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Dear free hosting providers
- Thread starter doogie88
- Start date
I don't think a lot of people realize this, but back when I was running my free host (lasted around a year) it only cost me $65/month. Granted, I colocated so the startup cost was a bit higher.
If you can't afford to spend at least $30/month, you have no business being a host. Free or paid.
Most of the "hosts" in the advertisement section are bots. Click here for an example of what I'm referring to. This guy comes on the dot every seven days and posts in the advertisement section, he has an extremely negative reputation, but nothing has been done about it.
Has he contributed to the community? No. Do people complain about his service due to serious restrictions? yes. But somehow, he's able to still post in the advertisement section even after all these years..
To be honest, I'm browsing through the free hosting advertisement section and it's pretty disappointing. There really should be stricter moderation -- at least in the free hosting offers. Maybe there should also be a rule change about being a member for x months before you can post in that section to prevent new signups/spam bots from joining just to post about a "SUPER SPECIAL UNLIMITED OFFER" only for the entire host to vanish the next day.
Thanks for your suggestions Tyler. We don't have a requirement on hosts to participate in the community and I think it should stay that way. If they just wish to post their ad, that's ok. And we don't have a quality requirement on hosts as that would be hard to enforce. I'm speaking in general terms here and not about any specific host.
To require hosts to be a member here for several months until they can post an ad is a bit unrealistic.
To require hosts to be a member here for several months until they can post an ad is a bit unrealistic.
It might be a good idea to have a new "Hosts" usergroup that is verified to meet the minimum necessary requirements to post advertising here.
- No free domain names even under premium TLDs (.in or .info for example).
A quick WHOIS check for protected WHOIS is usually a good start. The domains are often free, but they don't include free WHOIS protection. Any domain using information that fails to meet the ICANN WHOIS requirements should also be rejected. That includes using fake information such as a domain at Godaddy.com using Namecheap.com protected WHOIS information.
- No cobranded offers.
These should be reasonably easy to spot by visiting the webhosting provider's plans page. Any single account offering with very large limits (10GB / 100GB) will be a giveaway.
- No (free) resellers.
Master, Alpha Master, and normal free resellers will be the hardest to detect. Usually looking at the nameserver and RDNS information, you can find the main provider which should be a paid webhosting service to qualify for this requirement.
This is no guarantee of quality, but that is not what we are doing. We are just enforcing a basic set of rules that clears out most of the problems we have been seeing.
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Is it really necessary to establish such a strict authoritative regime on this? As far as I know, there are no ISO standards to enforce this. Neither are there auditors constantly probing Peo. Understandably, you all want to maintain a certain level of quality for everyone who visits this site, but if you were to go to such lengths you might as well remove the section on hosting offers from the forums and just maintain a directory that demands each submission to undergo a process of approval.
What did Peo originally conceive of FWS? Has it changed in any way? The regulations enforced here should reflect the vision that holds now, and until that is clearly defined there really is no baseline to measure against.
What are the metrics for the quality that you speak of? Are you certain that your direction is right? After all, running a community like this is more than just pleasing a few members. Is what you want to see what others want to see?
I am really perplexed by the recent intensity that has underlain all the discussions about hosts who do not meet the regular members' criteria. Banning unlimited offers is one thing, but wanting everything to go by your (which happens to be the minority's) definition of quality is another.
What did Peo originally conceive of FWS? Has it changed in any way? The regulations enforced here should reflect the vision that holds now, and until that is clearly defined there really is no baseline to measure against.
What are the metrics for the quality that you speak of? Are you certain that your direction is right? After all, running a community like this is more than just pleasing a few members. Is what you want to see what others want to see?
I am really perplexed by the recent intensity that has underlain all the discussions about hosts who do not meet the regular members' criteria. Banning unlimited offers is one thing, but wanting everything to go by your (which happens to be the minority's) definition of quality is another.
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Webcs-Peter
Member
I wonder what free host you are talking about?
I have to agree. You will not get perfection on any forum but placing so many restrictions to please just a few members, is just plain unrealistic. Take a chill pill guys. As long as they are following the rules that we have in place, let them be.
Webhosting providers come to freewebspace.net, advertise for a short time, and close down after that all too often. Why? It is very easy to get started now.
Consider an Alpha Master reseller provider.
For $30.00 per month, the main provider can purchase an unmanaged cPanel VPS with a reasonable amount of memory. They start giving away free Alpha Master reseller accounts to their users. The main server is just a VPS, but they are already capable of offering multilevel cPanel resellers.
5 Alpha Master accounts are given away that create 25 Master accounts which create 50 Reseller accounts with 500 cPanel accounts. The main provider is now 4 levels separated from any kind of end user verification against abuse such as spam, phishing, hacking, piracy etc. All it takes is a single user on the system to cause the server to become suspended or terminated for abuse.
That one server could easily power 5 or even 10 different providers advertising here at freewebspace.net.
We could have a Host usergroup with some extra benefits, it's a good idea. But any host that follow our rules should be able to post an ad here.
As for the suggestions about cobranded, free resellers and free domains. Two of those are already in the rules. The third one (free domains) is very likely used in combination with one or two of the others. So, those kind of hosts are already banned from posting offers here. To clarify this we could add "If you are a host and use a free domain such as co.cc you can't post offers here".
It's an emerging discussion on the web at large, called by a couple different terms such as Certification. Instead of a penalty, make it an "opt in rewards club" for Premium hosts. Then it just works in reverse. Didn't meet all the rules? No Gold Eye-of-Horus emblem for you!
My metric for quality is longevity. Again think of the Premium Club. It's certainly true that new businesses face a catch 22 if they can't get clients starting out! Fine. Just make something like 7 months in business necessary for the emblem. (There could be a couple of different levels.) I have a running joke that my project basically only has 1 rule: "Don't Croak". But some 75% of my entrants couldn't meet that either at the 1 year mark.
Seraphim
Active Member
It's been a rather amazing adventure in that regard too. So many hosts come into Tao's study thinking okay this is cake and then foul themselves out by either failing to communicate recent outage news or by outright collapsing.
Perhaps we could make an 'official' version of this dashboard study as part of the directory, that way hosts maintaining at least 95% real uptime with at least 8 months in the business get a gold star on their listings and are able to join the 'veteran host' usergroup.
"Including but not limited to" - There are a few Alumni who are doing okay on their second or third revivals since then, and a few Members of the Thread-Gallery who are not displayed for other reasons. So I am happy to contribute my results, but I shall be careful to point out my corner is only a subset of FWS quality.
theswagbayorg
New Member
I think it would be a great thing If Tao had his own section on the board. I really do respect what he does, after all, I wouldn't really be where I am without him. It's amazing to see him take a host, put them "through the roller coaster of web hosting" (to quote Tao), and see a better host emerge. True, most hosts do "fail" or otherwise disappear from his study, but that's all a part of the game! It's just as Darwin's theory of evolution states. It comes down to "mutations" that set hosts apart, and the survival of the fittest hosts. The host who have the edge will survive, and the others ultimately will not, unless they adapt. Obviously, hosts who are not fit in the first place will not survive. (A great example would be Flyhosts...not fit because of the overselling conducted on his part...)
Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think that is a pretty good analogy of the "Host Cycle"....
Thank you Scott!
I occasionally add new rules as events emerge. Flyhost's official scoring is a Flunk on the Hacking incident, with capstones of poor service and non reporting the outages when his capacity blew out. I'll try to refresh my board soon. I have enough new data it's about time for a Sync across the spread.
So what, they decided from the get go that they would provide hosting for six months, five months or less and that's it?
