Attached Link: Hosting Poll

I'm testing the water for hosting Poser folk's sites. I'm looking at some wholesalers and if there is enough interest I'll do some more research to setup a hosting company that will address the needs of Poser artists and their website needs. Please cast your vote in the pose at my site. Note: you'll need to redister (painless) to vote.

When you say 5GB bandwidth, do you mean per day or per month? Just wondering. Thanks! Aaron

Heya Nerd, this is a great idea. On my way to sign up and vote now!

Is there any way for you yourself to stop the traffic if the bandwidth goes ballistic? I've got some hair colors to put up and they always get a lot of play. Emily

It must be 5 GB per month. Nobody could afford to host dozens of free sites that did 5 GB per day each. The servers are expensive to buy and maintain, but the charges for the lines to the servers are huge.

^^ That's what I'm figuring. But, I thought it would be worth asking. Aaron

Attached Link: http://www.chilihost.com/

$4.00 per gig is alot. My hosting company is $1.50 per gig. And offers MAJOR space and bandwidth really cheap. And they offer hosting for adult sites, so they wouldn't be offended by any Poser stuff. I've been with them for a few months and I'm very pleased. It would have to be cheaper than $1.50 per gig. In fact, there are alot of "adult" hosting companies now that offer bandwidth as low as $.99 per gig. I even saw one that was $.50 per gig. (But they didn't have PHP or CGI, which I wanted.) I'm on their $25 per month plan at Chili Host (12 GB of transfer and 1.3 GB (yes GIGS) of disk space.) Maybe you could look into cheaper bandwidth.

TheDaedalus, Yes 5 GB/MO. MissTara, I didn't read Chili's TOS, but most places that offer cheap bandwidth have restrictions on how you use it. I'll pick on Under-Host because they dumped me via this fine print... "Sites with banners, graphics or cgi scripts running from their domain used on other domains. Sites with picture galleries (This is any site where 50% of the files transferred is graphics) Sites offering download files or archives. (This is any site where 50% or more of there monthly traffic is from file downloads). Sites using more than 30% of system resources for longer than 60 seconds. Sites running multimedia files (QuickTime, Real Audio, Real Video, MP3)." If you do any of this they charge you $20/GB/MO. Lets see, Poser art site, lots of big pictures, Off Site links for people to download you stuff, And maybe a couple of AVI or MOV animations. Gee a typical Poser site only breaks this fine print 3 ways. My site burns 40-50 GB/MO (Most of that is to provide free stuff to this site. Giving stuff away is getting awful expensive.) The numbers are still tennative. They depend on how much interest there is and how much I can get the wholesaler to come down on prices. I know last month several high profile sites got their proverbial plug pulled by their hosts. I hope to find a way to help Poser artists avoid this problem. The prices will not be the cheapest on the net, but than again the service will not be the cheapest either. I plan to add scripts and services to the accounts that Poser folks will find useful, like an automated gallery and message board. I've found bandwidth as cheap as $0.40/GB/MO but the list of restrictins make it virtually useless. I believe sites that do this are using a bait-n-switch and should be slapped up side the head. They let you get moved in, everything set up and then inform you that YOUR site will be paying not the standard $19.95 a month, but $3000 a month. because you have to be placed on a special server. Sorry I'm ranting. I've had this happen after telling the sales department exactly what my site is and needs. Then a week later I get the nasty note from the abuse department.

Sorry missed your Emily, The servers I'm looking at come with an Ensim control pannel. They send out a warning if the site gets close to its bandwidth allowance. The account could be suspended until the end of the month. That would be left up to the account holder.

Ouch, nerd, sorry to hear about your hosting troubles. Believe me, I've had my nightmares with hosting companies. One tried to tell me I was using 50 GB per month when the server logs that THEY provided for me said I was using 24. NOT good at $4.00 per GB. The guy that hosts me now I talk to personally sometimes. He's a really nice guy. He's been on ICQ just about any time I've needed to talk to him and he's never taken more than a few hours to get back to me about problems through e-mail. His terms of service basically says no illegal stuff and no spamming or hacking. :) I've hosted picture galleries, zip files, and even movies etc. with no problems. I also have several aquaintences on this hosting and they're all very pleased. Some even do several hundred GB per month, I think. I don't know who he is buying his bandwidth from, I just know he said it's a very big and very reliable company. Must be really cheap for him to charge so little. But then again, I don't think he makes alot of profit off of his hosting company. I think he started it as a way to pay for his own hosting. You might look into it, where he is buying from.

Part of my problem is that I live in the styx, technalogically speaking. Bakersfield, CA. We have only 2 "real" broadband companies. I'd be surprised if the there was as much as a whole OC3 runing the entire town. If I do this I'm stuck co-locating. It may be that somebody who lives a block from a main internet trunk should try this. I'm trying to come up with a solution because some of my Poser friends have been bit by the hosting bug and I'm sick of these sites that sucker people with "Unlimited Everthing" for $1.25 a year and then pull the bait-n-switch to trick them into a more expensive plan.

Actually, I think my host leases his servers and bandwidth from elsewhere. He's probably never even seen the servers. So it shouldn't matter where you live if you can find a good server somewhere. If you want to run your own servers you're going to be up late alot rebooting and such :)

My web site host is a wholesaler who gets his resources elsewhere. He makes the greatest profit from people who "just want to put up a home page," and probably never do more than that. They get very few visitors, and he makes a profit. It doesn't matter where you live. Your web site servers can be anywhere. I live in Maine, my web site host is in North Carolina. I'm not sure if the actual servers are in North Carolina. I do know his computers that do the hosting are in some building that has two "types of trunks," for redundant access? Something like that. The main point is that my residence in Maine has nothing to do with where my web site servers are located. I am fortunate to have cable modem access for my own convenience. Last I checked, DSL was still not an option, "here in the sticks."

I know how you feel, Ron. I'm "in the sticks" too. Bellsouth has been promising us DSL "within 6 months" for about 2.5 years now. The sad thing is, it's in my CITY... just not MY part of it! Grr :)

Hah, I know that feeling. I love Dominoe's Pizza. We're 1/2 mile over their "border," and they refuse to deliver. So I got used to Pizza Hut delivery.