Website hosting services needed?

At one time I considered getting another server set up to host sites specifically targeted for the herp industry.  But time just wasn't available to pursue it much, and certainly none is available to address this until around November.  But I guess it can't hurt to get some feedback now for me to think about during those long drives to and from the shows we are doing over the next two months.

I would be going out on a limb, yet again, for something like this and am wondering if there is really much need for something like this.  I have also reserved a bunch of domain names myself and considered leasing the names along with the domain space for them.

So this message is just to test the waters.  I really don't need something else to occupy my time, but if a bunch of people feel they need a stable base of operations for their internet business, then maybe I can start thinking about ways to help.

Thanks.

I'd like to see what you think your rate structure would look like if you take the idea that far.

I'm also curious if you'd be able to host an ezboard bbs with your license or if I'd need my own (if it's something you'd want to host.)

^Curtis

I might be interested as well, depending on price and soforth... Is this going to be a service mainly for small-time/hobbyist breeders or are you going to concentrate on larger businesses?

-Kat Hall

I'm not really sure of any details at all at the moment.  Just seeing what sort of interest there is about doing such a thing.  Understand that I would be going out on a financial limb leasing yet another server, and the cost per domain would depend on the number of users I could expect.

Suppose the server cost me $400 per month.  Is it possible to get enough domains leased on it plus put a few dollars in my pocket for the effort?  If I can only find 10 people, then of course it won't work.  There would not be enough leeway in the pricing that anyone would go for. 20 people, then you get around the break-even point (assuming most people will be looking for around $20 per month for something like this). 100 people, then there is a lot of room to play with, assuming everyone isn't going to pound the server to death with traffic.  Then I would be paying surcharges for excessive bandwidth, or people would be complaining about their sites being too slow.

I'm just seeing if there is any interest.  Not even saying I will actually do something like this.  I'm still trying to get THIS site operating in the black and it's more work than I had hoped trying to keep the advertisers rounded up to renew their ads.  So I am certainly not looking at providing a freebie in this case.

So far, I would say that the number of responses and views of this threat are pointing to it not being a feasible idea.  I have around 35 herp related domains reserved that I may set up on a server and lease them out sometime in the future.  But I don't know if the industry is quite ready for that sort of thing yet.

I have two domains right now that I need hosting for. I would very happily put them in your hands. Evan Stahl

Rich,

You and I have spoken before about my plans to get a website up and running in the near future.  I would very much like to have it hosted on your server with the others (AND possibly lease a domain name, depending on what's available), if that becomes a possibility.  Please keep us posted!

I might even like to lease a domain name if a server never materializes for this purpose.

Thanks,

OK, give me time to get through all of these shows I'm doing through the first weekend in November and I'll see what I can do.  I'm actually kind of amazed I haven't exceeded my bandwidth limit already with the sites I am now running on my server.  I want to check the stats to see how much head room I have so I can start out on this same server before looking into leasing another one.

Darin - When I get a moment to compile that info, I'll post a list of the domain names I have, for you to look over.

Thanks.

A number of things have happened recently, one of which is that I have already hit my bandwidth limit for the server I am using for this site. Then I had some problems with their tech support, that shouldn't have gone that way to do something rather simply (install a SSL certificate).

That pushed me into looking for a new server, which is what I have done. And I am glad I did! I have just signed for a new server that is twice as fast (2 gHz Pentium 4), has twice the memory (512 meg), has twice the hard drive storage (36 gigs - also a much faster version of IBM SCSI drive), and my bandwidth limit will be 400 GIGABYTES per month.

This gives me a lot of elbow room!

So with that in mind, I am thinking again about offering website hosting for anyone interested in it. I haven't gotten into the new server yet, so I don't know what limitations may be in place, but I should be able to offer either FaunaClassifieds.com/yourname types of domains as well as www.yourname.com sites. If you need to use SSL for credit card transactions, this will require you to get an SSL certificate as well as having an IP address assigned to your domain.

I'm not sure on the pricing, but I figure it should be around $20 per month. The usual stuff like FTP access, email addresses, etc will be available, plus perhaps some perks that I won't know about until I rumage around on the new server.

I will compile a list of the domain names I have personally reserved and see if anyone is interested in leasing them for the duration of their domain hosting. I figure I would ask $10 per month for the name lease.

I'll probably put something on the front page of the site to to indicate hosted sites as an additional perk.

I'll know more in about a week, but thought I wanted to give you guys a heads up. In the meantime, I'll be working on the domain name list. I can also do registrations for you of names you may want to get that are not already reserved. I've gotten this down pretty pat, and it may not be something everyone wants to get involved in themselves.

Anyway, thanks for the consideration.

Eventually, I would definitely want hosting services. If I had a website, I would be in the market for some advertising space as well.

Well, I still don't have my new server operational yet, so I'm still shooting in the dark about what exactly I can offer anyone for hosting services. But I've been doing some research and I think I could get away with offering a plain vanilla webhosting site for $10 per month. This would be nothing fancy, of course, so if you need SSL, cgi-bin, mySQL, etc. then we will need to talk about expanded services. If you do NOT know how to FTP files, talk to me, because you might need a little bit more hand holding than that $10 plain vanilla offering will provide for you. I will not design your website, but I can certainly get the files from you to the server for you.

Also, I compiled a list of domain names I have been sitting on that I would be interested in LEASING out to anyone interested. I am not interested in losing control of the names, however:

CyberSnakes.com
HerpArt.com
HerpCo.com
HerpConnection.com
HerpDeals.com
HerpDepot.com
HerpDirectory.com
HerpDomain.com
HerpEvents.com
HerpLine.com
HerpMarket.com
HerpMarketplace.com
HerpSales.com
HerpSource.com
HerpStore.com
HerpWare.com
HerpWarehouse.com
HerpWear.com

To lease the domain name would be an additional $20 per month.

If anyone has a domain name they are interested in getting for your site, I can help you out with that as well.

Anyway, hopefully by the first of the new year, I should be able to start setting up sites for anyone interested.

Oh, by the way, if you ARE interested, please let me know as soon as you can so I have a good idea of what I need to allocate as far as resources are concerned. I don't have a clue about how many people are even slightly interested in this sort of thing. I am perfectly willing to lease another server if the demand is there.

Thanks.