Just a question I''m curious about... why are you going to offer that webspace by free? Is it supposed to give you extra publicity for your site, or something... or is it just a gift for the dev community?

About what I''d like to see in a free webhosting, is a good stats service. If you are able to give your users the raw logs file, it will be the best you can do in that subject... And you could process those with Analog for those who are too lazy to do it by theirselves.

Best regards,


--DK
--H. Hernán Moraldo
http://www.hhm.com.ar/
Sign up to the HHM''s developers'' newsletter.

I''ll consider offering individual logs but I don''t think it will happen. I need to see if Apache can write to multiple logs.

Ben




IcarusIndie.com

[The Rabbit Hole | The Labyrinth | Programming | Gang Wars | The Wall]

Better make sure you come up with an Acceptable Use Policy, and try to cover as many possible situations as you can. If you allow CGI, or any Perl scripts in general, you had best include something about that for the customers. Exploiting of those scripts to forward spam and such has been huge on the Internet and will only grow. To the outside world, it will appear that your server is the responsible one, so you need a way to quickly kill those and inform those customers that you have the right to do that to protect your machine/services/other customers/etc. Offering a service like this without a good "Terms of Service" and "Acceptable Use Policy" document would be a bad move on your behalf, no matter how well intentioned you are.

Aside from that, like others have said, free is free and anything you can get is great. Also, securing the other stuff when using Linux is easy, generally speaking. I only have minor experience running a webserver (only done it on and off again on a company LAN), but that kind of security for Linux is relatively logical and among some of the easiest things you'd ever do when being the admin of that public-facing box.

[edited by - Tekneek on May 10, 2002 6:38:36 AM]

>$5 per month
>username.icarusindie.com

>$10 per month
>www.yourdomain.com

For $30 per YEAR you can get a www.yourdomain.com on NT + CGI (perl/asp/php) + FTP + unlimited space + good bandwidth.

$30/year for domain name registration plus all of that? What is "good bandwidth"?

PHP, CGI and SQL is an absolute MUST HAVE!

I don''t understand the security issues either, just use a Linux server running apache!

When you can download files and pictures in a reasonable time.

"Better make sure you come up with an Acceptable Use Policy"

I yanked the one from GeoCities. It pretty much covers everything from the user having to supply their own computer and internet connection to connect to my server (I find that funny yet sadly companies have probably been sued over it) to not abusing the service in a number of ways.

"Exploiting of those scripts to forward spam and such has been huge on the Internet and will only grow"

I noticed a very large amount of people trying to access formmail.cgi on my server last month trying to send spam. Analog is nice but I can''t modify it when I need to tag certain things like I can with my own. I reported attempts from about 5 ISPs and I have a couple dozen more to go.

"PHP, CGI and SQL is an absolute MUST HAVE!"

Not for a showcase. If you really really need something I have CGI, PHP and mySQL set up for my use so you could e-mail me the file and I could post it for you. I just need to verify it''s safe from intentional or unintential abuse.

The security issue is people trying to write/read/delete outside their home directory which is real easy to do with CGI and PHP since I have a couple of scripts that do it myself.

Linux doesn''t make security any better. I know how to lock down the server.

"For $30 per YEAR you can get a www.yourdomain.com on NT + CGI (perl/asp/php) + FTP + unlimited space + good bandwidth"

Where is this mythical place? You can''t just write up an ad and expect me match it. I''m not competeing with large ISPs that have so much extra resources they can offer that sort of absurd package.

Ben


IcarusIndie.com [ The Rabbit Hole | The Labyrinth | Programming | Gang Wars | The Wall]

Just ignore the troll. He''s full of shit. You cannot get that kind of Net hosting for $30/year.

>Just ignore the troll. He''s full of shit. You cannot get that kind of Net hosting for $30/year.

>Where is this mythical place? You can''t just write up an ad and expect me match it. I''m not competeing with large ISPs that have so much extra resources they can offer that sort of absurd package.

...

www.aruba.it
so much extra resources and so much support...

From their site:
"Aruba is one of the biggest italian ISP (Internet Service Provider). At only € 20,66 (approximately U$S 18.60) per year + 20% V.A.T, Aruba offers you: domain name registration and maintenance (.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .co.uk, .org.uk and .it); unlimited web space and 5 pop3 e-mail accounts relating to the domain. The price includes domain maintenance costs, therefore you will not have to pay any additional cost !"

and more...

The Troll