Technical Details
Turbulence Server Specs
1) Please provide a concise description of the project's technical aspects (250 words max).
A custom website would display imaginary objects, organized into a taxonomy. Users could select objects, see pictures of them and vote on which objects they would like to see built. The results will be tallied, stored and displayed on the website. The database would use MySQL and queried and managed by PHP scripts.
At the end of the proscribed voting period, we would commission Second Life builders to create the objects at current SL wages. The dynamic installation at Ars Virtua would be built from these.
The installation in Ars Virtua would then communicate with the website and as the imaginary objects are finished in SL, built in AI and sold on eBay, their status would be displayed. This would be accomplished through a PHP link using the LSL command llHTTPRequest().
2) Enumerate the specific techniques, products, programs, languages, toolkits that you will be employing to realize the project, including relevant version numbers (example, PHP 4.3). If any of these are commercial products you'll need to purchase, please include the price.
We will use the latest version of PHP 5 to dynamically display webpages and also to communicate with Second Life. We will also use the latest version of MySQL for the imaginary objects database.
3) If your project requires the procurement of a domain name [our preference is that turbulence.org will host the project], please specify why this is necessary, and where you plan to have the domain(s) hosted.
We will procure a domain name which will be used for publicity purposes - mostly so that people can easily remember the name. This will redirect users to the turbulence.org site.
4) What portion of the project will be realized on the turbulence.org server? Be specific, including figures on disk usage and memory requirements. Be sure to characterize the impact on the the server (i.e. sporadic CGI scripts vs a constant daemon process running in the background). Also include figures on the number of people in your project who would need access to the turbulence.org server, and in what manner (ftp access, shell access, etc.).
All of the webpages will exist on turbulence.org. We expect to have a low impact on the server because the only processes would be some small PHP scripts. Two people would need access to the server, preferrably shell access.
For disk usage, we would expect approximately 30mb of space.
5) What portion of the project (if any) will be realized on server(s) other than turbulence.org? Please describe this specifically and characterize the interaction between the servers.
We will have a redirect from a custom URL that more accurately reflects the name of the project.
6) If possible, please state the approximate monthly bandwidth you anticipate using for this project.
Each user that is actively voting on the imaginary objects would probably use about 2-5mb of bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth used depends on the publicity and access to the project, but we would hope for about 400 active users/month, so a rough estimage of 2000mb/month.