The trouble is that I don't know when links or sites quit working until I post a tech note and then see that it shows up as a bad link. Lately, that seems to be at work or just before it's time to close down and get ready to go to bed.
All the stuff I post from work runs off a read only DVD. It seems lately that is were most of my Stangnet time is spent. I can't write to the DVD because computer network security disables the DVD write function to keep data from walking out the door.
The time spent changing the DVD saved documents when the links go bad gives me some clue as to the amount of time and data I would need to keep up to date on an offsite server.
Here we have a slightly different approach.
First, the actual server is shielded from the WWW through a service called cloudflare. It is a proxy of the actual server. There are no requests made of the server from internet users... Zero.
All requests are made of the proxy service that's clones responses from the server.
The server itself can only be modified by a few number of accounts. Even those changes have oversight and are backed up (they are reversible).
The ENTIRE server is backed up regularly (more regular than what you might expect).
Copies of files that are uploaded to our servers are kept in multiple locations. There is no ONE source that can be compromised that can cause the server to respond differently from the user's perspective.
Everything is permissions based. The same mechanisms that protect staff forums protect every other forum and resource on the server. If you've not seen the staff forums, it's because the permissions were designed that way. If you CAN see the staff forums (by what ever means you chose), then let me know.
I'm not saying that you should have blind faith. I'm just saying that you might give ONE instance a shot and see how well it might or might not work for you. It would require some alteration in how you're used to doing things (obviously, things will be different).
If you give an honest try and don't like it, you'll never hear from me about it again (unless there's some big update to something you said you didn't like where that point in negated).
Stuff that is actually LOADED to this server doesn't become a dead link. The stuff that DOES is the stuff that is hosted off-site and the destination of said link becomes invalid. This is a departure what you became accustomed to on legacy StangNet. It's something that Mike and I have discussed at LENGTH before opening up the server's ability to host these materials on it's own. Since that implementation, a lot of work has gone into securing it. Additional security is implemented as it becomes available and is tested to be reliable. The advantage that StangNet has is that is that we're small (server relatively speaking) and can implement measures much easier and faster than large scale servers.
In a nut shell, there's a lot of interwoven layers working to ensure that data isn't arbitrarily lost.
What's more (and I would need to check on implementation) is that I believe that additional backups of SPECIFICALLY resources that you submit, can be sent to another off-site location at regular intervals or even sent to storage that can be designated by you. So copies of your resources can still be kept on hand for when the zombies come.
