03-14-2016, 04:38 AM
've made a good bit of headway on my open source site, and as my posts rise I'll soon be able to host my site on 1 vps with a good top level domain perhaps even some surplus of resources.
I'm learning oodles and accustoming myself with the rigors of maintaining an online server. While I'm posting here daily, I'm also checking my access logs, restarting services as needed, and altering configurations to maximize performance. It's my hope that within the next few weeks or maybe a month I'll be live and stable enough to give back to the community that gives so much to me.
Is there any particular service members would like to see? I don't have anything in the budget for big commercial software like whcms or cpanel. Any service I offer needs to be small and easy to maintain, at least in the beginning.
Some ideas I've had so far:
1 would be to offer free shell accounts with 1 open port per user. No web hosting but would come with local database access, cron, local file storage, and whatever scripting/developing tools I can figure out how to set up. There's not very many of these hosts left and they always come with tons of restrictions.
2 would be to offer free database hosting. There are tons of free web hosts out there, more than you can shake a stick at. While using these free hosts for the last few years, one thing I've become very aggravated about is poor database hosting: connection timeouts and low execution times being the major flaws. I'd be happy if I could give even 1 person an unrestricted database they could use for a good cause.
3 hosting a chat server for public use. Which reminds me I still need to figure out that anope issue with the ports *makes note*
4 I could give people hosting for an open source project of their choice, provided I can get it working. A wordpress blog, forums, or wikipedia or something similar.
5 Mirror repositories of some of my favorite open source projects. The sky is pretty much the limit here.
When choosing these services, my primary goals are
A: I want a service that's high quality. If I have to add each member manually and do all the configs myself I can live with that. What I don't want is an automated service that gets spammed with users so badly that I'm unable to offer a quality service. No matter what service(s) I offer, I intend to add users slowly to see how the server handles additional load. I do not intend to make any public offerings at this time, but will restrict access to responsible members of the communities that support me.
B: I want a service that is somewhat unique, or at least one that there aren't thousands of others like it. This kind of detracts from #3 and number #5
C: I want a service that will challenge me to grow and learn, but that isn't beyond my skillset to maintain. It won't help anyone out if I'm offering free databases and I get hacked and bring down the network. I never went to school for any of this stuff and all I know is what I've managed to teach myself over the years. Still, I think I can accomplish some good service with my 15 years experience using open source tools, and hopefully not screw it up too badly if the community is there to catch me when I make a mistake.
Now, if you've managed to make it through all of that, I'm welcome to know what services everyone else would like to see. Try to make it fall within the outlines of my goals, not too common, not too difficult, but something useful and unique.
As always questions, comments, suggestions are always appreciated.
I'm learning oodles and accustoming myself with the rigors of maintaining an online server. While I'm posting here daily, I'm also checking my access logs, restarting services as needed, and altering configurations to maximize performance. It's my hope that within the next few weeks or maybe a month I'll be live and stable enough to give back to the community that gives so much to me.
Is there any particular service members would like to see? I don't have anything in the budget for big commercial software like whcms or cpanel. Any service I offer needs to be small and easy to maintain, at least in the beginning.
Some ideas I've had so far:
1 would be to offer free shell accounts with 1 open port per user. No web hosting but would come with local database access, cron, local file storage, and whatever scripting/developing tools I can figure out how to set up. There's not very many of these hosts left and they always come with tons of restrictions.
2 would be to offer free database hosting. There are tons of free web hosts out there, more than you can shake a stick at. While using these free hosts for the last few years, one thing I've become very aggravated about is poor database hosting: connection timeouts and low execution times being the major flaws. I'd be happy if I could give even 1 person an unrestricted database they could use for a good cause.
3 hosting a chat server for public use. Which reminds me I still need to figure out that anope issue with the ports *makes note*
4 I could give people hosting for an open source project of their choice, provided I can get it working. A wordpress blog, forums, or wikipedia or something similar.
5 Mirror repositories of some of my favorite open source projects. The sky is pretty much the limit here.
When choosing these services, my primary goals are
A: I want a service that's high quality. If I have to add each member manually and do all the configs myself I can live with that. What I don't want is an automated service that gets spammed with users so badly that I'm unable to offer a quality service. No matter what service(s) I offer, I intend to add users slowly to see how the server handles additional load. I do not intend to make any public offerings at this time, but will restrict access to responsible members of the communities that support me.
B: I want a service that is somewhat unique, or at least one that there aren't thousands of others like it. This kind of detracts from #3 and number #5
C: I want a service that will challenge me to grow and learn, but that isn't beyond my skillset to maintain. It won't help anyone out if I'm offering free databases and I get hacked and bring down the network. I never went to school for any of this stuff and all I know is what I've managed to teach myself over the years. Still, I think I can accomplish some good service with my 15 years experience using open source tools, and hopefully not screw it up too badly if the community is there to catch me when I make a mistake.
Now, if you've managed to make it through all of that, I'm welcome to know what services everyone else would like to see. Try to make it fall within the outlines of my goals, not too common, not too difficult, but something useful and unique.
As always questions, comments, suggestions are always appreciated.