DokuWiki forum and sponsoring
After much discussion on the mailing list we decided to give the idea of an online forum for DokuWiki users a try. The forum uses the Unclassified NewsBoard software which is relatively unknown. I came accross it at opensourcecms.com where it got excellent ratings so far. I had some experience with PhpBB and PunBB which are both very fine and capable products1) but to be honest I don't really like their coding style. I haven't looked too deeply into UNB but I think it matches my idea of PHP somewhat more 
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Anyway. UNB also comes with some really cool features I hadn't seen in other boards yet2) eg. you can bookmark threads you're interested in and it has built in Jabber notification support - though I haven't configured that one yet. The only thing I don't like currently is the ACL editor which seem to be powerful but overly complicated to me - but I guess other may feel the same about the DokuWiki one .
But with every good there comes a bad: with the forum I now have another service running on my little server which begins to feel the load. It's a Celeron 2.4Ghz which isn't really a numbercruncher. It is currently running at a load between 1 and 5 and a CPU usage rarely beyond 30%. So sooner or later I will need to replace it with a more powerful machine. I just looked through a few online stores and I will need at least about 1,500 € for the machine I have in mind.
So here comes the sponsoring part of this post: I will probably buy a new machine in the next months (depending on my financial situation) but of course it would be much better to have a new server now – bought by someone else . So if you use DokuWiki in your company and think it is great and useful to you – why not donate a Server?. In exchange I can imagine some link to your company at the Wiki site (alá “Server sponsored by YourCompanyName”). If you're interested, just contact me and we can work something out.
Another idea to raise some money would be putting Google adsense ads on the Wiki page. I haven't really thought this through but I guess with the approx. 330,000 PIs per month it could bring some clicks. I'd like to get some feedback by you, the users: Would you mind to see google text ads on wiki.splitbrain.org?