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09 November 2009

Who wants to look after the metachat backend? (phooar) Wanted: PHP / MySQL coder with time on their hands, Blogging engine experience, basic knowledge of Linux, and the ability to unscramble PHP spaghetti. [More:]

Following on from this discussion, it'd be nice to get an idea of those people who would like to / are capable of taking over the administration of metachat.

The codebase is a much hacked version of b2evolution, and to be honest, it's a bit of a nightmare. You'll find no easy separation of functionality or MVC patterns here.

At an absolute minimum, there's little that has to be done. I run a periodic mySQL backup from the server onto my local machine, but everything else is taken care of. You might need to reboot the server every now and again. When the current hosting runs out, you might need to move the software or take over the current account.

There's also a lot that could be done. Uservoice has a list you could get started on. Plus - There are still a few SQL statements that cause the server to slowdown / take too many resources.

I said that I'd provide a sanitized dump of the metachat source code and data for perusing, so here it is.
Source code [3MB zipped]
Data [61MB zipped]
If you've got any problems with the data being there - Please tell me (here or by email).

Please comment in this thread if you can do this, if you want to do this, or if you'd like to vote for / nominate someone to do this. Thanks.

edit:One thing you may need to know in order to get the software running. We redirect 404 errors to error.php. This means that pretty urls like metachat.org/recent do not use mod_rewrite, they use this redirection to error.php.
If nobody can do this, would money to hire an admin be feasible?
posted by By the Grace of God 09 November | 14:41
As I commented in t'other thread, I'm keen and capable enough to handle maintenance, but I suspect I'd find coding new features a struggle.
posted by chrismear 09 November | 14:50
I have the utmost confidence in mr. mear.
posted by terrapin 09 November | 16:18
As do I.
posted by dg 09 November | 16:27
I have total confidence in chrismear.

Also some of us can help out with coding new features - just give us a shout out when you need to. We have a pool of talent why not use it?
posted by gomichild 09 November | 19:27
/claps
posted by richat 09 November | 21:03
To further expand my point, beyond simple applause, I think that if chrismear is willing to hold it together for awhile, and we acn try to cobble together some new code, that'd be GREAT.
posted by richat 09 November | 21:17
I suspect that chrismear is a programming god, so anything he does is fine by me.

However - He has stated that he doesn't want to code new features.
It would be nice if more people threw hats into the ring.
posted by seanyboy 10 November | 03:48
I've never wished I could write code MORE than I do right now. Sadly, it doesn't give me the brain for it, or the skills. I will continue to wish for two main things:

1) That someone with hardcore coding skills turns up,
and
2) That the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Gilded Palace of Sin" had better production values.
posted by richat 10 November | 11:56
I'm not super-active here; I'm usually on MetaFilter, and I was a co-founder of SportsFilter. I'm also a PHP/MySQL web applications developer.

Based on my experience with SportsFilter, I'd recommend building a new site in a CMS like ExpressionEngine instead of hacking around with the current code. SportsFilter was based on a copy of MetaFilter's code, and it was really difficult to work with since it the code was built up over a couple of years by one person and there wasn't any documentation. With a CMS, there'd be documentation and access to developer forums, so it'd be much easier to manage and modify than trying to suss out spaghetti code.

ExpressionEngine has user accounts, blog postings, comments, and a wiki built in (along with lots of other features), and has several of the features on the Uservoice wish list, including subscribing to threads, embedding Flickr photos, and embedding YouTube videos, are either built-in or easy to add.
posted by kirkaracha 10 November | 17:58
GREAT! kirkaracha has volunteered!

I kid, I kid.
posted by richat 10 November | 19:26
Should I Attack? || My boss is on hold in the next room

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