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Guide backups.
Heya, lurker and regular /r/tulpas poster here.

Earlier, Tulpa.info went down due to a SQL error, which prompted this thread on /r/tulpas:

Quote:So, I just tried to check Tulpa.info, and it's down again.

Quote:MyBB has experienced an internal SQL error and cannot continue.

This got me thinking--many of the guides I've seen so far are based on the Tulpa.info forums. In the hopefully unlikely event that the forums go kaput forever, do there exist or are there plans regarding backups of all the guides on the forums?

If there aren't, and it's something that's okay with the community, perhaps we could put together some sort of effort to back everything up on Google Docs or a Wordpress site. My main concern would be keeping things updated, and permission from the original authors to repost their work (with linkbacks and credit, of course).

Does there exist such a plan, or ideas for one?

Lolflash - click it, you know you want to

Quora is working on a collection of guides.
Reiterating my comment on reddit:
As the OP found, there is an effort to back up the guides on github. I'm not familiar with github, but I think multiple people can contribute to it.

If I could make a request though, if you guys are planning on backing up the guides like this, be sure to link back to the original topic. I say this because google likes to penalize when it finds "duplicate content" and whatnot.

Regarding the mysql stuff, tulpa.info is more or less starting to outgrow its host. We've had about 2 million page views in the past 30 days, and I'm getting emails every day that we're capping our concurrent connections for mysql stuff. I'm working on getting off shared hosting and into a dedicated machine, though it's taking time and the university work (another 2 weeks left of school) is taking most of my time.

However, backups on the site are made literally every day, if something went kaput with tulpa.info, other people I trust have access to them. Even if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, there are other admins that would have a daily access to the database backup.
This is the first time I've ever seen the word "kaput" used in English.

That aside...

The biggest gripe that authors will have with this is the need to follow and update the guide in several locations.

It would probably be best if each author kept an offline copy of their own guide and we just keep a list of links and contact details for the authors.
That way, there will only be one online copy in existance for the author to update and we can contact them to re-upload it in the even this site goes kaput.
And each author really should keep the latest version of their guides on their own HDDs, regardless of the online redundancy situation.

As for online redundancy:

Someone could try keep a centeral guides site that is "mirrored" on multiple servers for redundancy and just embed/frame guide pages on other sites so that updating the original keeps it up-to-date in all locations.

Another possibility, is to attempt to "mirror" and automatically sync guides from their source - If someone is willing to write the code for that.
This would be the most redundant solution, as the servers are under the control of different persons, so double failure is near impossible - while still providing a single point of contact/update to authors.
(Redundant, as in: "the duplication of critical components or functions of a system with the intention of increasing reliability")

As for this site: It is the administrator's responsibility to keep backups of the database.
Only Pleeb will be able to comment on the backup scheme for this site. Edit: looks like he did while I was typing this post.
Hopefully, Pleeb has assigned a secondary admin here that can perform the necessary tasks, should he go AWOL for whatever reason. Edit: I see he has addressed this too.
GW Personal Note: On my website, my web host makes automatic daily backups and I manually back it up weekly or before and after making significant changes. I also have a plug-in that automatically backs up my database to my Google Drive account. If my site goes down due to hardware failure, my web host will restore it for me automatically. However, should something happen to me, my site will die the moment I miss a payment to my web host or domain provider.

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Lolflash - click it, you know you want to