Considerations When Accepting Bandwidth Donations? 24
dnotj asks: "I'm involved in a project that is growing fast and is going to soon outgrow it's current hosting location. I've had a couple of offers for donating bandwidth (and servers in one case). Basically free colocation or dedicated servers. Since this isn't a revenue generating project, it's going to be necessary to migrate this project and it's related website to a location with adequate bandwidth. What kinds of questions should I be asking these generous organizations that make these offers? I just want to make sure I cover all my bases before jumping on one of these offers."
Did you say FREE? (Score:4, Funny)
Why jump on one offer? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why jump on one offer? (Score:2)
The basic legalities... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are providing the hosting or bandwidth, be sure to read the small print! Make sure that you aren't signing away any rights that you might care about. I'm not just talking about copyrights and trademarks, I mean things like the right to publish your work elsewhere, change hosting services or servers at any time, how and when access is provided to the server, if and when backups are done (started/completed), what you can expect in case of an unacceptably long downtime, etc.
Strings? (Score:2, Insightful)
For instance, having to run advertisements and other such stuff.
load balancing (Score:5, Interesting)
Where the main domain resides is an account that is in your control and redirects the request to one of the other servers.
This way if one goes down you can simply remove it from the list of mirror servers. It also maintains you in control of the setup instead of giving one person 100% control of the site by putting it on their server.
Re:load balancing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:load balancing (Score:2, Interesting)
Free is sometimes expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
How Much (Score:3, Informative)
also look at stability, is this a service that is going to be going up and down, or might just disappear suddenly.
As others have said, you should also be sure that you are not prevented from posting your content on any other sites.
If you are worried about ads, you should also look into that
Will they own your site? (Score:2, Interesting)
Linux Gazette forgot to ask those questions ansd it did not work out to well for them [slashdot.org]
Just make sure... (Score:1)
Oh, wait, you aren't talking about slashdot? Nevermind then...
-Adam
The same as paying for it. (Score:5, Informative)
o Keep you own backups of your site out of the hands of the hoster.
o Make sure that any contracts you sign keep your stuff yours.
o Keep your domain names under your control.
o Have a contingency plan in case things don't work out.
If you were paying for service, you would probably be asking for SLA and reviewing technical details about the hosting plant. With free service, it is a bit harder to ask for too much. Plus, how much of a rebate do you want against zero.
Once you are up and running, be sure to give the hoster appropriate thanks and credit. A link on your home page is probably the least you should do. Also, don't do things that cost the hoster money and/or aggrevation. Be self-sufficient with your servers and applications. Use the bandwidth that you are getting sparingly. Don't overdue the photos and graphics. Just because you are getting something for free doesn't mean you should use as much as possible.
Also, try not to attract riff-raff with your project. You are getting stuff for free. Returning the favor with a DDOS attack is probably not the best idea.
Look out for number one! (Score:3, Insightful)
Realistically, make sure you have rights to access your data if they ever go under or quit hosting your project. Waking up to 404's and no backups is not much fun. See if they'll give you at least one month notice if they ever decide to quit. Then you'll have a much better time of migrating somewhere else. Other than that, it's a gift, don't expect to be able to make too many demands. Make your requests for "the good of the project" which should be your primary concern here anyway.
Keep the domain name YOURSELF. (Score:5, Informative)
By taking these precautions, should that entity ever start misbehaving, you'll be able to move your content to another server without too much disruption.
Exchange (Score:3, Insightful)
Then again hopefully most hosts can be trusted
Rus
Re:The IRS (Score:1)
My Question (Score:2, Funny)
Stuff to think about (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're getting hosting, make sure you get a full-blown service. A certain British cable company {clue: not Telewest} promised me 10MB, five IP addresses and my own cgi-bin when I signed up for their broadband service. Turned out they meant five e-m