Tagged - free

Everything is setup, and ready to go. Free hosting from me

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

My Journey

I bought the VPS for one month, thinking that it would be somewhat difficult to setup. I did not even know that you log into servers via SSH. I’m familiar with SSH, but I thought people used VNC’s or similar to do host management. I could have installed VNC, but GUI etc would just take up too much resources. Everything had to be done through the command prompt. By reading my last entries, you can also get a more full idea of what I had to go through.

I got root access to the server, connected via SSH and attempted to install EHCP. It didn’t go well. Someone must have had this box before me and mucked it up. For one, the server is running Ubuntu, and EHCP uses Apt-Get to install everything. Hmm… What happens when the sources.list file is missing? You guessed it, apt-get doesn’t work at all. Neither does apt-get update. After a lot of screwing around I found that I needed to get the sources.list file for Ubuntu 6.06. So, I surfed around the internet and found it. Another issue: how do you transfer files through ssh? Well, putty has a program called psftp. This is not difficult to use. Just cd into the correct directory, type put and drag the file into the command prompt. Easy. Now with that done, I could finally do apt-get update.

I attempted to re-run the ehcp script. Still, errors, all over the place. For some reason it was not asking me for my root MySQL password? I got fed up with ehcp, and attempted to install ISPConfig. That did not go smoothly either. I have a feeling that a lot of my problems were due to the box running 6.06, and someone before me screwing with settings that were not fixed before I got it. I never had such problems installing software on Ubuntu. I went back to ehcp, since that seemed like a little less to configure. I had fixed a quite a few issues manually, so I re-ran the EHCP script, and wallah, things worked.

The next thing I tried to do was play with my technologyinsanity.com domain by moving it over to the new host. That did not go well. It took forever for the DNS Server to update, and I got fed up and just switched it back.

I began searching for a cheap/free domain to use to continue my project. I ended up finding .co.cc domains. They’re free, you have full control over DNS. I was able to setup my own nameservers with it, very easily. How?  I set a Zone Record in the “A” group for one domain. I made the “name” ns1.domain, ns2.domain, and for “value” I put in my 2 IP addresses I have for my host. I was not allowed to then point this domain to the newly created nameservers, so I created another domain, technologyinsanity.co.cc, and pointed it to those 2 name servers. I then went in and edited a file for custom DNS on my ehcp control panel. I waited till the next day and ran “sync dns” and “sync domains” wallah, it worked.

I then installed phpBB on the domain “technologyinsanity.co.cc” and that was it. That’s all I’ve done with it. Quite simple, really. Nothing that was too complex, most of my issues came from the fact someone screwed up the installation of Ubuntu.

I was a little surprised at how easy it was to setup an unmanaged server with no control panel, and setting up name servers was really no big deal. Granted, I do have prior Linux and server knowledge, just never set one up before.

So…

If you sign up, you just point your domain to the name servers I’ve created with your domain, and setup the MySQL and php stuff and you’re good to go. I’ve already tested the mail server, FTP, etc it’s all good. The install scripts for some programs work fine through EHCP as well. Pretty much everything you see through EHCP works fine. If people sign up, I may keep the host active for the next month, just realize that it will be $5/month after the first month. It costs $35/mo for me to have this host.

Sign up details

Visit: technologyinsanity.co.cc for more details :) I’m only accepting 2 users to start out, because offering free hosting seems like it could be risky.

If no one signs up..

I will discontinue the host after this month, that’s all.

This is my last post about my VPS, I’ve dived into my INSANITY category again. :)

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Posted in Experiments, Insanity | 3 Comments »

I may offer free webhosting for 1 month – the key here is *may*

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

I really have no idea who would be interested, but I am getting fairly close to having this server setup, main thing I’m having trouble with is trying to setup the  name servers on a .co.cc domain. I should really buy another .com domain to do this, but it’s all just an experiment, so I didn’t feel like spending another $10. I’ll post up my entire experience later, setting up a VPS has been very interesting.

Anyway, I figure that since I have this host I might as well try and get some use out of it.. There’s no way I could use that much bandwidth/resources. I thought about the $5/month deal, and I came to the conclusion that people would probably not sign up, and I want to at least try and use the resources available.  No Warez, No Crazy Scripts, Nothing Illegal. I think that’s about it. I will monitor accounts to a degree.

This is all just a possibility, I really don’t know if I can finish up the setup :) Probably 10 users max, and it still should be better than shared, because shared hosts pack em in pretty tight. (They wouldn’t really make a profit otherwise) I’m using a free control panel for Debian based machines called ehcp, so I don’t *think* offering webhosting breaks any rules.

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. It means that I have part of a dedicated server, with root access.

Disregard the *may* everything is setup, and appears to be working, so I will be accepting sign ups.

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Posted in Insanity | 1 Comment »

WordPress.com, Blogger, and Blogspot bloggers

Monday, December 29th, 2008

I hate to break it to you, but having your blog on one of these services makes you look unprofessional. My theory is that if you own one of these blogs, people might see .blogspot .blogger or .wordpress and run away without ever looking through your content. You might have the best content in the world, but the .whatever might be your achilles heal.

If you’re serious about your blog, why not spend the $60 or so per year it costs for a shared host and domain? That’s about as much as a video game these days. I’m getting more entertainment out of owning this blog than I ever would from a video game. It is NOT hard to set up. I used something called “fantastico” to install wordpress automatically. Yes, you may have to learn how to do upgrades manually, but that is very simple, not anything technical.

*one note is that if you do get too much traffic you’ll have to upgrade the host to dedicated or similar, which will cost around $100/month.. Some ads would take care of that cost, however if you’re really getting that much traffic.

I believe that is why people run away, they don’t think you’re serious about your blog if you have that .whatever. By having that, you have proven to them you’re not willing to put a little money into your site. You’ve proven you’re not willing to put a little extra effort into it.

There are also other benefits to owning the domain and host. Customization is one big factor. Another is the fact that you’re blog could be shut down at any time by the .whatever, if they don’t like your blog, that’s not going to happen when  you own your host and domain.

I urge you, if you’re in any way serious about your blog, buy a domain and host. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

To be honest, when I started this blog, I didn’t even have the intention of using my host/domain for a blog. See, I’ve been trying to learn PHP, and I beleive certain functions I could not run on my PC with Apache because some ports are blocked by my ISP. I might have been wrong, I don’t know, but that was the main purpose for me buying the host, the domain I just bought for the fun of it I guess. That’s why when I got more serious about this blog, I changed the domain to technologyinsanity.com.

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Posted in Internet | 8 Comments »