I just don’t think there are any deployment processes. I could probably put one together but it would take a lot of work, it might be tricky given my dev.darwin v production.xyz, and it would be empty without permission to copy over the whole DB (semi-effectively promoting me to Godhood since I could see all data).

Update: also, from my perspective… the site code should be nuked from orbit. I don’t see anything here that I don’t feel would be better and easier (to write, to test, to maintain, to rope in help) on any modern framework. I got a commit bit to try to encourage myself to try to work with what’s here but like a New Year’s Resolution gym membership… I have nothing but appreciation and admiration for the active devs keeping the site going and nudging it toward new features.

I'm sorry that you're afraid of the process. I agree it can be daunting, but hey - I got through it. And I'm probably a worse coder than you.

The important thing is that you wouldn't be going alone. I stand ready to mentor (hand-hold) anyone who's willing to give it a try.
The first thing is to dig into the code and try to understand how it works. You don't have to understand it all; take it bit by bit (or byte by byte). Here is my first patch. I tweaked the content of some html!

By the way. Unfortunately, the Everything documents (such as the Everything Bible) are next to useless for PerlMonks. The baselines have diverged too much in the last 20 years.

Regarding multiple servers: No; we have multiple servers but they're all running code out of the same database. Yes, the code lives in a database (mostly).

I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.

I always appreciate the offer and the effort. It's not fear that stops me though… well, maybe a little fear of embarrassing myself by breaking something but that's really just vanity. :P

How hard would it be to build and run a clone/development version on any given *nix? Do instructions exist? If I should already know the answer to these… I will say 10 Hail Larrys and whip myself with a dead python.