Time to rebuild my host spread

**colorhost** · February 17th, 2010, 19:01

Tao, Would you like my offer?
Never got an reply on what you thought.

Thanks
ColorHost

**TaoPhoenix** · February 17th, 2010, 23:50

Sorry Colorhost,
In fact it was your offer that made me reopen the round. But I smashed too many sentencs together into a mush.
Yes, I'll accept yours.
I'm a bit slow on processing, but I'll get the round opened eventually.

**TaoPhoenix** · February 18th, 2010, 00:04

However, Cal, your comment is relevant over here.

(Pasted)

Originally Posted by Cal

I finally had it taken down, after I provided proof of domain ownership. Visit DigitalPoint Forums.

If your also with ParadoxServers... then keep a look out if you have a BIG forum or website. Your data may get stolen and used without you knowing.

I found out when some random person (a buyer) emailed my from my forums, and asked about the sale. I had no idea what the hell was going on... he sent me a link and I was shocked.

All I can say... I won't ever be hosting for free anymore. I rather pay and know a reputable company wouldn't do something like what I went through.... It's just a shock that free hosts would take advantage of it's users these days.

But, lets get this topic back on track. If you or anyone else wants more info, feel free to PM me. Let's not break the rules and wreck a thread here.

Cal, I don't know what piece of Paradox's TOS is involved as opposed to simple data security concerns. Earlier Darksoul said he didn't know either.

And if I'm going to do an accurate survey, I need to know. Did you have a big forum hosted on Paradox, then it wandered away somehow, and then someone tried to copy most/all of it for sale? (Forum design? How do you get away with copying the whole forum including posts and selling it?)

Can you explain here? I'd rather not muddy things cross-site over at DP. I barely heard of them before your note.

Note that data can be copied from nearly anywhere on the web. I'm interested in precisely how Paradox's involvement made things any worse.

**Cal** · February 18th, 2010, 00:11

Originally Posted by TaoPhoenix

However, Cal, your comment is relevant over here.

(Pasted)

Cal, I don't know what piece of Paradox's TOS is involved as opposed to simple data security concerns. Earlier Darksoul said he didn't know either.

And if I'm going to do an accurate survey, I need to know. Did you have a big forum hosted on Paradox, then it wandered away somehow, and then someone tried to copy most/all of it for sale? (Forum design? How do you get away with copying the whole forum including posts and selling it?)

Can you explain here? I'd rather not muddy things cross-site over at DP. I barely heard of them before your note.

Note that data can be copied from nearly anywhere on the web. I'm interested in precisely how Paradox's involvement made things any worse.

I am contacting the admins right now. After that, I will update you all on the story. All I can say is for now read my signature.

**colorhost** · February 18th, 2010, 06:22

ONTOPIC: When you want the Deal Tao, contact me cause there is no order form for this package anymore.

Thanks
ColorHost

**Seraphim** · February 19th, 2010, 00:49

Originally Posted by TaoPhoenix

Maybe Seraphim.

It's the new hosts who are at risk of Bad Things Happening. So do you have a couple tricks up your sleeve to avoid the worst of downtimes?

At the moment you're in something like the "Feeder" category. Let's do this. I'll pass on logging a full strength account with you just for the sake of saving work. But I'll make a different link to you just so we can keep tabs, but you get a break on minor blips.

You bet I do. I'm building a network from the ground up with reliability in mind, my projected downtime goal is no more than 5 minutes of site downtime for any customer in a given 30 day period.

I'll admit it isn't easy on my current budget, and there's a lot of competition out there.

SeraphimLabs Free

1 Subdomain
1 MySQL Database
5GB/month bandwidth
500MB storage
Virtualmin control panel
PHP, CGI, Perl
Single Banner Ad
Starting at: $0/month (Single Banner Ad)

Here's my normal free plan. For the sake of review, I'll drop the ads and double the storage and bandwidth just to be on par with the others, since I'm still small enough scale that it doesn't make a mess of the bookkeeping. Will probably just enter it in my customer database as two free accounts with the same username and contact info, that way I can account for that space and bandwidth as things start to get busy.

Signup here. It does verify the email via confirmation message

**Seanieb** · February 19th, 2010, 01:06

Hey,

I'm from Lost Signal Networks, and a friend showed me this thread, wanted to see what you thought. I give out free accounts with the following specifications:

5 GB of disk space, 75 GB of bandwidth a month (I do limited runs of these accounts, but I have plenty of spots left.)
"Unlimited" SQL databases, meaning that you can have as many as you please within your disk space limit

I do not require ads, I do not have a forum, though if you want more bandwidth I would ask you to put an ad up, but the offering seems well within your requirements. I have been up since 2006, providing web hosting since 2008. I currently serve about 10 other customers, without so much as a hitch, on paid or free accounts, VPS services, etc.

My website is at http://lostsignalweb.com/ . I'm committed to customer service, so for the last little while I've been taking customer requests all by hand, to make sure everyone is taken care of. You can e-mail me directly, use one of the contact forums on my site or send me a PM. There should be an "e-mail me" button on this forum.

-Sean B.
Lost Signal Web

**TaoPhoenix** · February 19th, 2010, 07:47

Hey Cal, can you keep this thread updated with the results of your discussions with the SuperPowers here? Your former Sig affects my study project.

**TaoPhoenix** · February 19th, 2010, 07:52

Originally Posted by Seraphim

You bet I do. I'm building a network from the ground up with reliability in mind, my projected downtime goal is no more than 5 minutes of site downtime for any customer in a given 30 day period.

I'll admit it isn't easy on my current budget, and there's a lot of competition out there.

SeraphimLabs Free

1 Subdomain
1 MySQL Database
5GB/month bandwidth
500MB storage
Virtualmin control panel
PHP, CGI, Perl
Single Banner Ad
Starting at: $0/month (Single Banner Ad)

Here's my normal free plan. For the sake of review, I'll drop the ads and double the storage and bandwidth just to be on par with the others, since I'm still small enough scale that it doesn't make a mess of the bookkeeping. Will probably just enter it in my customer database as two free accounts with the same username and contact info, that way I can account for that space and bandwidth as things start to get busy.

Signup here. It does verify the email via confirmation message

Yes please, "Coupon" me up to 1GB space and no ad, but I'll remark that if anything I won't even use all of that existing bandwidth. My dev style is long haul & static.

I'd remark that you can even get away with "1 hour downtime per 30 days". A 5 Min goal is probably a bit too brittle. (One tasty glitch will sink you for that aforementioned hour because you'd end up rebooting with 2 network tests or something.)

**TaoPhoenix** · February 19th, 2010, 07:59

Originally Posted by Seanieb

Hey,

I'm from Lost Signal Networks, and a friend showed me this thread, wanted to see what you thought. I give out free accounts with the following specifications:

5 GB of disk space, 75 GB of bandwidth a month (I do limited runs of these accounts, but I have plenty of spots left.)
"Unlimited" SQL databases, meaning that you can have as many as you please within your disk space limit

I do not require ads, I do not have a forum, though if you want more bandwidth I would ask you to put an ad up, but the offering seems well within your requirements. I have been up since 2006, providing web hosting since 2008. I currently serve about 10 other customers, without so much as a hitch, on paid or free accounts, VPS services, etc.

My website is at http://lostsignalweb.com/ . I'm committed to customer service, so for the last little while I've been taking customer requests all by hand, to make sure everyone is taken care of. You can e-mail me directly, use one of the contact forums on my site or send me a PM. There should be an "e-mail me" button on this forum.

-Sean B.
Lost Signal Web

Wow, my Feeder Round is really heating up! Tangentially, the first guys to figure out a barter system for resources will move this industry to the next level. I guarantee I won't come close to using that kind of bandwidth for a long time.

I do most of the logistics in this thread itself, because a fairly open process is important. People can see hosts rise, and then ... sometimes stumble. I have several manager coupons for parity, but see elsewhere that this is not a feature comparison, simply a host longevity review.

Heh. Okay, now that I have a full fledged new round, I'll have to clean up the debris in my files to close out the last series. My links are just a shorthand - all you guys are in, so my tardiness has no effect on anything.

**Tyler** · February 19th, 2010, 08:18

Originally Posted by Cal

I am contacting the admins right now. After that, I will update you all on the story. All I can say is for now read my signature.

Originally Posted by TaoPhoenix

Hey Cal, can you keep this thread updated with the results of your discussions with the SuperPowers here? Your former Sig affects my study project.

Hm...

http://filesmelt.com/dl/cal.png

**Seraphim** · February 19th, 2010, 12:24

Originally Posted by TaoPhoenix

Yes please, "Coupon" me up to 1GB space and no ad, but I'll remark that if anything I won't even use all of that existing bandwidth. My dev style is long haul & static.

I'd remark that you can even get away with "1 hour downtime per 30 days". A 5 Min goal is probably a bit too brittle. (One tasty glitch will sink you for that aforementioned hour because you'd end up rebooting with 2 network tests or something.)

I probably will use an hour a month when it comes to advertising and calculating outage refunds, but internally my goal is staying 5 minutes, since my longest reboot only takes 3 minutes to do.

Incidentally I was just playing with some numbers regarding times.

In a 30 day billing cycle, there are 720 hours. 99% uptime as most hosts claim to offer would have at minimum 712.8 hours of that as uptime, with up to 7 hours a month down.

Meaning even at no more than 1 hour a month downtime as my goal, I would still be way ahead in reliability.

**TaoPhoenix** · February 19th, 2010, 12:28

1 hour:
3 min for the reboot that doesn't help
42 min for scrunching up your eyebrows while muttering "WTF"
12 min to fix some unbeliveably baroque yet stupid problem
3 min to retrieve beverage from fridge.

**Seanieb** · February 19th, 2010, 18:13

Originally Posted by TaoPhoenix

Wow, my Feeder Round is really heating up! Tangentially, the first guys to figure out a barter system for resources will move this industry to the next level. I guarantee I won't come close to using that kind of bandwidth for a long time.

I do most of the logistics in this thread itself, because a fairly open process is important. People can see hosts rise, and then ... sometimes stumble. I have several manager coupons for parity, but see elsewhere that this is not a feature comparison, simply a host longevity review.

Heh. Okay, now that I have a full fledged new round, I'll have to clean up the debris in my files to close out the last series. My links are just a shorthand - all you guys are in, so my tardiness has no effect on anything.

Sorry to go off topic here, but "feeder"?

**TaoPhoenix** · February 19th, 2010, 20:44

Originally Posted by Seanieb

Sorry to go off topic here, but "feeder"?

It's still 20% on topic. What resulted was three hosts are on track to be really solid for a while. Industry wide, new hosts drop off like a cliff. So I thought there should be "layers of achievement" between a host I think is really solid and newcomers who are still shaking down.

As hinted elsewhere, this is a low dollar field, so it attracts all kinds of folks who have some skill but not much startup capital. I personally think it's a great little sideline to learn on as a provider, but mostly everyone agrees it's no big-bucks.

So while you're a nice newcomer, we'll have to see how events play out.