Re: newbie question

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To: "Chad Morland" <cmorland@gmail.com>, <SuDaNym@aol.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:46:48 -0500

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chad Morland" <cmorland@gmail.com>
To: <SuDaNym@aol.com>
Cc: <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 1:10 PM
Subject: Re: newbie question

On 4/17/05, SuDaNym@aol.com <SuDaNym@aol.com> wrote:
> Hello
>
> Can anyone give me a very rough estimate on how much time is required on
an
> ongoing basis, after a server is set up with FreeBSD and Apache, to
maintain
> everything. By everything I am referring to everything required to keep
the
> server up, and host about 100 domains. Thank you in advance and I
apologize
> if this question is not appropriate for this list.
>
> Sue

If you will be doing this as a business venture I HIGHLY recommend
that you either get a managed server or hire someone to help you admin
the server when you are stuck. There are many people out there that
offer this service. Go to any webhosting forum and ask for some
referrals.

The reason I say this is because it seems that A LOT of people think
they can make a quick buck off of webhosting without any "real" work.
These are usually the companies that fail quickly and give the hosting
industry a bad name. Running any type of business requires some
thought and experience.

There are a lot of minor issues that will stump a self described
"newbie" and having someone there to assist you will make your life
and the life of your clients that much easier.

-CM

Good advice Chad. Even for those that have been admin'ing *Nix boxes for
years get stumped by the most simplest of things at times. We rarely admit
it, but it happens.

Some additional things to consider if you plan on hosting sites as a
business.

o CGI access requirements of your clients.

o DNS, SMTP, POP3 requirements for your clients. These usually go hand in
hand with web hosting these days.

o The ability for them to update pages properly on their own (ftp / front
page requirements / access)

o The responsibility to ensure that the software is patched quickly as
needed (perl, php, mysql to name a few)

o Spam / AV filtering (do they want it? Do they not care?, Are they going
to trip out if you start filtering their mail?, etc)

o Are you going to host these on static IP's? If you're going to provide
SSL enabled sites, you have no choice since you can't use SSL on name based
virtual hosting.

o Are you going to need to do virtual domain maps for the users that
require / use email services?

A sundry of other items that are just too numerous to mention.

I'm not trying to scare anyone away from it, far from it, just trying to add
my .02 to the discussion of things to consider before you decide that
hosting is the thing for you.

--
Micheal Patterson
Senior Communications Systems Engineer
405-917-0600
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