cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/36939944

Good evening everyone!

Quick announcement to inform everyone that I will be upgrade this instance to 0.19.11 this coming Friday May 2nd at 8PM EDT.

I'm expecting about 30 minutes of downtime for this upgrade.

I'll providing real time updates via our matrix channel should any of you want to join and keep me company.

Thank you!

Good evening everyone!

Quick announcement to inform everyone that I will be upgrade this instance to 0.19.11 this coming Friday May 2nd at 8PM EDT.

I'm expecting about 30 minutes of downtime for this upgrade.

I'll providing real time updates via our matrix channel should any of you want to join and keep me company.

Thank you!

Update: Upgrade has been completed. Have a wonderful weekend.

Hey all,

Today, I’m writing to share our intention to join Fedecan, a Canadian not-for-profit organization committed to supporting the Fediverse. We believe this partnership will foster collaboration among like-minded individuals who share a common goal: to create a safe, welcoming space where people can connect freely.

Together we will help deliver a fast, reliable, and consistent experience for all and continue to be free from corporate influence and guided by the values of openness, community, and trust.

Who is Fedecan

Fedecan is a registered non-profit organization based in Canada, with the goal to provide a safe and welcoming space for people to connect with each other on the Fediverse. More information can be found here.

You may also know them by their Canadian lemmy instance lemmy.ca.

What does this mean for sh.itjust.works?

From the outside everything will stay much the same, especially with the admin team. Internally, we will collaborate on tasks related to non-profit compliance, policies, banking and common infrastructure elements such as backup/disaster recovery infrastructure. We will continue to operate separate equipment and instances in geographically isolated locations under different names. We will work towards aligning on safety and security practices in order to ensure that data is secure.

From an organizational structure, sh.itjust.works will fall under the Fedecan umbrella and will share common bylaws, policies, methodologies on best practices, security and legal considerations.

Where do donations go?

Donations to sh.itjust.works will continue to support our mission and objectives exclusively. However, users will also have the option to donate directly to Fedecan, which will allocate funds amongst its projects including sh.itjust.works. Operational costs related to running the non-profit will be shared among projects and these expenses will be transparently disclosed in annual reports published on the Fedecan website.

Option to withdrawal

sh.itjust.works will have the right to withdraw from the Fedecan umbrella should our mutual goals no longer be aligned. In such a case, a predefined provision and action plan will be in place to ensure a smooth transition back to independence.

Why Now?

As the Fediverse continues to grow, we believe it's important to collaborate more closely with others who share our values. Joining Fedecan allows us to do just that, strengthening our operation through a non-profit while staying true to our mission.

Timeline / Next Steps

Over the coming weeks, we'll begin the process of integrating with Fedecan on the organization side. You won't notice many changes but we'll keep you informed throughout the process.

Looking Ahead

We’re excited about this next chapter and the opportunities it brings. By joining forces, we’re reinforcing our commitment to the Fediverse and to the principles that brought us all together in the first place—openness, community, transparency, and trust.

Our core mission remains unchanged. We're still independent in spirit and practice and we remain committed to being a space that's not driven by profit, but by people.

I invite your questions or concerns on this thread or on our https://matrix.to/#/#sh.itjust.works:matrix.org)

Stay connected,

--The sh.itjust.works and Fedecan Team

test

Hello SJW community!

I will be conducting an upgrade to the lemmy software this coming Friday, March 21st at 8:30PM EDT.

During this time we will be upgrading to lemmy version 0.19.9.

Users can expect up to 60 minute of downtime for the upgrade to complete. As always will do my best to do it in less time.

I'll be providing real time updates on our matrix channel throughout the process for those interested or who just want to keep me company.

Thank you all for being part of the fediverse and this instance.

Update: If you are seeing this, we have successfully upgraded to 19.9. About 20 minutes of downtime. Thank you all for your support and kind words.

testing

Here it is, the update I've been promising you for some time.

When I first started this instance, I wanted a place where people could come together and share their experiences, knowledge and start discussions about the things that mattered to them. A place that was not driven by corporate greed but instead by its users.

In the early days of this instance, I founded the community /c/Agora to serve as a platform where users could openly discuss instance or fediverse-related matters and advocate for improvements and changes they would like to see. I want to put emphasis on the fact that this instance belongs to all of you, now and in the future.

Most of you know that since the start of this instance I've been personally funding the costs associated with it. While a lot of you have been generous enough to ask for ways to contribute over the last year, I haven't allowed it. This reason was mainly related to time and in no rush in making donations my top priority. Over the last few months I've reflected and come to understand that for this instance to truly be about its users, it also needs to be funded by them. Today I am taking the first step by sharing more details regarding the costs associated to running this instance and sharing with you all platforms that you can use to donate towards keeping this instance running.

So here it is. I've broken the rest of this post in the following sections. Feel free to jump to whichever section are most important/interesting to you:

• Current running cost
• Wishful 2025 budget
• Donations platforms
• New announcement community
• New front-end available
• A special thanks

Current running cost

Note: Some of these items are paid yearly however to keep things consistent I've broken it down monthly The running costs includes everything that relates to keeping the lights on. The time the admins and moderators put in keeping this instance decent is all volunteered.

This break down is quite conservative but as this instance continues to grows, so will its costs. I've already had to replace a drive and a power supply since switching to the new server. The current breakdown doesn't leave much room for improvements. If we get enough donations, here's what I'd do with the extra money throughout 2025. The focus is around speed, stability and general site availability. I look to do this by implementing a more robust disaster recovery strategy, add extra resources for new future hosted services and switch to a proper external email sending service to address some delivery issues during waves of new accounts.

2025 Budget

Donations

Its taken far longer than anticipated, but it’s finally here! 🚀 For now, I’m launching with two donation platforms: Liberapay and Ko-fi. If there’s demand for additional options, I’ll gladly expand in the future.

Where your donations go:

• 💻 Keeping this instance running smoothly (see Current running costs)
• 🔧 Funding improvements and new features

Community-driven priorities:
You can shape how extra funds are used. Join the discussion in the /c/Agora community—your input matters!

My commitment:
I’ll personally cover any funding shortfalls to ensure this project thrives, no matter what.

Thank you for your support!

New Announcements Community 📢

We'll be moving away from the /c/main community for posting future announcements moving forward. Instead we'll be using the /c/announcements community. The community has been restricted to only allow posts from admins. Be sure to subscribe!

New Tesseract front end available

One of our members @[email protected] raised a discussion in the /c/Agora to introduce a new lemmy front end called Tesseract. I've went ahead and added this front end for all to use. You can access it from here: https://tesh.itjust.works/

A special thanks ❤️

It wouldn't feel right if I ended this post without taking a minute to thank and appreciate the admins for all that they do on this instance and the fediverse. @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] thank you for your support, volunteering your precious time and continued dedication in keeping this a place running smoothly for many that call it their home. I'll always be in your debt!

test post after upgrade

Hello sh.itjust.works community,

It’s been a while since my last update, and I owe you all a more detailed one soon. However, today I’m here to give you a heads-up about the upcoming upgrade.

Over the next 7 days, I’ll be upgrading the instance to v19.5. While this update doesn’t strictly require it, I’ve decided to take this opportunity to upgrade our Postgres database from version 15 to 16 as well. This process can be time-consuming and have take up to 2 hours to complete on other instance.

I'm optimistic that we'll complete it in less time, but to err on the side of caution, I've scheduled the maintenance window for 120 minutes.

To minimize downtime, I've split the upgrade into two phases: Phase one will cover the database update, and Phase two will handle the Lemmy code upgrade.

Note: If the database upgrade is completed in under 60 minutes, I’ll proceed with the Lemmy code upgrade during the same maintenance window.

Here's the tentative timeline:

During these two planned events those who want to provide moral support or who want to get periodic updates are more than welcome to join us on our matrix channel

edit: 9:23EDT - Hey all, the database and lemmy codebase has been upgraded to v19.5. The database upgrade took a lot less time than expected so I went right into upgrading the codebase. A whole bunch of background tasks are still running which might make your experience slower than usual. Things should be back to normal in the next couple of hours.

Hello sh.itjust.works community,

Many of you have been eager to get an update about when the sh.itjust.works instance will get it's upgrade to the latest version of lemmy. Here's a update along with a tentative timeline.

In December 2023 I purchased a new server for this community. It took me awhile but I eventually made the time to get it racked at the local datacenter. For the sysadmins lingering and those interested here are the specs:

• Dual Xeon 2.9Ghz CPUs (32 cores total)
• 256GB ram
• 4 x 1TB SSD in raid 10 (with room to add 6 more disks)
• 10gbit networking

While I'm ready to proceed with the upgrade, I've decided to first migrate this instance over to the new hardware. Here are two reasons.

1. Those of you who have been around long enough may remember that I've been running this instance on "borrowed" unused resources that were available at the time. There are no more resources available for this instance to grow.
2. There are reports that the latest version of lemmy may use more resources. Given we are among the bigger instances, should I end up in a situation where I need to increase resources to keep things fast I'll be restricted.

Here's the tentative timeline:

• If anything major goes wrong on the 27th I will revert back the changes and bring the instance back up on the current server.
• If anything major goes wrong on the 29th I will revert back using an earlier snapshot. If that fails, I will restore from a backup.

During these two planned events those who want to provide moral support or who want to get periodic updates are more than welcome to join us on our matrix channel

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Update February 29 2024
We've successfully completed the upgrade to v1.9.3. I'm happy to announce that we did it in an astonishing 27 minutes, a whole 93 minutes under what was expected. The extra leg work that was done over the last few weeks combined with the better hardware definitely played a part. Looking over the processes, it looks like the service responsible for images is still doing some work so it's possible that you will come across some broken images. I'll be keeping on eye on that over the next bit and make adjustments if needed. Thank you all for the support and to all of you who kept me company on our matrix channel. Have a good evening.

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Update February 27 2024
We've successfully completed the migration. I'm happy to announce that this instance is now running on its new hardware dedicated solely to this community! We experienced just under 40 minutes of downtime which is a whole 50 minutes less than expected. Please give this instance a chance to catch up what it missed but we should be good within the next 30 or so minutes. Thank you