Time to rebuild my host spread

[TaoPhoenix]

Free Hosting into Paid Upgrades

Member Rosareven sent along a note that confirms what I believe is the best free hosting model - solid Free hosting with good specs and support, with the slide into Paid for special features and/or even further capacity.

She reports that she is "now paying for Decker Services' web hosting, who generously cut me a discount with SSH access."

 

[theraptor]

Looks like Hostalope just didn't have what it takes, your study is ever enlightening Tao.

Have you ever considered setting up a domain so that people can always access your page from one URL? Its not too difficult to set it up with multiple nameservers and low TTL so that when they access the domain xyz.com, it will attempt to load server1, then server2, etc.

 

[TaoPhoenix]

Hosting offers for students!?

Rosareven's other news was that she is "This semester I am enrolled in a subject where web hosting is compulsory for all student, and the last week my fellow classmates have been hunting for web spaces for this subject."

Look at that! An entire class of prospective clients! Deeplist and Seraphim, do you want to post offers here? You two have the best support availability here, so you two get my recommendation. My initial advice is for you two to consult and work as a team and post roughly matching offers with separate specialties. Depending on how personality quirks go, I'd reckon it would be smart to have planned a Client Swap program so that between the two of you they get a great intro to the Free host world!

Part of my reply back to her:

"I picked two of my winning hosts and asked if they wanted to make site offers. Why don't you visit the thread and post the specs they think they will need for the class?"

 

[TaoPhoenix]

Looks like Hostalope just didn't have what it takes, your study is ever enlightening Tao.

I'll give every ounce of credit I can here. After a fairly typical new host shakeout Hostalope is in the running to have a solid server. I had to make my decision based on my difficult service experience, however another client may just do great with them. My study does require owner-coupon overrides to out-of-the-box policies, and we were unable to complete the setup to everyone's satisfaction.

 

[TaoPhoenix]

... your study is ever enlightening Tao.

Have you ever considered setting up a domain so that people can always access your page from one URL? Its not too difficult to set it up with multiple nameservers and low TTL so that when they access the domain xyz.com, it will attempt to load server1, then server2, etc.

Thank you for the idea, and in fact, that is just about to happen! I will have to migrate today's update over because the draft copy probably broke. It will soon be like the Debian theme of "something Stable" is what lands on the domain version, and the "testing" versions include both fresh experiments and a couple of PG13 buttons like Fark not on the more PG domain copy.

Today's board update was a bit of an event, especially since IsMyWebsite had been so strong as to win the lead spot for a while. I hardcode some of the button references to a single host so when they go down it takes chunks of the page with them.

Then with the status back into a lull again, I'll actually start writing for the page! (gasp!)

The admissions status of this coaster ride is a bit unclear. Chops to Logan for realizing that he is still learning and can't yet be confident of his results yet. I'm around looking things over, but Seraphim made a stunning comeback and Decker Services looks rock solid, and RLS is actually a paid host who offered a ferocious offer not to be ignored. Deeplist and Seraphim, please post my Ordinary and "Spike" bandwidth quotas. But rough guess is I have over 25 combined gigs of bandwidth on tap and over 5Gigs of space, so that's the bar potential new entrants are looking at.

 

[deeplist]

The board moved around little today, with one departure and previous leader IsMyWebsite sliding to the back of the ladder.

I guess that means that I am now in the lead.

Deeplist and Seraphim, do you want to post offers here?

Since my free hosting is on a per user basis and requires a custom request in order to consider it, I'd need a little bit of information before I'd be able to create any kind of offer.

Deeplist and Seraphim, please post my Ordinary and "Spike" bandwidth quotas.

I'm sorry, but I don't completely understand what you're requesting here.

 

[TaoPhoenix]

I guess that means that I am now in the lead.

Yes you are! Congratulations!

I'm sorry, but I don't completely understand what you're requesting here.

Ordinary bandwidth is just steady usage. But some of the better hosts have a grace for "2 day spikes" such as landing on a news site. I do eventually hope to write an article good enough to make one of the news sites. Meanwhile some of the nastiest hosts in the past used to threaten to cancel the account if the bandwidth went over.

 

[deeplist]

My policy is: Your bandwidth is yours to use how you want. Spike my servers if you want, they're built to handle it and won't flinch. When (and if) you reach 80% of your bandwidth for the month, I will contact you so we can evalutate together what the next move will be.

 

[Seraphim]

Since my free hosting is on a per user basis and requires a custom request in order to consider it, I'd need a little bit of information before I'd be able to create any kind of offer.

Same here. Class projects usually don't consume as much bandwidth as normal hosting accounts, and are often only used for the duration of a semester before being abandoned. But without having ballpark figures on how many projects they need to host in that time, and roughly what to expect for storage space requirements, it is hard to tell what plans would be best suited. Most likely though the normal 500MB/5GB Bandwidth would do fine for them unless it is a really involved class with a lot of flash or java on the sites or any kind of video feed.


As for bandwidth, I haven't provisioned any kind of spike vs normal bandwidth. Your assignment is yours to use though, and if I like what I see should a spike appear I might even give you a little bit more as long as the servers hold. Like before I might choke it a touch if I see it's coming too fast and impacting other clients.

But you'd have to get quite the audience to get it to that point though. A couple of times now I've been hosting live feed chatlogs from events with several hundred people in attendance for a MMORPG with some thousand players, and there has been no ill effects on my services at all so far.

 

[Rosareven]

Hi Tao,

Just got back again. Sorry I didn't realise that you have posted my update here. I believe majority of my class have already selected their respective hosting, and paid host with SSH was emphasised in my class so they're not trying to look for free hosting anyway. I did already recommend Decker Services' paid hosting to others.

It's not relevant now but I'll post the specs for my class anyway:

- 100mb at most for assignment-purpose projects unless one wants to eventually move beyond school assignment
- bandwidth that is enough for approximately 100 hours of text transfer per month, aka not much
- PHP5, MySQL, SSH (to learn linux command line environment for web purpose), FTP
- cPanel or any admin interface not necessary, we have to learn to control the web space via ssh anyway

I may be missing a few things but as you can imagine, there is not much needed for our class other than SSH being the point of learning objective.

 

[TaoPhoenix]

Hi Tao,

Just got back again. Sorry I didn't realise that you have posted my update here. I believe majority of my class have already selected their respective hosting, and paid host with SSH was emphasised in my class so they're not trying to look for free hosting anyway. I did already recommend Decker Services' paid hosting to others.

It's not relevant now but I'll post the specs for my class anyway:

- 100mb at most for assignment-purpose projects unless one wants to eventually move beyond school assignment
- bandwidth that is enough for approximately 100 hours of text transfer per month, aka not much
- PHP5, MySQL, SSH (to learn linux command line environment for web purpose), FTP
- cPanel or any admin interface not necessary, we have to learn to control the web space via ssh anyway

I may be missing a few things but as you can imagine, there is not much needed for our class other than SSH being the point of learning objective.

Well play then! I m still glad that we got some useful info posted to the thread!

 

[TaoPhoenix]

IsMyWebsite Info

My old email address for Azoundria is unused now.
Someone from the IsMyWebsite team sent me this note.


--- On Wed, 8/17/11, IsMyWebsite Admin <ismywebsite@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: IsMyWebsite Admin <ismywebsite@gmail.com>
> Subject: How To Get Help Re: Service Outages
> To: taophoenix@yahoo.com
> Date: Wednesday, August 17, 2011, 6:34 PM
> This email address is retired.
>
> Please use private message if you have a working account.
> Secondly try
> emailing matthewcomp@hotmail.com.
>
> --
> --
> Name (Username)
> Support Council
> http://www.ismywebsite.com/

 

[oniscorp]

Looks like Hostalope just didn't have what it takes, your study is ever enlightening Tao.

Hostalope is still up and running strong. As Tao has already stated, there is a misunderstanding between the two parties that caused this to go downhill. It had nothing to do with the quality of our hosting and this is the first complaint we have received thus far. Tao is always welcome at Hostalope.

We also have a brand new feature coming out that may interest some of you. Can't say what it is yet

 

[theraptor]

Hostalope is still up and running strong. As Tao has already stated, there is a misunderstanding between the two parties that caused this to go downhill. It had nothing to do with the quality of our hosting and this is the first complaint we have received thus far.

You are relatively new here, so let me explain to you a very important aspect of hosting - It is called service, also known as support. You say that the misunderstanding with Tao had nothing to do with the quality of your Hosting? I'm afraid that it very much so does. When you act hostile and confrontational with a client who requires assistance, the quality of your service, and therefor the quality of your hosting declines tremendously. And the fact that you have a special agreement with Tao about how he is being hosted is no excuse. When you take in client, no matter how you choose to do so, you are staking your reputation as a host that you will provide them with a certain things to the best of your abilities. The fact that you got so hostile about a simple change of subdomain - something that can be done in WHM or DA in under a minute, and can be done via SSH in under 5, sets a very bad precedent about how you will act when there is an actual problem of a larger scale. Just look at Decker Services, are they a great host because they have an exemplary track record of uptime? Yes, but that is only half the story. Decker Services is a great host because deeplist is very patient and helpful when it comes to his clients - often when his clients have done nothing to deserve it. Part of being a great host is being able to deal with people who will be rude, and in this incident Tao hasn't even been rude. He politely made a simple request.

A 4 month old host shouldn't even be making the claim that they are "great". The great hosts are the ones that are there for you every day, year in and year out. Maybe if you can stick around that might be hostalope one day, and this will all just be a bump in the road of experience. There is a reason that there are only 4 hosts on Tao's study page. Too many free hosts come and go, and screw over their clients in the process. Hopefully this won't be you.

 

[Tyler]

You are relatively new here, so let me explain to you a very important aspect of hosting - It is called service, also known as support. You say that the misunderstanding with Tao had nothing to do with the quality of your Hosting? I'm afraid that it very much so does. When you act hostile and confrontational with a client who requires assistance, the quality of your service, and therefor the quality of your hosting declines tremendously. And the fact that you have a special agreement with Tao about how he is being hosted is no excuse. When you take in client, no matter how you choose to do so, you are staking your reputation as a host that you will provide them with a certain things to the best of your abilities. The fact that you got so hostile about a simple change of subdomain - something that can be done in WHM or DA in under a minute, and can be done via SSH in under 5, sets a very bad precedent about how you will act when there is an actual problem of a larger scale. Just look at Decker Services, are they a great host because they have an exemplary track record of uptime? Yes, but that is only half the story. Decker Services is a great host because deeplist is very patient and helpful when it comes to his clients - often when his clients have done nothing to deserve it. Part of being a great host is being able to deal with people who will be rude, and in this incident Tao hasn't even been rude. He politely made a simple request.

A 4 month old host shouldn't even be making the claim that they are "great". The great hosts are the ones that are there for you every day, year in and year out. Maybe if you can stick around that might be hostalope one day, and this will all just be a bump in the road of experience. There is a reason that there are only 4 hosts on Tao's study page. Too many free hosts come and go, and screw over their clients in the process. Hopefully this won't be you.

Yup, agreed. I also can't say enough about Decker Services, if he ever opened up his own datacenter and the price was right we would very likely purchase several servers. I seriously can't say enough about him, I've never seen a host with the same quality and dedication that guy has.

 

[TaoPhoenix]

TheSwagBay in opening discussions

TheSwagBay's original ad (a couple parts are becoming Superseded such as the note about not having a website!)

Hello Folks,
I would like to present TheSwagBay's free application hosting. If you have a forum, blog, cms site, or any other "database based" application, why not host it for free? Even if you are completely new to online applications, we still can set you up with any application! Heres what we can offer as far as applications go:

-Forums such as phpBB, SMF, XMB, MyBB, PunBB, and a slew more. If you own a Vbulletin licence, we also allow Vbulletin as well.

-Blogs including Joomla, Wordpress, necleus, Pixie and more (almost 15 more!)

-CMS of all types are allowed, as long as they comply with our TOU.

-Wikis are allowed.

-Estores are allowed

-Podcasts are allowed

-and actually, much more. There are so many open source apps out there, so to be clear, if it uses a database, and is classified as an "Web App", then we will host it! If you have questions about this, please PM us.

All hosting comes with email, domain, and managed file services (FTP, etc), as well as lots of webspace and bandwidth (we can't use the word unlimited, but we can assure you its very high).

Heres how we can offer free application hosting. Once you have our team install your web application, one of our Tech guys will contact you on where we can place an advert on your website. We offer a few different choices when It comes to adverts, such as text based ads, contextual ads, or even video based ads.

All free plans are subject to our Terms of Use (TOU), which can be viewed/read by contacting us (just PM us)


Finally, if by now you are wondering, we dont have a website (well, sort of, but not for hosting.) We have just found that most of our business comes from forums like this, and a website is not needed.

Thanks and enjoy!
-TheSwagBay Admin Team

-----------------------------------------

Elsewhere they noted that they plan to offer cPanel.

----------------------------------------

Over on the other thread, Scott from TheSwagBay remarked -

I understand TaoPhoenix,
Here is what I will do. I will make a website, with links to support, policies, the whole nine yards. As soon as that is complete, I will post the link here. Give me roughly a week to build the site (I'm going to do a full site, rather that just a small lander-page. After hearing from other people here, a website is the way to go. Sorry about any misunderstandings here.

Oh, and I will take you up on that offer. I would love for somebody from here to try out my services, and report back. I can either set you up now or after I set up the hosting site. That choice is up to you.

Anyway thanks all, hopefully I will hear from you soon!

-Scott

---------------------------

** Hallo Scott! I sent my opening note to your support email, which is also copied here. By all means, let's start working on the details while you work on the site in parallel. --Tao****

------------------------
Advisory remark from Tao on the other thread -

Let's look at this remark: "If you don't think we are up to par ... with our hosting and support, you may post that all over these forums. But I can assure you, we don't disappoint."

I'm game to give you folks a thorough test of that! I'm perhaps at the 70% mark on sternness when I put my Evaluation hat on, so if you get by me, I'd gander that you would be well on your way. I will remind you once of the consequences of your remark above, combined with the one in your ad that said, "Even if you are completely new to online applications, we still can set you up with any application!"

This means you must expect several educational tickets because you are purposely aiming for higher grades of content to be hosted than 75% of normal web sites!
-------------------------

This was my opening note to their designated email support address.

8-21-2011
Okay gang, here we go!

Please send me your Terms of Use. I am pretty tame in my interests, so I tend not to have many problems with Terms documents. I am also careful about Copyright, which is the new hotbutton of the last few years.

You wanted New users, so here I am! I have surveyed standard web hosting for a while now, but I purposely avoided the fancier applications out of nervousness of the unknown!

My initial interest are Forums, Blogs, and Wikis. Do you have any materials prepared on the plusses and minuses of the different apps per category? A new user will have heard *of* all kinds of things, but has no idea of the specific quirks of a particular program!

Category: Wiki
This feels like it should be the simplest. I collect all kinds of snips that aren't yet ready for coherent articles. If I started with a blank wiki, is there a way I can get a list of articles so I know what's in there?

Category: Blogs
Wordpress certainly is making the news, both in popularity, and in some recent hacks! I do like to be unusual, so have you made a complete list of the blogs you host? If not, I might dig one up from maybe Wikipedia, and you'd cross off the ones you don't know how to handle.

Category: Forums
Forums certainly sound like fun! One big plan I have is to have a legislation oriented site, and let users thrash around if they like the various provisions. Is there a forum/other that lets visitors/members both comment on and rate sentence by sentence of an entire article? A lot of key legislation comes down to make-or-break single sentences. Then a way to add the cumulative mods would show the overall opinion of the legislation, maybe subtotaled by legislative section.

So there's a lot to play with!

Other note: I would like a Subdomain if possible. I am treating this as the "lead development" account of a spread of host services, but hopefully would mirror it to some of my other hosts. To do that, it seems useful to get a subdomain of taophoenix.______.____

I will remark that if you change your branded name from TheSwagBay to something else, make sure FWS knows it because we get grumpy when hosts decide to get bored and say "well, our name is such&such now" with no preparation!

Regards,

--Tao

 

[TaoPhoenix]

Terms of Use note - Free Accounts

Hallo Swagbay.

Here are a few notes on your Terms of Use.

Recall this opening line of your ad:
"Quote Originally Posted by theswagbayorg View Post
Hello Folks, I would like to present TheSwagBay's free application hosting. If you have a forum, blog, cms site, or any other "database based" application, why not host it for free?"

Unfortunately, your Terms of Use say this:
--------
4.) Payment Information
a. You agree to supply appropriate payment for the services received from us, in advance of the time period during which such services are provided. You agree that until and unless you notify TheSwagBay of your desire to cancel any or all services received, those services will be billed on a recurring basis.
b. We reserve the right to change the monthly payment amount and any other charges at anytime.
c. All payments that are due and not received on the specified date of invoice will have 3 days to pay invoice. If payment is still not received after the 1st late day then a $5.00 late charge will be added on to the total price for that month and a account suspension will occur. If payment is not received within 3 days then your account will be terminated with or without notice.

13.) Illegal Free Hosting
We reserve the right to terminate accounts where free hosting (defined as hosting that was obtained at a zero cost to the end user) was provided, as this provides a security issue for our servers, and it is in our best interest to look after everyone on the server. Free hosting accounts are setup by ‘hackers’ (“a programmer who reaches a goal by employing a series of modifications to exploit or extend existing code or resources”) who make as many attempts as necessary to destroy the server and its content, or escalate to root privileges and cause havoc for all of our end users.
------

I know what you are trying to say - however I recommend that you add some supportive language indicating that free accounts that you issue can be perfectly honorable clients as part of your sales package.

 

[TaoPhoenix]

Terms of Use - Backups

Section 5 says this:
"5.) Backups and Data Loss
a. Your use of the service is at your sole risk. We are not responsible for files and data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on our servers."

I have perfect backups of my ordinary html files. However as a new user I have no idea how to backup database based sites, so I believe your service offer to new users ought to extend to assistance on making backups of this new type of data. Do you have a Backup-Test procedure in place where in a scratch directory the backup is reloaded to test it?

 

[TaoPhoenix]

Terms of Use - Resources

These two sections together sound like they are meant to catch common abusive practices, however there is something in them that sounds like it would inhibit a lot of great clients. Let's revisit these portions of your ad again:

"I would like to present TheSwagBay's free application hosting. If you have a forum, blog, cms site, or any other "database based" application, why not host it for free? Even if you are completely new to online applications, we still can set you up with any application! ... so to be clear, if it uses a database, and is classified as an "Web App", then we will host it!"

However, the resource & use sections come through as:
-------
"7.) Resource Usage
Users may not initiate the following:
a) Use 15% or more of system resources for longer then 90 seconds. There are numerous activities that could cause such problems; these include: CGI scripts, FTP, PHP, HTTP, etc.
b) Run any type of interactive real-time chat applications that require server resources. Remotely-hosted services are fully allowed.
c) Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.
d) Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.
e) Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life, battlefield1492, etc
f) Run any video/music/file sharing intensive site or penny auction websites.

8.) Fair Usage Policy
a. TheSwagBay service is designed to host websites. TheSwagBay does NOT provide unlimited space for online storage, backups, or archiving of electronic files, videos, documents, log files, file sharing intensive sites, reverse auction sites, illegal content of any kind, etc., and any such prohibited use of the Services will result in the termination of Subscriber's account, with or without notice. Accounts with excessive number of files negatively affect the performance of the server and TheSwagBay may request that the number of files be reduced to ensure proper performance at TheSwagBay's discretion. TheSwagBay does not set arbitrary limits on the amount of visitor traffic a web site can receive or on the amount of content a Subscriber can upload to his/her/its website in a given month, nor does TheSwagBay charge additional fees based on increased use of bandwidth, as long as the Subscriber's use of the Services complies with these Terms. In most cases, a Subscriber's web site will be able to support as much traffic as the Subscriber can legitimately acquire. However, TheSwagBay reserves the right to limit processor time, bandwidth, processes, memory, number of accounts a subscriber can create, or number of files in cases where it is necessary to prevent negatively impacting other Subscribers.

All of your web pages (html,php,htm, etc.) must be 'linked' with files (.GIF, .JPEG, etc.) stored on TheSwagBay's server. Web sites that are found to contain either/or no html documents, a large number of unlinked files are subject to warning, suspension or cancellation at the discretion of TheSwagBay management. Any customer who violates TheSwagBay's Policies in abusing either space/site transfer will be notified and given 2 days to remedy the problem. If the problem is not resolved within the allotted period, the client will be billed for the overages.

INODES The use of more than 50,000 INODES will result in account suspension. An INODE is the actual file or directory and not the size of that file or directory. For example your index.html file is 1 INODE. A directory called homework is counted as 1 INODE as well."
--------

"Policies are Policies, whatever they decide to be". However, there is some tricky wording. Of course there is "not unlimited space to host (stuff)" - because you would define the account space limits.

The "All of your files must be linked" part seems to cause concern for webmasters who build their source materials online and only link completed pages. I especially know that *prior* files which are no longer linked will quickly trip this policy. The world is moving towards cloud storage, so this policy feels a little aggresive towards many humble webmasters.

I'll leave it to my betters to know if database apps can produce a lot of subsidiary support files which would trip that 50k limit.

Overview: Your initial ad goes for high end clients, so this terms of use is a bit of a surprise.

 

[TaoPhoenix]

Site strategy - Forums

Swagbay wrote me some notes back. On the topic of forums:

-----
As far as forums, We offer over 10 different FREE applications. These include:
-phpBB
-AEF
-XMB
-UseBB
-MyBB
-Phorum
-PunBB
-SMF
-FluxBB
-bbPress
-Vanilla
-Simple Machines Forum
-Advanced Electron forum
-BBpress

There are also some other paid mediums out there, such as "Vbulletin". I would highly recommend this to all our clients, because it does not have many flaws, and offers much greater control over your boards. Just a standard licence will run you about $200, so only use this if you are serious about your forums.

Now, instead writing out all the ups and downs of each forum medium, Let me take a minute to ask you a few questions, so we can match you with the application best for you.

0) Do you want to learn more about Vbulletin? Please note you must buy a licence your self in order to use Vbulletin.

1) What is your experience level? Some Apps are more user-friendly than others. If we know your experience level, we can narrow down our search for the best forum app for you.

2) What kind of style are you thinking about for your forum? Were you going to create you own style, or download a pre-made one? Some forum apps offer more free styles than others.

3) Finally, How big of a community are you planning on building? Some forums have better member management than others, so this is quite important.

As soon as I receive the answers to the questions above, I can recommend the best forum apps for you.
------
I know I get excitable without following through, so I am not inclined to get the vBulletin license yet. And I am a representative of the class of clients with zero experience! So let's try one with the most user friendliness and safeguards and supportive tips built in! I don't yet know much about the style, but I'd probably download one. Initially I don't expect to have a big community at all. I'd be shocked to get over 1000 users! However if I managed to strike a gold mine, we'd evaluate and see what else there is to do.

P.S. In general I support the Open Source concept, so let's try to see if I can handle/stand one of the open source forums. I'll be looking whether the proprietary packages become must-picks or if I can do well enough maybe without some power feature.

P.S."If it uses a database" - what category do you put Slashcode in? (The back engine of Slashdot) Last I knew it was open source and available.