Dear free hosting providers

[TaoPhoenix]

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]

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.

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"....

[TaoPhoenix]

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.

[Jan]

You mean well but my octopus thread is the proof that this is absolutely not true. Most free hosts from my project haven't thought past the six month mark.

So what, they decided from the get go that they would provide hosting for six months, five months or less and that's it?

[Seraphim]

So what, they decided from the get go that they would provide hosting for six months, five months or less and that's it?

Some of them may very well have- the infamous turnover experts in particular.

A majority though simply ran out of funding before the 7 month mark or ran into unexpected complications that were beyond what they could handle.

[TaoPhoenix]

So what, they decided from the get go that they would provide hosting for six months, five months or less and that's it?

Yep.

One saturday when you're bored grab a cocktail and read the "Evolved novel thread". That's why I'm rather stern with my reporting rules. For Alumni, which comprise 75%ish of total hosts, 50% of them had absolutely no intention to be there longer than a year. (Let's be careful, lack of intention is not the same as a choreographed fraud. I think I only recall a couple of those. L4rge was the signature one - it was a data scraping venture hiding as a host.)

I'd put those folks as more "let's make a webhost for a lark". That's how the lack of intention occurs. It's fun, it's fun to hoard over your army of clients, let's post ads on FWS! Then as I liked to say that infamous 4-7 month mark hits - the minute something goes sour they fold. The individual reasons do vary, that's why I don't call it fraud (except those couple), it's just a thundering lack of planning.

In summary the colossal mistake all these new hosts make is you need TWO people minimum to start an average "good host". One needs to be the lead techie and the other needs to be a financer. X % of all those failed hosts are because they miss one or the other - either they have the $1000 (to be figurative) but get all tangled in DNS issues etc, or they have the tech skill but start off with a low end reseller and then oversell it until someone calls their bluff with a data pull. Bonus if they have a third runner just to glue it all together with support tickets and admin junk just so that the two leads don't wipe out.

It's "not hard". I can sweep FWS and make about 5 good hosts on paper by just matching up the component skill sets.

There used to be an old internet joke about a form of why something wouldn't work. We could practically make one of those here and just click off the boxes when our favorite mistakes show up over and over.

For their dignity though is why I made my corner Opt In. And the results still happened, knowing they would be on the wrong end of the spotlight.