[CS-FSLUG] Need Web Space?

[Timothy Butler]

Hi everyone,
	I'm usually hesitant to advertise any of my services on the mailing  
lists I host (I do not want it to seem like I am hosting them to sell  
stuff), but I did do a little pitch in 2004 and I hope no one minds if  
I do the exact same thing in 2008.  Here's what the deal is. As some  
of you know, I do web hosting almost solely as a courtesy to my web  
design clients -- I do not advertise on the web, etc. However, I am  
looking to upgrade my server and to make it cost effective, I would  
like to sell a few more accounts. As I did last time, what I would  
like to do is offer accounts that are larger than my normal plans but  
with a major caveat. I explained it thusly in 2004:

> The real catch would be that it wouldn't really be supported. I have a
> vested interest in keeping it up (OfB and my web design clients  
> would be
> on it), but unfortunately I can't provide 24x7 support. I would help  
> if
> something went wrong with the server, but I'd rather promise no  
> support
> and provide something than promise support and be unable to. If
> something happened like your site was completely down, then I'd get it
> working. Hopefully that makes sense.


	Now, just to be clear, the server is watched 24x7, I just am not  
personally around to provide *support* 24x7. On the upside, you're  
otherwise getting what I like to call an over engineered account. Your  
account is backed up off site every week, with five backups kept in  
the off site archive (rotated). Moreover, I never oversell servers: no  
one wants to be the last person to show up on an airplane when it is  
overbooked and most everyone showed up, and likewise it is not fair to  
web hosting customers to oversell the server. I will be moving less  
than 25 clients on to the server to start, and expect to keep the  
amount of users under 50 in the future -- far less than the hundreds  
that go on a typical web server. In addition, the server is in a fully  
redundant data center with multiple tier 1 connections offering a  
total throughput of more than 120Gb/s. Over the current server's run,  
we have achieved significantly better than 99.999% reliability.

	This deal will only will happen if I get at least five people to take  
the offer (e.g. enough to make the server upgrade happen). The account  
costs $10/month paid annually.

	You get everything my $10 Pine Account offers:
	- 20,000 MB transfers
	- 4 MySQL databases
	- 10 subdomains or parked domains
	- 2 FTP accounts
	- CPanel and Fantastico

	But, instead of my normal 300 MB of disk space, this account will  
come with 1 gig of space. Also, instead of 40 POP/IMAP accounts, you  
would get unlimited (whatever you can fit in your disk space). While  
you may not resell parts of that space, you may resell entire accounts  
if you wish and then provide tech support to your clients. If you are  
interested in being a reseller, I'll provide a reseller control panel  
for working with your accounts.

	The standard web hosting fine print (AUP/TOS): http://www.serverforest.com/aup-tos.html

	Let me know if you are interested. Also, if this plan doesn't meet  
your needs, let me know what would.

	Thanks for bearing with my little sales pitch. For your amusement, my  
previous self-serving promotion from 2004 is included down below.

	-Tim

---
Timothy R. Butler | "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window- 
panes,
Editor, OfB.biz   | The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the  
window-panes
tbutler at ofb.biz   | Licked  its  tongue  into the  corners  of  the   
evening,
timothybutler.us  | Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains."
                                                                 --  
T.S. Eliot



On Feb 7, 2004, at 3:22 PM, Timothy R. Butler wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>    I hope you don't mind a little shameless promotion here.
>
>     Well, I think the time is drawing near for OfB & Co. to move to a
> dedicated server. Right now, I'm paying as much for shared hosting  
> as I
> would be for a dedicated server (thus making the time seem right).
>
>     Here's the thing: most dedicated servers have more resources than
> the ten or so sites I host need. So, I was thinking of maybe selling
> some of the space exclusively to anyone on OfB lists that might want  
> it.
> I'm not sure when this will happen, but it might be within a week or
> two.
>
>    I'm thinking something like this:
>
> 100 megs of space
> 1 to 5 gigs of transfers (depends on what I get "upstream")
> Unlimited pops, forwarders, etc.
> MySQL db (maybe 1 or 2)
> control panel (hopefully CPanel or Plesk, maybe webmin)
> Maybe 1 or 2 mailing lists (not sure yet if that would be included)?
> SSH shell
> -etc-
>
> It will be running RH, Fedora or Debian, depending on where it ends up
> coming from. The network will hopefully be multihomed. The absolute  
> most
> sites I envision on the machine would be 100, most likely 40 or less
> (most servers have 200 or more these days).
>
> For between $30 and $36 a year ($2.50-$3.00/month).
>
> The real catch would be that it wouldn't really be supported. I have a
> vested interest in keeping it up (OfB and my web design clients  
> would be
> on it), but unfortunately I can't provide 24x7 support. I would help  
> if
> something went wrong with the server, but I'd rather promise no  
> support
> and provide something than promise support and be unable to. If
> something happened like your site was completely down, then I'd get it
> working. Hopefully that makes sense.
>
> If I offered such a deal, would there be any takers here? If I get a
> several takers, perhaps I'll upgrade to a better server for the sites
> (this is meant to be a break-even proposition).
>
>  Thanks,
>           Tim
>
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Timothy R. Butler       Universal Networks      www.uninet.info
> ==================== <tbutler at uninet.info> ====================
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