Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with host

Get friends to go home?

Taft — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:17:12 -0800

How do you get your friends to respect your house...after they have a precedent that it's just a 'hangout place'? I'm 17, and my house has always seemed to be the laid back, hangout place for my circle of friends. It's been established that we don't have to respect it (i.e. there are holes in the wall due to my older brothers anger fits) and we usually stay up all night. My dad goes to bed and enforces little to no leave-times...he's kind of withdrawn like that.

Nevertheless, it hasn't really bothered me much in the past. I stay up and hang out with my friends, they go home when they have to (usually in the early morning.)

Some of my best experiences have been shenanigans with my friends at 2am, smoking hookah in the back or playing DnD or just sitting around eating McDonalds and laughing. Honestly these have been great times in the summer that I would never trade anything for.

Lately, I've been wanting to go to bed earlier, around 10:30 or 11:00pm. Last night I told everyone I was going to bed. I went upstairs and tried to sleep...but all I could hear was laughter and noise coming from downstairs. Even without a host, everyone was having a great time in the hangout house. Tonight has been the exact same, and it's irritating me. How do I tell them to respect me?

Why can't I access my self-hosted site anymore?

KI6ILS — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:16:05 -0800

Switched ISPs and now not able to access my own websites which I host myself by TLD. Before I switched ISPs I was able to type in the TLD of my website to view it, eg: ki6ils.com. Now I am not able to. I have to go into the server properties and tell it to accept connections on the internal IP address and wait for the service to restart and call it by 192.168.0.2. That makes it hard when I want to update more than one site.

How can I get it working again to go to www.ki6ils.com and actually see that site, or any other site I want to work on? What changed to cause this to happen?

Oh, I updated the domain name with the new IP address.

Webhost changes security settings on server and breaks Joomla

clockworkjoe — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:27:08 -0800

A webhost my company uses just changed the security settings and now Joomla no longer works correctly. Are these new security settings industry standard and what should I do? You can see the security settings here and the real problem seems to be that php ini.set is disabled, which Joomla needs. I don't know enough about security and coding to know what to do here. My options are to switch to a low security server, described here, try to reconfigure Joomla somehow, switch to a new CMS package or switch to a new web host.

I guess I need to understand what web hosts usually do with Joomla.

Also, my current webhost is nomonthlyfees.com which has had pretty poor tech support lately.

Which host offers the most interpreters?

grumblebee — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:20:19 -0800

Is there a reliable, not-too-expensive hosting company out there that lets you post server scripts in most open-source languages? This is for personal use. I know PHP and I'm learning Python. Eventually, I want to learn Java and one of the popular functional languages. And maybe some C++.

I know I could just download the various interpreters and compilers and play around locally, but it's so much more fun writing web apps for public consumption.

Currently, I'm with Dreamhost, and they let me code in PHP and Python. Is there another host out there with more options?

I know I could get my own dedicated server or use Amazon's cloud service, but those would be expensive solutions -- wouldn't they? If that's the only way to go, help me find the most reasonable option. I'm talking personal website stuff here. I currently pay $30 a month to Dreamhost. I'd pay a bit more than that if necessary, but I'd rather not pay hundreds a month.

How can I use my PC's DVD drive from my netbook?

whir — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:47:42 -0800

Does software exist which will allow me to use my PC's DVD drive as an external USB drive for my netbook? I'm going a bit crazy trying to get OS X onto my netbook via a USB flash memory stick and have decided to try it with a DVD drive instead. I don't particularly want to fork out $50 or more for an external USB DVD drive that I'll probably only ever use for this purpose, and I've got two drives on my PC already.

Is there any Windows XP or Linux software that will allow me to plug the netbook into the PC (via a hub) and have the PC's drives run under the control of the netbook as though they were external DVD drives? I recall seeing "USB host" options in the Linux kernel setup, so I'm fairly sure this is possible to do in Linux, but I've been googling around for how to do it and haven't come up with anything.

As another wrinkle, I'll need the netbook to boot from the DVD drive, so it will need to be pretty "real" USB hosting, on a level that the netbook BIOS can grok.

Gifts for Japanese Families?

bassooner — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:03:46 -0800

What are some good gifts for Japanese families? Also, are there any cultural taboos that I should be particularly sure to avoid breaking while staying in Japan? I'm a twenty-year old male American college student. This summer, my college's band will be doing a tour of Japan and China. The Japan section of the tour involves a number of homestays with Japanese families (either three or four stays). The stays are being arranged through local schools in the cities we're performing in, so our only information about the families are that they'll have at least one child between the ages of 6 and 18. What kinds of gifts should I be bringing to give to the families?

I've done a couple of similar tours in Western Europe, as well as spent a semester studying in Ghana while living with a host family, so I'm fairly comfortable with the guest/host intercultural dynamic. However, I'm not all that familiar with Japanese culture/language. Is there anything I should be especially careful to avoid doing or saying? (e.g., while in Ghana, coming out of the bathroom and then diving into the communal dinner bowl with my left hand).

How to make sure I have coffee on hand for guests?

olinerd — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:34:05 -0800

As a non-coffee drinker, help me figure out how to have coffee available when I host guests. I don't drink normal coffee. I occasionally spring for a latte, but i don't drink the regular stuff -- and I have absolutely no clue how to, you know, *make* it. So I don't keep any coffee-related stuff at home.

But I host friends and family from out of town from time to time, and they always look astounded that I don't have any coffee in the mornings. There's a Starbucks a few blocks away that they can go to if they really need a fix, but I'd like to be able to provide something at home that they don't need to bother getting dressed for.

So what coffee hardware + beans should I have on hand that are (1) relatively inexpensive but (2) provide a decent level of quality (like, not Folger's Crystals)?

Please, help me post a video that's currently too large. I'm a Mac user.

Toto_tot — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 09:44:32 -0800

How do I get a too large video on line? A friend of mine passed away and I created a slide show tribute that I would love to post on-line. I created it with Photo to Movie and have it rendered as an MPEG-4 which is 140 ish Megs. It is also 11:30 Minutes. When I rendered it in Quicktime it was more that 2G.

I have the typical Mac software at my disposal.
I have a place to host it where it needs to be 100 Megs or less.
Is there a way for me to use iMovie or some such to dip the quality a bit? It will only play on people's home computers.

Alternatively, is there a different place to host it? Create a website maybe?
I can put some money into this...

Thanks SO much.

Secure and Reliable Web Hosting?

meta.mark — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:13:52 -0800

Do you know of any secure & reliable web hosting providers? I am part of a startup company and we manage multiple websites. The problem is they keep getting hacked and it is a hassle to fix because our engineers are in India. Currently our host is GoDaddy but we are thinking of switching to someone more secure and reliable. Can you recommend any good hosts?

My application requests an XML file and I need to plan how to host that file so it's always available and zippy

Your Time Machine Sucks — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:17:36 -0800

Please give me some input on web hosting planning for a small XML file which might get a lot of requests. I'm working on an application which allows the user to load an XML file. The XML is less than 2K and will probably be loaded once per usage session, which could happen a few times a day. I can't speculate about how many users there will be, but the outcome that I need to (over)plan for is the one where there are metric fuckloads right out of the gate.

How would you host this file to make sure it is always reachable and zippy? Would you trust one single hosting company to host it? Which one/which plan? Which hosts would you avoid like the plague? Or would you put your eggs in multiple baskets and have a couple of hosts which the app can try in sequence to see if they are reachable? I'm willing to pay for bulletproof uptime and reliability, doesn't have to be a cheapass plan, but it might not be cost-effective to pay for a hosting plan oriented towards customers who need huge amounts of bandwidth or root access rather than the ability to handle lots of simultaneous low-bandwidth requests of one dinky file.

Thanks very much for your input!

Fastest way to upload and share images?

wastelands — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:43:29 -0800

What's the fastest way to upload and share images? I share images so frequently that I wonder if I could cut down my workflow to save time. Currently I use ImageHost.org. The usual workflow is:

1. Save image to local drive if the image is from a web page
2. Go to ImageHost, sometimes having to open the browser if it was closed (e.g. during gaming I close background apps)
3. Browse, upload
4. Copy/paste ImageHost link to wherever

I tried a Firefox plugin for ImageShack but wasn't all that impressed. It seemed like just as much work.

Is there an easier way, or am I at the limits of efficiency? Typically I'm sharing either a screenshot from my system or I want a more permanent location I can link to for a fleeting image on reddit/4chan/whatever that might disappear soon from expiration or the "Slashdot effect".

I'd prefer a solution that doesn't involve signing up with a website, if possible.

Host without the most: A party with no furniture?

abdulf — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:22:54 -0800

I'd like to hosting meetups, events, and parties in my apartment with no furniture. Can this work? Previously, I asked for some tips adjusting to a new city. Amarillo, Texas specifically.

The thread suggests I take the initiative. I found that I need to organize events for them to happen. While there is a lot to do by dining out and such, those things get expensive.

I'd like to have people over for some events. The only problem is, I don't know where to put them. I have no chairs, no sofas, and no tables. There is carpet though. And 1 bar stool.

For example, I'd like to host something like a cookie night (baking fresh cookies, milk, having conversation) or a dinner.

Would it be reasonable to have the guests sit on the floor? If so, what are cheap ways to make it comfortable and help people forget there are no places to sit? I'm thinking pillows but I need pictures or ideas.

Alternatively, would it be better to hold off and buy furniture to do this? I would be able to have the typical couch, dining table, etc in about 2-3 months.

I just don't know what the proper etiquette is for this. I'm from an Indian background and sitting on the floor is not a big deal and sometimes preferred. These would not be close friends though. Just casual acquaintances or people I meet through a meetup group.

What would you do if you had no furniture and had a desire to host social events? Pictures and detailed examples are appreciated.

Thank you-now go buy groceries with this gift card

simplethings — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:35:45 -0800

Is a gift card to a buy-in-bulk type store a tacky gift to give to hosts? A relative and his wife offered me their couch over the weekend (I flew out of my state and into theirs for an event we were all attending).
They were awesome hosts. They made sure my every need was met and answered any questions before I even though of them. They drove me everywhere and took me out to eat for many meals and cooked as well.

I'll be sending them a thank you card as well as some local treats. I'd like to also give them something more substantial. I was thinking a gift card.
Throughout the weekend they frequently mentioned their love for one of those buy-in-bulk stores. They visited the store twice over the 3 days I was there.

Is this a tacky or inappropriate gift?

Some other info/thoughts:
I'm in the "Gift cards make great birthday, Christmas, and graduation gifts" boat... so, to me, gift cards in general are not tacky. I don't know how I feel about this particular situation.

If the card is an appropriate gift is $75 a decent amount? I'm hoping it would be somewhat equivalent to the expenses they incurred for the 3 days while I was their guest.

How can I be of service?

sunshinesky — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:57:31 -0800

HostingFilter: (no not the geeky kind...) I just got a job as a host in a franchised restaurant. I know food and wine, but I don't know 'people' or restaurants. As a customer, what would you like to see more (or less!) of when you're being greeted and seated? Any helpful tips from service veterans? Please note that I will not be serving food or drinks. I'm just the bubbly door-girl.

What should I get for some people I barely know that let someone they barely know sleep in their house?

ignignokt — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 01:16:29 -0800

What's a good gift for my host? I'm volunteering in Indiana for three weeks, and I'm staying with a family that is putting me up for free. Besides being nice enough to share their home, they're very nice and were very understanding when I lost a set of their keys.

I want to thank them for their generosity at the end of my stay with a gift. They're a mom in her mid-thirties and a kid who's about 5-8. I don't know a ton about them, but I do know that the kid has a guitar, and the mom has a lot of vinyl and seems to like '50s "bad girl" imagery. I rarely get to their house while they're still awake, so I don't know how deeply they are into any of this stuff.

I'm looking to stay in the under $30 range.

Help me identify a 70's-80's home repair show

wylde21 — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:50:48 -0800

TV FILTER: I am looking for the name of a 70s-80s home repair/gardening TV show, and the female host's name. I used to watch the show, in syndication, on local Seattle TV in the early 80s. I believe the show was made in Canada, but maybe the US. The hostess was a thin woman with light brown hair and the shows premise was that she was a housewife working on her house and garden while the husband was away. They had a dog. She would have sections on the show showing how to pot plants, change light bulbs, grout tile, etc....

Quality Dedicated Hosting that allows Bittorrent Tracker? Have Budget.

mrflip — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:01:41 -0800

I will soon be distributing a bunch of large scientific and research datasets, all entirely legal for redistribution, many as large as a few gigabytes. Bittorrent is the best solution for this. Many respectable webhosting sites don't allow Bittorrent trackers; too many of those that do seem fly-by-night. I have a budget for this and want something respectable and reliable. Recommendations? My current host (Bluehost) has 6000GB/transfer a month, but I hear that these large caps can often be illusory; I want to be prepared for one to ten TB of traffic per month. I also need to be able to receive similarly large datasets, which I think will be much easier over bittorrent than asking folks to POST >1GB over ADSL and have it crap out after 3 hrs transfer (not to mention hitting CPU limits).

Amazon S3, at $0.18/GB, would be ~ $1000/mo for 6000 GB. I've reviewed most of the previous hosting q'ns, including Dealing with spikes in website popularity, but none of those suggestions make this work financially.

This clearly calls for bittorrent, but I've had real trouble finding dedicated hosting that will allow me to install a tracker. Bitrot has happened to the last question along these lines, and too many of the directories for tracker sites seem populated by rug merchants and fly-by-night operations.

I'm willing to spend money -- preferably in the $100-$200/mo range -- and want something respectable and reliable. If you tell me it will cost more than that then so be it. I'm figuring that the bittorrent solution (combined with throttling, ratios and a cooperative userbase) will keep me in the 1 TB/month range.

Can you recommend dedicated hosting that will allow me to run a tracker?

Servlet Host Recommendations

badstone — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:52:19 -0800

Please recommend a good host of Java servlets, very preferably one that runs Tomcat 6. This question was asked once before, but that was in '05. I suspect the answer may be different now. My needs are not too intense. E.g. - the Bronze or Silver service here would be perfect, other than the fact that I don't know whether I should trust that particular company.

Document management on a shared hosting server?

sprocket87 — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 12:43:18 -0800

Help me find an online document management system / digital asset management system. I'm looking for a document management system (DMS) / digital asset management system (DAM) for my scanned documents. I plan to store all of my important documents, from credit card statements to bills to receipts to insurance info, etc, digitally. I'll be using a scanner with ADF & duplexing to digitize my papers. I need a management system to organize and archive them.

Ideally, I'd like to have some software that can be set up on Dreamhost for a hosted solution. However, to allow for more flexible responses, here are my overall stipulations:

1. Must be free or inexpensive. See 2.

2. Must be hosted online. I don't trust local copies (hardware failure/fire/theft/etc). This applies to portable (DVD, etc) media as well. It does NOT need to be a hosted system per se, in that Company X provides the DMS/DAM software and hosts it. I am willing / would prefer to use a 3rd party host, such as Dreamhost, for cost reasons. They are much more flexible in that they offer tons of storage and bandwidth and whatever else you want for a much lower cost. I don't want to pay $X/mo just for an online DAM. I am willing to pay $X/mo for a shared host that allows me to host anything else I want as well though.

3. Must be somewhat easy to install, configure and use, whether it is a provided & hosted service or a service I set up on a shared host.

4. Does not have to control my scanning experience; I can use a separate tool to get the files digitized but I'm looking for the DSM/DAM service to organize them. Obviously an online service wouldn't have much control over my hardware anyway :)

5. Should have the usual DMS/DAM features: File indexing for a wide array of filetypes (doc/pdf/all images/tiff/archives/etc), support OCR if possible, allow categories and advanced naming/file control, exporting, etc.

I love the looks of Linux DMS tools like DocMGR, but the setup looks somewhat overwhelming. I'm comfortable with basic Linux tasks, but configuring a shared host is a bit confusing to me. Is there any way to even set up such services on a shared host? For instance, is it possible to install DocMGR on Dreamhost? I suspect not, as it uses PostgreSQL and Dreamhost uses MySQL. But beyond this limitation, how does one go about installing their own applications on a shared host? I mean, Dreamhost provides a shell prompt, but not root - are you even allowed to install software? And what about dependencies, etc?

I know Dreamhost offers several "One-click" installable services, like MediaWiki, Wordpress, Joomla, etc, but I don't think any of these are exactly what I'm looking for. I'm assuming it's possible to set up some other service, albeit with more work, but I'm not having much success finding documented "How To's" for this. For instance, how to set up docmgr/doxfs/etc on a shared host.

Also, I know there are some basic Windows tools like PaperPort and Docsvault that do a great job of managing local copies of digital files, but I want them online. I understand I could simply backup a directory to an online host, but I'm thinking a hosted database would be preferable for advanced administration, etc.

Obviously I have a lot of "wants" so this is pretty wide open. Understand that I'm not a corporation and don't need any huge DAM solutions, but I'd like something a little more advanced than a basic client-side software.

Advice needed re: website which will (hopefully) be hosted in Jordan

zharptitsa — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 19:13:46 -0800

Does anyone have experience with domain registration and/or hosting companies in Jordan? Let me preface all this by explaining that the reason I ask is because the website in question will ultimately be managed entirely by Jordanians with limited English skills. Arabic speaking tech support is essential, so it seems to make sense to go with a local domain registration service and/or hosting company assuming we can find one. I also have someone in Jordan looking into this, but since he has no experience in this realm, I thought I'd see if any of you had suggestions.

My first question might be obvious, but I'm a novice here. Can a Jordanian domain registration service register a .org domain? Or can they only register a .jo domain? If they CAN register a .org, can anyone refer me to a well-established reasonably priced service? If not, I guess I'll be registering the domain here in the U.S.

With regard to hosting companies, has anyone had a good experience with a particular company? Are there any we should stay away from? My preference would be to go with a company that could both register the domain and host the site (like you can with GoDaddy). If they also provided design services, that would be ideal but not necessary.

Any other suggestions, insights, etc. regarding working with Jordanian domain registration/hosting companies are welcome! Thanks.

Why isn't ONE of my emails working?

pikaboy202 — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 19:56:01 -0800

I have a home network that is working fine except for emails from one server. The problem is not the server. What else could it be? more inside... I have a home network of 4 computers. I use a Cable connection, hooked up to a wireless router that splits the Cable connection to the 4 computers. It's a very basic system.

I am having problems accessing emails from my website (my_name@mywebsite.com). All emails from my website are experiencing problems. The emails sometimes gets through, and a lot of times, it does not. Emails sent sometimes goes through, and most emails overseas don't go through.

I had to resort to using other email accounts such as aol or gmail, which works fine. I thought that the problem was with the server or host, so I switched from my original hosting site, domain discover, to another hosting site, yahoo. However, this did not solve the problem.

I am now out of ideas as to what the problem could be. My last theory is that it could be the cable connection. However, it's odd since my other emails seem to work. I am planning on switching to Verizon's fiber optic connection to see if it helps. Is that a wise choice? What could be the problem? Hive - please help!

What is the service that shows you a server on a map?

criticman — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 16:50:52 -0800

What is the name/URL of the tool that allows you to see a physical map of where a domain name's server is? I recall seeing this summer a service/tool (maybe even Firefox extension) that you input a domain name into and it would, based on IP, locate where the server is and show it on a map. I believe it was a Google Map based tool, because it showed you a map and gave the option of satellite view too. I have tried at least 15 different Google searches and gone through the first few pages of results for each without finding it. Thanks for the help!

Where will my blog live?

benjh — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 13:28:53 -0800

Where will my blog live? My current web hosting service term is up, and I need to look at my options. I just do some basic blogging, and use services like Flickr to handle posting my photos online, so I don't need something too elaborate.

Right now, I use Wordpress hosted at Dreamhost. I am looking at both what to manage my blog with, as well as where to host it.

I used to use TypePad, which I loved for the simplicity and no-hassle hosting, but remembering that it wasn't as versatile as I would have liked.

Welcome any suggestions of not only where but how to host my site.

How to migrate to a new mail server?

Lokheed — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 09:06:22 -0800

Migrating email when changing web hosts. How to make it less painful? I currently have two domains hosted in a Unix environment. I am moving both domains to a new host, using a Windows environment. I currently have about twenty email users, several of whom primarily use the web email client and who leave messages on the server.

During the transition, I can change the mx settings on the current mail server so any new arriving mail gets sent to the new host's mail server, that's not a problem. My question is, is there any way for me to actually move the contents of the various mailboxes from the current mail server to the new one, or will I need to require my users to pull down all of their messages locally or else lose them?

Need wiki host

deeman — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 13:26:45 -0800

What's the best host to run my wiki created using MediaWiki? Using MediaWiki and a LAMP server, I want to play around with creating my own wiki site. All hosts are not created equal which is why I need one that will host my site that plays nicely with MediaWiki, is relatively inexpensive, is reputable, and is relatively user-friendly. Any suggestions?