archive users announcement

mygpo/web/templates/dashboard.html

@@ -46,6 +46,52 @@ <h2>{% trans "Newest Episodes" %}</h2>
 
    {% endif %}
  {% endcache %}
+
+ <hr>
+<div class="well">
+<h3>2025-02-08 <b>Annoucement</b></h3>
+
+<p>Dear gpodder.net users,</p>
+<p>we now have a total of 146k accounts, which is an amazing number.
+Thank you for joining us on this platform! But of these 146k accounts,
+only 2500 logged-in last month, 7000 logged-in in the past 12 months: not that many active users after all!</p>
+
+<p><b>This message is to inform you that we will likely purge inactive (no login since 2024-01-01) user data from our database.</b></p>
+
+<p><b><i>As you see this message, you are connected to gpodder.net so your data will not be removed</i>.</b></p>
+
+<p>To my knowledge this is the first purge since 2009.
+We have to do it in order to restore good performance for active users.
+Indeed the system has struggled with an ever-increasing database for <a href="https://github.com/gpodder/mygpo/issues/349">years</a> now.
+More than 300GB database on spinning disks is too much. We also keep album artwork for long-gone podcasts, up to 70GB. This has to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>Based on first simulations, we would <i>reclaim more than 80%</i> of the database,
+going down to 50GB. This would encourage our hoster to migrate us to newer hardware,
+with even more performance gains. By the way, a huge thank you to our hoster
+<a href="https://tornadovps.com">tornadovps.com</a>, who provided us with 2 VMs
+with significant resources free of charge for years. We really appreciate their support.</p>
+
+<p><b>So, what will happen to long-inactive user data?</b> We will produce a downloadable export of everything they have sent to gpodder.net:</p>
+<ol>
+<li>the list of their current subscriptions, in OPML format, to be able to easily re-import them in their podcatcher of choice;</li>
+<li>a json export of their profile, all subscribed podcasts, all episodes, every history entry ((un)subscribe, download, play, delete, ...), tags, favorite episodes, etc..</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>This archive will be available for download from their user profile. It will be kept for as long as it's reasonable,
+at least for another year. Any other action on gpodder.net will be unavailable.
+There is currently no way to re-activate an archived account but we could think
+of something if necessary (open an issue).</p>
+
+<p>The export code is available for review on <a href="https://github.com/gpodder/mygpo/pull/829">github</a>.
+Please give feedback if you find missing data. It's our intent to give back any bit of data we can find on our system.</p>
+
+<p>We also would like to engage with you on the future of gpodder.net: please bring your feedback
+on <a href="https://github.com/gpodder/mygpo/issues/830">this issue</a>. In particular, should it be a more stripped-down
+syncing engine or is the web experience crucial?</p>
+
+<p>Thank you for reading this, and for your continued use of the podcasting ecosystem!</p>
+</div>
 {% endblock %}
 
 {% block sidebar %}

mygpo/web/templates/home.html

@@ -115,7 +115,48 @@ <h3>Features</h3>
                             <li><em>For publishers:</em> Find out which parts
                             of your content are popular</li>
                         </ul>
-
+<hr>
+<div class="well">
+<h3>2025-02-08 <b>Annoucement</b></h3>
+
+<p>Dear gpodder.net users,</p>
+<p>we now have a total of 146k accounts, which is an amazing number.
+Thank you for joining us on this platform! But of these 146k accounts,
+only 2500 logged-in last month, 7000 logged-in in the past 12 months: not that many active users after all!</p>
+
+<p><b>This message is to inform you that we will likely purge inactive (no login since 2024-01-01) user data from our database</b></p>
+
+<p>To my knowledge this is the first purge since 2009.
+We have to do it in order to restore good performance for active users.
+Indeed the system has struggled with an ever-increasing database for <a href="https://github.com/gpodder/mygpo/issues/349">years</a> now.
+More than 300GB database on spinning disks is too much. We also keep album artwork for long-gone podcasts, up to 70GB. This has to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>Based on first simulations, we would <i>reclaim more than 80%</i> of the database,
+going down to 50GB. This would encourage our hoster to migrate us to newer hardware,
+with even more performance gains. By the way, a huge thank you to our hoster: <a href="https://tornadovps.com">tornadovps.com</a>,
+who provided us with 2 VMs with significant resources free of charge for years. We really appreciate their support.</p>
+
+<p><b>So, what will happen to long-inactive user data?</b> We will produce a downloadable export of everything they have sent to gpodder.net:</p>
+<ol>
+<li>the list of their current subscriptions, in OPML format, to be able to easily re-import them in their podcatcher of choice;</li>
+<li>a json export of their profile, all subscribed podcasts, all episodes, every history entry ((un)subscribe, download, play, delete, ...), tags, favorite episodes, etc..</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>This archive will be available for download from their user profile. It will be kept for as long as it's reasonable,
+at least for another year. Any other action on gpodder.net will be unavailable.
+There is currently no way to re-activate an archived account but we could think
+of something if necessary (open an issue).</p>
+
+<p>The export code is available for review on <a href="https://github.com/gpodder/mygpo/pull/829">github</a>.
+Please give feedback if you find missing data. It's our intent to give back any bit of data we can find on our system.</p>
+
+<p>We also would like to engage with you on the future of gpodder.net: please bring your feedback
+on <a href="https://github.com/gpodder/mygpo/issues/830">this issue</a>. In particular, should it be a more stripped-down
+syncing engine or is the web experience crucial?</p>
+
+<p>Thank you for reading this, and for your continued use of the podcasting ecosystem!</p>
+</div>
                         {% endblock %}
                     </div>