[Techtalk] Web-hosting dilemma

Kathryn Andersen kat_lists at katspace.com
Thu May 26 07:58:39 EST 2005


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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