New server

Thanks to the efforts of Jim and Mash and the combined financial support of OneTwenty members, we now have a new server. Behold it’s magnificence:

… or it’s beige-box-ed-ness; you decide. I’ve been setting it up as a mail server and will be migrating services to it over the next week or so.

Online communication is becoming increasing integral in day-to-day life and, unlike other forms of technology (such as mobile phones), it is plausible to operate your own services (using a standard computer with a broadband internet connection). A benefit of operating your own services is that you aren’t dependent on external entities that could misuse or delete your information, or capitalise on their unique position. I’d like for everyone to be able to control their own online information and communication. Currently, it takes a fair amount of expert knowledge, but I hope that people see enough value in it to ensure that changes.

New OneTwenty services after the migration will include email (using RoundCube for webmail), and individual feed readers (using TinyTinyRSS) for OneTwenty members. Existing services that will be migrated include instant messaging (Jabber), blogs (WordPress), and a blog aggregator (Planet). I’ll also be adding photo galleries (ZenPhoto with ZenPress) to any blogs that want it, and I’m considering an iCal aggregator (maybe using PHPiCalendar).