I’m no expert, but git isn’t so hard. My workflow for the stuff I do on my own is:
Make changes on my dev computer
“git status” shows me which files changed
“git add whatever” adds it to staging
"git commit -m “fixed bugs or whatever comment”
“git push origin master”
And then from the production server
“git pull origin master”
And, I think we all (including you) could be fine if this kind of thing takes much longer. If people are cool with the high rates of productivity here, that’s fine too of course. But, I think you could make some change work on dev and we (I would do this if you want) could recruit testers. Put up a thread that X change is done on dev, but needs to be tested on all themes or something like that. And then let it sit until someone has claimed that ticket and completed it. Pretty much anyone could do that and respond with any bugs they find. Or similar things.
Johnny getting targeted for wig ads really appealed to my inner bastid 
On a serious note I don’t really understand why setting out some guidelines and putting some limitations on revenue being distributed is such a bad idea or somehow insulting to some of the people who have been so fundamental creating and running the site? It seems fairly practical on the off chance the site explodes.
I’m also curious now the site is up and running as to how much time will be needed to keep things going smoothly? I would assume it isn’t as time consuming as the initial set up, but then again I know close to nothing about tech stuff.
Hopefully nobody takes this post the wrong way because I have zero issues with people being paid and feel a bit bad I’m not donating money myself.
It would be pointless because none of it would matter if the site ever did explode. Anything decided now would be ignored. If you wanted to start drawing up rules for what happens in that event, first you’d need to figure out who owns the site. Then you’d need to codify that under an established legal system. Remember how well that went the last time we tried?
We’re not quite there yet and I suspect there will be a lot of variance. Maybe 10 hours per week on average divided among 2 or 3 people?
edit: That number ignores the mods but I think their contributions should count, along with those of anybody else who puts in significant time doing something other than posting.
This is zz’s most recent post in the Behind The Scenes thread
Wait, that wasn’t a prophesy. In fact, I promised you, PROMISED, that it would all work out even if zz rage quits. And what I mean, kinda obviously, is that if push comes to shove, I’ll do it.
But that’s not going to happen. It’ll be fine.
I know what you were talking about, but that’s not a prophesy.
I feel like this discussion would be so much easier and productive in person. Hundreds of posts across days could be settled easier in a 20 minute chat.
True. Also people are soooo much better to people they’ve actually met.
Are ya’ll seriously going to drag this shit into a fifth day?
I agree with microbet’s prophecy fwiw. The forum is fine and this stupid drama means nothing.
Hosting bill has to be paid. If you don’t want problems you have to keep up with software updates, both on the server (operating system kind of stuff) and Discourse. Backups are pretty important. Keeping familiar with things and monitoring. A lot of the work done has been done to make the place nicer and meet requests that people have had, but I don’t want to make it sound like that work wasn’t needed. People need to be happy with the software - obviously that has been a point of some contention with some people.
Similar to a lot of things you can do X hours to make it 95% perfect and ten times as much to make it 99% perfect.
People have emotions. To pat myself on the back, I’m really seeing the wisdom in my stepping down from admin and treasury which I did so that I could do stuff like this as a plebian. My consistent calmness in these threads probably wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
I think we are in a little trouble if zz absolutely disappeared tomorrow, but we will remedy that before long with backup on a different server. The software stuff should be pretty ok on github. The posts I think would be lost.
Even without that, we could still start over like we’ve done twice and probably just regroup at exiled.
But again, it’ll be fine.
Aren’t you pulling backups? All you’d need to do is set up another server somewhere, install Discourse, restore the backup, and have simplicitus point the domain to the new place. With a bit of coordination you could pull the whole thing off in a couple hours.
Settings should be in the db. The plugins and stuff should be on github I think.
Should be everything except plugins, which like micro says are pulled remotely for every rebuild.
So i’m finally getting a banner ad. It’s… in Chinese. Or maybe Japanese or Korean, i can’t tell. Appears to be for Statefarm. I think you guys still need to work on this ad thing.
I think you need to educate yourself and not try to voice an opinion about a Chinese ad that you don’t understand.
