[Techtalk] Web-hosting dilemma

[Meryll Larkin]

5/25/05

Hi Kathryn,

I used to make my living as a high level Web Dev, architect, Web Application
Dev, etc before the dotcom dot bomb....  Now I Sys Admin...

You actually have LOTS of choices.  You can do browser-detection clientside
with Javascript.
http://www.alwanza.com/bells/browserDetectJS.html
That example is a little outdated because it isn't where I've been putting
my energy for the past 3 years, but you get the idea.

There are PLENTY of reliable hosting places with Apache servers for MUCH
less than $25 per month.  Just Google "cheap Web host Apache" and you'll
come up with a ton of them.  Make sure you read the specs carefully, call up
their tech dept before you sign-on and find out how they handle the URL to
page mapping that you want to create.

I do my some of my own Web hosting and I can tell you that has its own
problems too.  Here they are:

1.  Yes, you get more control, and more experience, but you also PAY for it.
It is NOT less expensive to run your own host server UNLESS you host others
and get them to pay for it.

2.  You will need more than a server, you will also need (at minimum) backup
power supply (for outages), some mechanism for making data backups of your
sites (so that if something happens - getting hacked, a server meltdown, you
can restore from backup), and a firewall (this can be minimal and built into
a router, and you can be pretty damn safe with just that plus hosts.deny and
hosts.allow, provided you know how to configure them correctly).

3.  If you have a decent amount of traffic going to your site, a static IP
address on the fastest home ADSL won't cut it.  You will need to purchase
business-level DSL to handle the bandwidth you'll need.  As you've noted, at
that point it becomes MORE expensive than having to pay monthly fees to a
host.  Plus you might get stuck with a phone business listing and every
solicitor from around the world will phone you trying to get your business
to buy their product.

4.  As long as your site is not getting commercial-load traffic, you CAN
make due with your home DSL.  If you have already purchased a static IP, you
are half way there.  Another disadvantage to home servers is that many of us
get STUCK with the MONOPOLY phone company that has our TERRITORY.  Those
AWFUL (they are all bad, some are worse than others) companies charge too
much for services they don't deliver (just use Ping Plotter and find out how
fast/slow your connection really is vs what they bill you for).  MAYBE you
are one of the lucky few who have competing phone companies in your area.
If you are, SHOP AROUND.  Call them with a list of questions.  Compare.  The
deals are not all the same.

Good luck and hope that helps,
Meryll Larkin



-----Original Message-----
From: techtalk-bounces at linuxchix.org [mailto:techtalk-bounces at linuxchix.org]
On Behalf Of Kathryn Andersen
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 2:59 PM
To: techtalk at linuxchix.org
Subject: [Techtalk] Web-hosting dilemma

For the past several months, I've been going back and forth with my
web-host, getting very unsatisfactory non-answers about the problems I'm
having with my web-site and the fact that they use the Zeus webserver,
not Apache.

The situation is, I've written my own web-content application, Posy
(perl CGI, with modules as plugins) which relies on Apache rewrite rules
to hide the fact that the site is run by a CGI script, because I don't
want to have horrible URLs like
http://www.example.com/myscript.cgi?param1=this&param2=that
and want to have a site where the URLs are the same whether the page
has been statically pre-generated or dynamically served.
It works perfectly well with Apache (I have it working on my own PC).

Zeus has rewrite rules, yes, but they are only available in the global
config, not in .htaccess files.
I compromised by using the ErrorDocument directive to call my script on
404 errors, but, unfortunately, Zeus, unlike Apache, does not allow you
to change the status of 404 errors either.  So my entire site comes up
as "not found"!

Now they tell me that (a) they will never offer Apache as an option and
(b) it is impossible for Zeus to do what I want.

Blech!

So, I'm faced with choices of what to do.  I don't want to make my site
wholly static, because IE is so broken I really need to do browser
detection in order to give special IE-only Cascading Stylesheets when
people come in with IE (blech!).

The only other alternatives I can see are (a) find another webhost
or (b) run my own server, as I will be getting my own ADSL connection
(with static IP) soon.

The problems with these are that the likelihood of finding another
webhost who is as cheap and reliable as the one I am using now is
miniscule (the package I have with them is that I paid a large amount up
front, and now I get it for US$25 a year, which is really good).  And
apart from this particular Zeus problem, they have been a really good
webhost.

Running my own webserver is, well, all new and challenging, and also
probably costly, because I *was* intending on getting the lowest level
ADSL: 256/64, but 64 upload would probably be too slow for serving pages.
And I've been told that I'd need at least 256 upload, and the cost of
that is a minimum $20 more a month, and my budget is already stretched
in getting the ADSL in the first place... Getting 512/512 would be an
extra $40 a month, no way I could afford that.

Advice?

Kathryn Andersen
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