Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with hosting

Technical/legal questions about a site that will parody a trademarked brand

Riki tiki — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:59:14 -0800

I'm thinking of creating a political parody website that may step on some toes and/or trademarks. I have a few technical and legal questions about how best to go about this. So I had an idea for lambasting a prominent political party in the United States. I was shocked to find that a really obvious domain name for that party was available, but it may infringe upon a trademark for that party.

I know YANAL and YANML, but a little guidance as to the prudent first steps here would be appreciated. I would assume (but correct me if I'm wrong) that free-speech protections of satire and parody may protect me from some of the trademark issues. But I also sense that those lines may become fuzzier if I ever appear to draw a profit from the site. Is there anything I can do to reasonably ensure that my site is on firm legal ground without the cost of consulting an actual attorney?

On more of a technical level, does anyone know of a good hosting company that could be relied upon to keep the site running even if they got big scary letters on legal stationery from that political party?

This idea is still in the brainstorming stages, so I'm probably imagining a bigger future for it than will realistically happen... but I'd rather be overprepared than underprepared.

Make sugar sweeter...

frwagon — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:55:54 -0800

Dedicated Hosting Rentals for SugarCRM - Help me out! I need to rent a dedicated host to house the SugarCRM application (figure 25-50 very active users) for a few months to a year. Who would you recommend, and what minimum specs would you suggest I look for? I've hosted on shared machines before, and I've built my own hardware (although was not happy with the results of either)... Who's good, and what should I look for in the hardware?

What is this cryptic Text Message?

MattMangels — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:17:44 -0800

"You Hosting Tonight? Got some of the best Faves ever" What could this possibly mean? My friend got this text message from a wrong number, and we were all stumped as to what on earth it could possibly mean. Could you help me out, Hivemind? I'm just very curious about this; it sounds really funny out of context. For the record, it was received at 1am today (Sunday) from a number in our area code.

Subvert the dominant, oh geez, I can't even type it

mwhybark — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:25:31 -0800

Any experience / suggestions / pearls of wisdom / recommendations for free Subversion hosting? TIA, no more inside.

Like a turkey trying to fly.

zoomorphic — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:37:49 -0800

I'm hosting my first Thanksgiving. I have zero idea what I'm doing. Advice, s'il vous plait! I got the bright idea to organize a Thanksgiving dinner for my fellow NYC transplant friends who aren't flying home for the holidays, doubling as an excuse to show off my cool new apartment. Oh, except, I can barely cook tofu, let alone an entire turkey. Today I saw a sign-up list at a grocery store for turkeys that ended yesterday, and I was mortified that somehow I'd missed the turkey lottery deadline. I need advice on everything.

My ten guests are bringing side dishes according to their household traditions, but I'm in charge of the turkey, the mulled wine, candied bacon ice cream and pumpkin pie. I'm a good baker and will do right by the desserts, but I need easy-to-follow advice on good places to acquire a bird (preferably free-range, organic) suited for 10 people, gutting it, basting it, etc. If you've got a good mulled wine recipe, send it my way. Any favorite Martha Stewart touches would be lovely. Miscellaneous advice related to large dinner parties would be much appreciated as well.

What should I do about my lost domain name?

doubtless — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:26:23 -0800

So I lost my domain name. Now what? For a few years, I had a personal blog. Then the super cheap hosting service I used (Vizaweb) suddenly vanished, charging my credit card one more time before becoming a eerie and apparently deserted spam-trap.

My blog disappeared, but the domain continued to be registered to Vizaweb (I hadn't registered it in my own name).

So, I watched patiently over the course of a few months, as the name expired and went into pending deletion, thinking I'd buy it when it came up again. I figured that my very low traffic blog address (not a name that seems very marketable, either) wouldn't be worth anyone's effort to steal.

However today the name apparently became available and someone managed to buy it before I could register it again. Now it is owned by "c/o eNom, Inc. on behalf of eNom, Inc. Customer." It also says, "Expiration Date: 19-nov-2010." I've already visited the site on line (which perhaps was a bad idea?). It's now just a spamy set of links to hotels, ring tones, etc.

So, as I see it, I have 4 options:
1) wait till the name expires next year, then buy it.
2) email the owner and ask to buy it
3) buy the .net version and use that
4) forget about the old domain entirely

However, there are problems with each option:
1) they might renew it
2) he will probably ask a huge price for it, and I'm poor. I'm also not sure if, on principle, I'd want to pay more than maybe $50 to this domain name squatter
3) this would be ok, but .com is better known, and would probably encourage the new owner to renew the domain next year and/or to charge more for it if I ask him to sell it
4) this will really annoy me, as the name has some personal importance. But it is an option.

Anyway, I know that there's no great solution here, but I guess I'd be interested in what you'd recommend. (As a secondary question, how could I have avoided this? How could I have reserved the name that was held by my defunct hosting company?)

Thanks for any advice.

GMP math friendly web host?

wmeredith — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:02:13 -0800

Sys Admin filter: I'm looking for cheap web hosting that is out of the box GMP math friendly. Does anyone have a good recommendation?

Help me choose a host

Iteki — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:47:58 -0800

Help me choose a webhost for my small business. Details on the inside. Drowning slightly in the choices available to me. I have a teeny tiny business "doing sites" and will be hosting my clients under my own package. The sites are tiny enough (online brochures in principle) that a reseller account would be over the top.

On the "need to have" end of things I guess that means:
- multiple domains on one account
- handling of hosting and mail for those domains
- handy WP integration
- cheap but established (really max $20 a month I think)

and "nice to have" would be:
- easy ecommerce solution
- environmentally friendly/carbon neutral
- free wp templates

I am probably leaning towards Dreamhost based on their being so well established and correctly priced. I just heard of GreenReseller hosting today, so I have no real opinion on them, anyone know of them or similar companies?

What are other need/nice to haves I should consider?
Which company do you recommend for the most bang for my buck?

Contemplating getting my own server

sindark — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:59:43 -0800

How would the new Mac Mini server compare to a cheap shared hosting account? At present, my website is hosted on GoDaddy.com's 'economy' shared Linux hosting plan. I noticed that Apple has now released a version of the Mac Mini designed to act as a server, costing about $1,000 Canadian.

Does anyone have any idea of how it would compare with GoDaddy, in terms of performance? I have found myself frustrated by how slowly content loads from their servers, especially anything that depends on MySQL databases, such as WordPress and MediaWiki.

$1,000 would be akin to about 10 years of shared hosting payments, but there might be secondary benefits to running my own server, rather than farming the task out to someone else. Any thoughts?

wordpress - the two types of hosting options - pros and cons?

figTree — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:26:43 -0800

wordpress pros and cons of self-hosting versus using wordpress hosting? So i started a wordpress blog. I bought my own domain name and am redirecting the the servers at wordpress.

I would like to move my blog to my own server so i can have more controll over it (especially the ability to edite css without paying). That said i have a few questions:

1) I would like to install feedburner into my rss feed. I cannot figure out if i can do that without having my own server, but i have not found a source that says exactly that. Do all plugins basically require you to have your own server? .

2) Are there any disadvantages to moving to my own server? What i am primarily thinking is if i move my wordpress blog to my own server, will my posts and blog be affected in how it shows up in searches done through wordpress.com? (does it show at all?) Could moving my page become less popular in ranking if you move it to my own host? Is it perhaps a good idea to keep a blog on wordpress hosting so that it grows faster, then move it later?

3) If i wait a while to switch to my own hoster, will there be any problems with how old links might point to my site? Does wordpress keep the old links active and redirect to my new host?

Thanks for you time!

How can I change to company Y for domain registration and hosting when I can't contact unreliable original company X?

Not Supplied — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:00:15 -0800

How can I change to company Y for domain registration and hosting when I can't contact unreliable original company X to do the change? In the UK. My friend has had domain hosting for a long time from this sketchy guy. He's never available to contact. I've been emailing him and phoning him for 2 weeks.

I am listed as the registrant and administrative contact for the domain names, but all the contact details are the dodgy hosting company.

Seems like he keeps his customers by just making it so bloody hard to switch to another company.

I've spoken to someone from godaddy.com about the process of switching both the domain name registration and the hosting to them. I'm not attached to using them but they seem cheap and ok for my friend.

Anyway they said I need to ask dodgy domain host guy to 1) unlock the domain 2) Change the administrative email to my address.

It seems fairly likely that this guy will stall and be uncooperative when I do finally get in touch so I'm not sure how to handle it. I'm thinking of writing a letter recorded delivery asking for the changes to be made. If I do this what articles of consumer law can I quote to back up our right to have him make the changes?

Is there another way of switching the domain registration and hosting without having to get the previous comanies approval?

Researching website options

titanium_geek — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:03:04 -0800

Researching options for all things website: hosting, domain name registration and DNS. Can you help me narrow it down? Hello Mefites, this is my first ask.mefi question. I'm writing a report for a 'professional writing' course. We will be assessed on the quality of the writing, not the content.

Scenario: you say "I would like a website for my small company."
I say: "Well, you need content (I have this covered), a domain name, and hosting."

What do I say next? I know I can google web hosting providers, but there are lots! What are the good and/or popular companies out there?

I have on the list already: GoDaddy (my own domain bought through them, looking to change.)
nearlyfreespeech.net
mediatemple

These are companies I've seen mentioned on my journeys around the web, but I'd like more recommendations please.

I want to rock the party.

yersinia — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:10:51 -0800

One bachelorette party, ten miscellaneous female guests, one extremely introverted organizer (that's me!). Activities are set, but what little things can I do (or how should I behave) to keep things cohesive and lively, instead of awkward or lame? As maid of honor at my sister's wedding, I'm in charge of running her bachelorette party in a few months' time. The thing is, I'm personally pretty reserved and low-energy. I've never been to one of these things myself, and in general female group socialization of the "SQUEE!"/Sex-and-the-City variety is kind of a mystery to me. Sis is also on the quiet side of average, but she does like parties and I know she'd enjoy having a proper bachelorette experience.

The guests are likely to be a mix of mutually-unacquainted high-school, college, and work friends, ages 25-35, and I haven't seen Sis with any of them, so I have no real sense of the existing social dynamics. We'll likely be doing a pole-dancing class plus dinner, and thanks to this question I'm set with ideas for smaller activities/games.

What I'm worried about are the intangibles of executing this plan, the little details of demeanor and conversation that might help unite everyone into a group and ensure that the energy level stays high. Being a kind of un-fun person myself, I've had plenty of social interactions that bottomed out, energy-wise (as well as some where I ended up having to exhaustedly feign enjoyment for hours at a time), and I'm worried about how the party will fare if I'm the one responsible for getting the evening going.

Normally, just the thought of attending a bachelorette party would fill me with dread and anxiety, but I think I can make it through the hostessing if I have a very clear, explicit plan for how to act/what to say/how to "be"/etc. to keep things lively for everyone. So thinking back to the absolute funnest small party you've ever attended, what qualities and behaviors characterized the host(ess)? And how can I fake being, well, more like that?

Free Audio Hosting? Does it Exist?

spacelux — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:16:01 -0800

I'm trying to find a way to stream some Mp3s of songs (about 60) on a website (completely self created) from a host/website but I am unable to find anything similar to Flickr or Youtube or ad infinitum for music. Is there something similar for audio? My husband is a musician, and the mp3 hosting he had previously changed avenues and dropped his files. Now the website doesn't work, and unfortunately there isn't enough server space on the domain to host the Mp3s ourselves or we would.

I was wondering if there's any such thing as free mp3 hosting, I've searched, and haven't been able to find anything. I find it hard to believe that photos and videos have tons of places but not music? Thanks in advance for any hints. :)

(I know, it's a tough arena due to RIAA, but I'm talking about honest user created content)

Help me create an RSS feed from a site updated daily

Merlin144 — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:12:24 -0800

How can I create an RSS feed from a wordpress site that doesn't add new posts, only updates the SAME post every day? Please direct me to online tools I can utilize based on specifics below. Specifics:
1. The website I want to create the feed from is: www.serveraday.com, which is updated every morning with a great dedicated server deal.
2. They update the SAME wordpress post from 6/25/2008 with the NEW information in this post each and every day. This prevents most feed creation tools, including feedburner, from updating a feed, as they think it's the same post.
3. I need to be able to set the tool I end up using to refresh on a daily basis, to capture the update on the site as soon as possible after it's posted.
4. I am not the owner of this site, just a person that wants to find great deals and share them through an RSS feed!

Thank you!!

I need my html, and i need it NOW!

saxamo — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:01:46 -0800

Are there any free hosting services that will just host a .html page? I'm looking for imageshack/tinypic but for html pages.

I need to upload an html page and have it be displayed on something like http://saxamosdreamhost.com/abcdefg.html Rapidshare/megupload will not work because they ask you to download the server

This is for a game server MOTD (the screen you see upon logging into a counter strike 1.6 server). It's only one page, one background image externally linked to tinypic. It will get a fair bit of traffic daily but it can not have advertisements. I would also like the option to go back and re-edit the html OR upload a completely new file with my changes.

Hosted Blog or DIY?

heavenstobetsy — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:05:14 -0800

My boss would like to start a blog. He already has a domain. We're unsure as to whether to use something like Wordpress to host, or to install it (or Moveable Type?) ourselves. Opinions? He is also a bit concerned with search engine optimization. The concern is that google (and others) will not recognize that a hosted blog (pointing to his domain) is a PART of the domain, but appear as another domain altogether (Wordpress'?). Basically he would like the blog to come up when people google our business name. It would be tagged appropriately, he is just concerned that using a partially hosted service would dilute the connection to the domain. Hopefully that makes sense!

He will be using the blog for weekly/monthly/etc newsletters, posting pictures, links, etc. He is also concerned about being able to use his own fonts. It seems to be that this should be possible, but I'm not so up on the server side of blog hosting (or any hosting). What is our best bet here?

Hosting Gametable on Amazon S3 or Linux Hosting Account?

royalsong — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:10:31 -0800

My friends and I use a java based program called Gametable to play long distance Dungeons and Dragons. We're having trouble finding someone who can host the game each week. Firewalls and general computer problems are preventing one of us from hosting the game. Can I use my linux hosting account (or even better my Amazon s3 account) to host Gametable? I don't have the knowledge to do complicated coding outside html and css. If it's relevant.

Low-cost white label video solution

ialas — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:45:14 -0800

Do you know a low-cost white label video solution with privacy settings that hide the video from the public but allow you to embed the video where you want? I'm looking for a low-cost white-label video solution for my business that will allow me to embed videos behind a log-in, for the eyes of registered users only. The registered users won't be able to share the videos (embedding disabled). Ideally, it would also:

-be easy to use (we would like to have users upload videos themselves)
-allow us to put our brand/logo on the video/video player
-not have ads

We've looked at free solutions (YouTube, Vimeo) and white-label solutions (Brightcove, Watershed, Twistage, Castfire), but the former don't fit our needs and the latter are priced too high for our needs. We'll only be uploading a dozen or so videos a month. So far the best fit looks like Viddler, but at $100 a month I'd like to see if there's anything cheaper.

Thanks in advance!

Open Drop.io Competitor

joshnunn — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:06:10 -0800

I'm after a self-hosted or hosted solution that provides an easy to use interface for uploading and displaying/playing back of media files of all types from my own Amazon S3 account. I really like the idea behind drop.io, but don't like it for permanent storage of my media, as the drops expire, and they add a markup (totally warranted).

What I'd love is something that hooks into my own Amazon S3 account, allows me to upload files, and offers a stylish interface for display of media such as photos, video, audio, documents etc - and might even let me embed these individual items (in their stylish wrappers) into other places on the web.

Of course drop.io does all of this and more, but the lack of permanency (and price) have got me down. I also realise I could cobble something together that has the appearance of doing this using something like Wordpress (or Drupal et al), but they aren't really an all-in-one simple solution.

Please tell me if there is something like this that I can host myself (or is hosted) that does this.

Cheers.

Hosting an Australian website from Iceland: ridiculous?

carnival of animals — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:07:27 -0800

I have my heart set on an .is domain which spells out the name of my Australian website, but I'm restricted to using web hosts registered with the ISNIC (administers the .is gTLD), which means hosting from Iceland/Europe. Should I give up on it? (If not, can you recommend a host?) A previous question asked about this, but I think the rules on registering an .is domain have changed since 2005, because I can't see any mention on the ISNIC website of requirements for an Icelandic business presence or trademark. I have in fact successfully registered the domain I want to use, somehow managing to have skipped over the bit in the FAQ which points to a list of approved hosts.

For a host to be registered with the ISNIC, they have to conform to the ISNIC's (I think) quite strict technical requirements, pay a modest tariff, and host at least 10 .is domains at any one time. Of course, no Australian host is registered with them.

I read that Icelandic web hosting is meant to be quite cheap because of low energy costs (cheap sustainable geothermal energy, and less cooling necessary), but from the very limited research I've been able to do (Google can't translate Icelandic yet), this doesn't really seem to be the case? Perhaps this only applies 'in bulk' to companies running high-load apps/services and not to hosting relatively humble webpages?

My instant reaction when reading about the hosting requirements was that I had made a mistake, but then most of the websites I regularly visit I suppose are hosted in the US, so maybe it's not completely silly? I can still change the name of the project, but I have my heart set on this name and the .com.au equivalent is taken. I don't expect the website will be drawing huge amounts of traffic any time soon, (say, before the new 1.9 Tbps cable referred to in the Wired article comes online) but I'd like to go with a hosting company that will let me scale up when necessary.

If you don't think I'm being overly sentimental about the name and can read Icelandic, I would be most grateful for host recommendations!

Multiple domains, one hosting package, same content. Why?

entropic — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:23:13 -0800

Why does the domain I just registered and added to my existing hosting account (with 1and1) contain the same files and folders as a domain that was already on that hosting package? When I registered the new domain, I connected via FTP and noticed that it contained exactly the same directory and file structure as a domain that was already setup on that hosting package. If I make any changes to the new domain via ftp, it affects the existing domain as well. Obviously I'd like to be able to have different content on this new domain, but I can't figure out how to make that happen!

When registering a domain name, should I pay - annually - to hide these details from the Whois database?

Kirn — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:16:22 -0800

When registering a domain name, should I pay - annually - to hide these details from the Whois database? I'm in the process of registering 2 domain names (with fasthosts.co.uk/ukreg) and have been presented with the following option:

Hide your contact details for this domain
£4.99 pa per domain
Activate domain privacy to stop these contact details being displayed in the publically-accessible WhoIs database.

£10/year isn't a massive amount of money, but it isn't nothing. Should I tick this option? Do people, generally? Do you? What am I getting by doing it, and what am I risking if I don't? Is there a serious risk of identity fraud? (FWIW, the domain names I'm registering would both have my full name in them.)

Thanks!

What programming language should I use for a Digg-like web site?

jackson5 — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:37:41 -0800

What programming language should I use for a Digg-like web site? I'm no web developer, but I already have a high traffic picture gallery which I want to turn into a digg-like picture voting site.

I'm going to hire a developer and would like your recommendations on which programming language I should target for the site?

My site currently does about 2 million pageviews per month already, so I expect the traffic to go up. The programming language should easily handle a lot of traffic on 1 dedicated server.

I keep hearing a lot about Ruby on Rails. I'm familiar with PHP/MySQL, but not sure if that is the best programming language for this project.

I also keep hearing a lot about cloud hosting. This sounds like a good option as well.

Basically, to sum up my question: I want to post a "programmer wanted" ad for this project. What should I be looking for from a developer?

Help me move four very large Wordpress sites.

jbickers — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:33:39 -0800

I need to move four large Wordpress sites from one host to another, and I'm scared at all the many ways it could go wrong. We currently have four websites hosted in our building. All are running Wordpress.

The company has made the decision to switch to an off-site hosting company, an account has been setup, etc., and I'm tasked with moving the sites to the new host.

Here's the rub: The people that originally set up our in-house box put all four sites in the same MySQL database, with different table prefixes. Rub #2: These are extremely large sites, several of which have upwards of 50,000 posts.

So, how do I go about moving/implementing this beast? Setting up WP and moving the themes and all that isn't a problem. But how do I best move the data? Do I use a backup/restore plugin, or will that not work given the fact that they're all four in the same DB? Is there a better, safer way of moving MySQL data from one place to another?