Hi Martin and Pono,

Martin and I met today and discussed migrating the Inkscape website to a
new server/OS and rolling out the upgraded Django 5.0 codebase. Martin
asked that I put some details in writing so that the Inkscape PLC and
Conservancy have something to approve.

Inkscape have a feature-rich and mature website that has evolved over
many years to closely meet their needs. The website serves a range of
public-facing content, login-based content and internal project tools.
It's a reasonably large codebase at ~ 20K lines of Python, primarily
written by Martin. The site is currently hosted on 6GB/4 core CentOS 7
machine at OSUOSL.

Martin and other contributors would like to upgrade the site from Django
2.2 to Django 5.0. The bulk of the work on the codebase has already been
done, but can't currently be deployed as it requires Python >= 3.10,
where CentOS 7 appears to come with 3.6.

1. Ben to set up a local copy of the website for testing purposes.

2. Briefly review the setup and operation of the existing server.

3. Negotiate with OSUOSL to provision a suitable new machine.

4. Install and configure the website codebase and dependencies on the
new machine. Transfer database and media for testing purposes. Test
basic functionality across the website.

5. Make the new website public at https://test.inkscape.org/ so we can
get feedback from Inkscape contributors and community.

6. When satisfied, perform a final database/media sync and switch over
DNS to the new site and the Fastly caching origin.

7. Troubleshoot and resolve any follow-up issues.

8. Optionally add some additional local caching and/or rate-limiting to
reduce the pressure on Martin to monitor for abuse by bots.

Estimated cost: $1,200–1,600 USD
Estimated delivery: 2 weeks from approval (excluding community testing)

I don't want to scare you off with that cost, but I also don't want to
underestimate and set the wrong expectation. Martin has explained that
there's quite a lot going on in the website, so this estimate includes
provision for some challenges along the way, back-and-forth
communication and a reasonable amount of testing and follow-up
adjustments. Actual cost will be lower if possible. I'll also keep
Martin fully up-to-date throughout so there won't be any surprises.

Regards,
Ben

--
Ben Sturmfels

Sturm Software Engineering
www.sturm.com.au
+61 3 9024 2467