hey i was wondering if anyone here runs there own web hosting, i looking into doing it so when i make pages for people i can put them on my server and charge them for that. I was just wondering what you think i should do and what setup you are using, software, hardware etc... thanks

Hi.

I run a hosting company.

Basically we have the easiest and best setup.

Users request hosting, we check their details, create them an account in WHM (Web Hosting Manager) and that's it.

They then get a login to cpanel/FTP from whereon they can set up their site how they want to.


Anything specific you wish to know?

NYChaos,

If you are willing to start a hosting business, you may choose either a reseller plan or leasing a dedicated server. If you are new and don't have many potential customers starting with a reseller plan is less risky.

If you are looking forward to leasing a dedicated server, you must decide which operating system to run, which control panel to install and which mail server you will going to use. Other software you may want to consider is firewall, antivirus, antispyware, backup etc.

If you are willing to host asp / asp.net based sites make sure you run Windows 2003 operating system.

If you will be using hosting as an add-on service and not as your main service, definitly go with a reseller account with a larger company. Running your own server is just not worth it unless hosting is your main source of income.

I agree with Anacrusis on that one! There's plenty of reseller accounts that let you act as an independent hosting company and which take the headaches out of running dedicated servers.

If you want to go the full hog and you intend to host lots of people a good Web Host Management Software like WHM Autopilot, LPanel etc will keep your clients accounts running smoothly and invoicing just right.

Also don't forget about supporting your clients once you have them. You really need to know your way around the system they will be using to control their host accounts on your reseller space.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

Andrew
www.hostyorkshire.com

Originally Posted by Starcraftmazter

Hi.

I run a hosting company.

Basically we have the easiest and best setup.

Users request hosting, we check their details, create them an account in WHM (Web Hosting Manager) and that's it.

They then get a login to cpanel/FTP from whereon they can set up their site how they want to.


Anything specific you wish to know?

I suggest you to go for Reseller plan first if you don't have good client database with you. When you will be capable of good client database then move to dedicated server or managed server if you are not good in technical issue.

I would advise you start off with a reseller plan as already mentioned, choose a supplier that has a dedicated server service so that when you are ready you can upgrade.

I dont know why , but I'm thinking most of the user here are resellers

Originally Posted by huligancho

I dont know why , but I'm thinking most of the user here are resellers

Like who?

I run a reseller account and find the support and service I receive from my host is excellent. Support desk responses are nearly always responded to within minutes. This helps me to support account holders very quickly. The reseller is unbranded.

Originally Posted by huligancho

I dont know why , but I'm thinking most of the user here are resellers

If you have your own dedicated server(s) you are still a reseller, only if you operate your own data center, than you can say you are not a reseller.


It is not mandatory to start with a reseller account, we started directly with a dedicated server, now it depends what plans do you have for your future web hosting company. But i do agree, if you have no experience in webhosting industry i advise you should start with a reseller account.

10x Raulica

BUT

I cant start as resseler ... WHY ... cause I cant beat no one... if I have my own datacenter and so can I get a BIG place on the market in one of your nabor countries

<<<<<<
I run a reseller account and find the support and service I receive from my host is excellent. Support desk responses are nearly always responded to within minutes. This helps me to support account holders very quickly. The reseller is unbranded.
<<<<<<
Hi lasor ... I am impressed with the "..... Support desk responses are nearly always responded to within minutes."
Are you able to let me have the name of the company? Please post or PM me.
Thanks.

The thing to wach out for with Reseller accounts or hosts period are overselling. This becomes even more critical when your Reseller Account is with a host that oversells these as well. Each Reseller has the ability to setup unlimited domains and in some cases are even allowed to oversell themselves. Trust me when 10, 20, or more Resellers start using their allocated resources, giving away databases like they grow on trees and adding CPU/RAM intensive sites to the server you are going to end up with a dead slow server and/or mega support/security issues. Too many webmasters add these PhP/PhP-Nuke scripts to their sites and never update them or even think to check if an update or vulnerability exists with them.

I have both a Reseller Account and a dedicated server with my host. Both are fully managed and proactively monitored. I use my Reseller account for my less productive sites while they grow. My dedicated server handles any sites doing more than 300GB/month. Now I said all this to say that my host will not put more than 3 resellers on any server. In fact my dedicated server could also be considered a Reseller account wherein I am the only resseller on it.

Plus the support I get is incredible. Then again I probably pay more than most would consider but when I report a problem and they tell me they are already working on it or have already fixed it by the time I could write another email/IM to let them know it's fixed I fell like I my money is well spent!

Reseller accounts are easy to use and doesn't need server maintenance. Therefore is it best to build a customer base on a reseller account before moving to a dedicated or colocated server.

ok thanks for all of your input,

what should i take in college to learn all i need to know about running web hosting servers, dedicated serves, etc...

and i was wondering what it would cost to start off a hosting company...

Originally Posted by Raulicã

If you have your own dedicated server(s) you are still a reseller, only if you operate your own data center, than you can say you are not a reseller.

I dont think this is accurate..... owning your datacenter is not the only form of true hosting. You could have unmanaged dedicated servers picked up from Server Farms and as long as YOU independantly manage the software / hosting end, YOU are a webhosting company. There are give or take 50 something popular datacenters in the US (and by popular I mean well known by the hosting communities), are you trying to say the thousands of hosting companies spawned off their hardware services are "resellers" ?

In my opinion, a Reseller is one who signs up with another webhosting company only to resell their Hosting servers, software, and service + support as his own, to his clients.

I rent unmanaged servers from Superbservers.net and manage them on my own, I don't consider myself as a reseller simply because the ONLY thing that Superb manages for me is the hardware and my pipe. I manage my own software, my own billing, my own trouble tickets and everything else that comes with the package.

my friend has its own server and store a few sites on it.
he thinks its not worth the effort. you have very cheap hosting today so why bother?

FIRST, make sure your ISP will allow it. Not all of them will.

Then, make sure of your connection speed.

And here are some good links to follow.

Hosting from home
DSL/Cable Webserver - Run your own webserver from home on DSL or Cable!
Dynamic DNS, Static DNS for Your Dynamic IP
easyDNS.com

As far as what server software, if you are a linux fan, Fedora or CentOS are the best for servers. If you go windows, use a windows server.

Then move to this thread:

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=10531

Then go to this one:

I asked the same questions, got royally reamed by most of the people here. The negativity is unreal. http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=10531

However, a few people did help. I am hosting my own and have been for some time. I have had two outages. One *kitty* generated and one when I moved from one ISP to another. And here was my apology to my forums for the kitty generated one:

I got up at 4:30AM to discover that I couldn't get on to my sites Turned around to check my equipment and found out the server was OFF!! I'd been attacked by KITTIES! The plug that goes into the wall had been pulled loose thanks to one of five!

Anyway, that's why I was down overnight...and I'm unsure how long it was for. I apologize on behalf of the kitty responsible. They all got a good LOL. The other one was announced IN advance.

I'm running THREE forums off my server and a business. As long as you have the *want to*, go for it and don't let the naysayers around here put you down.

We have 6 computers networked to our system. We just don't use them the same way. We don't find it necessary to download music and other entertainment so I guess that's where the difference is.

And we DID run a business DSL and found they used what is called *sticky* IP's not static IP's. That is what caused us to switch to a cable company and go with true static. We also doubled our download speed and tripled our upload in the process.

I found that hosting at home has given me a real working knowledge of hosting. If and when the time comes for me to go back to a hosted package (and I am sure it will someday) I will know far more about what to expect out of my hosting company. I NOW know I CAN get my own server back up and running by myself and I had NO working knowledge of linux back in June/July.

Running your own server off a DSL or cable connection at home is good fun and a good learning curve though, and you'll get away with it for low volume sites. I'll be interested to see if you're still hosting at home if/when your forum/s become more active.

I found that hosting at home has given me a real working knowledge of hosting. If and when the time comes for me to go back to a hosted package (and I am sure it will someday) I will know far more about what to expect out of my hosting company.

I realize that my sites ARE small and it's NOT for everyone but the naysayers around here IMPLY it's not for ANYONE! THAT is simply NOT true.

I use a MSI KT6V Socket A (yes, it's old but not too old) with 586 MB ram and 2 hard drives. One is a 40 gig and 1 an 80 gig SATA. I use CentOS 4 which effectively makes those 2 hard drives into one. I didn't have to use any tools to make CentOS read the SATA drive seperately, it did that within itself...linux is wonderful that way now.

We are also on a cable busniess package giving us five TRUE static IP's. Be VERY careful when looking into this. Apparently a vast majority of the DSL companies are going to what is called Sticky IP's which is just a form of Dynamic.

For more info on Sticky IP's do what I did, google it with quotes around it. It is amazing what material is out there. My previous DSL is one of the biggest offender. In their ads they quote saying STATIC IP's and yet have used ONLY sticky ip's since July 04. *I* call that *bait and switch* since I requested STATIC IP's. Btw, I now HAVE static thru my cable company.

I'm networked to my other computers so I am backed up there. I use Winscp and Putty to access my Linux machine from my Windows machine and I have Samba enabled. I can access the root files of my linux computer sitting right here on my Windows XP Pro computer. And if necessary, drag them over to my windows for safe keeping BUT to be perfectly honest, they are far safer on that linux computer than on my machine. That's why they are also backed up on my husband's computer as well. Called triple redundancy. I also have the sql files for my forums farmed out to a VERY good friend. IF I EVER have a problem, I have copies of my database outside of the house.


We went on vacation for 2 weeks back at Christmas. My daughter made sure the server stayed turned on but that was the ENTIRE limit of her knowledge. She knew NOTHING about how to do anthing else except turn it back on if it was off and ONLY because I MADE her watch me show her which buttons to push.

The two people watching my forum were located in England, I am in Michigan. One has root access to my server but if it goes dead, HE can't get in.

I did a few things before I left.

1) I made complete backups of all my forums and put them on the server for him to download to his server.
2) I gave complete access to one of my admins to all my sites as well, she didn't have root access to the server, just access to the sites.
3) I copied all the files to my laptop as a backup as well even tho I would be on dialup.

Then I left town and prayed, LOL.

Two weeks later got home and had no trouble while gone.

I've had MORE trouble in the last month WHILE home with my modem losing config files than I did with us being out of town.

Having a server at home does not mean you have to limit yourself. You just have to have great backups.
I have static IP's from Comcast.

You can NOT get static IP's from SBC unless you are paying for a T1 line. The Pro-S plan is a *Sticky IP* not STATIC.I had the second level tech's at SBC confurm that with the despute resolution specialist at SBC when I cancelled my contract due to that issue.

http://www.broadbandbanter.com/q-t_7...ic-addres.html
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/7740
http://isp-lists.isp-planet.com/isp-...109/index.html
http://209.123.109.175/forum/remark,10920351~mode=flat
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...8185~mode=flat
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/...html#wp1062570
http://www.mailarchive.ca/lists/comp...5-04/0099.html

The biggest problem is the RDNS and mailserver issue. You can't run either on a sticky IP and I needed both for my business. So I cancelled my contract after verifying I could get a true static IP with Comcast and then desputed the cancellation charges and won.

According to the web site, the Pro-S plan states 5 STATIC IP's and I called them on it.

1) Will 3.0 mbps upload be enough to successfully host a forum from a home server?

Who is your provider? Make sure it is a TRUE static IP and not a sticky IP. If it's SBC, run the OTHER way as fast as you can unless you do not plan on running your own mail server. They do not run a true static IP.

Liz

Originally Posted by NYChaoS

hey i was wondering if anyone here runs there own web hosting, i looking into doing it so when i make pages for people i can put them on my server and charge them for that. I was just wondering what you think i should do and what setup you are using, software, hardware etc... thanks

Hello -
I've worked for a number of Resellers, and was Managing Director for a local hosting company and would advise you this:

Pick a standard Reseller plan (like a cPanel WHM set-up) where you simply lease space on a shared server and resell hosting plans if: you want a low monthly expense... AND you are willing to do the tech. support yourself.

Look for a Reseller plan with Tech. Support if you'd rather concentrate on web design, and mark-up plans over the "wholesale" cost (covers tech. support), and enjoy income that way.

Pick a dedicated server plan when you can spend at least $100 a month, will provide all the tech. support, and want maximum flexibility (you can choose the Web Hosting Management and other software you place on the server). This one usually takes a lot more development and set-up time.

Best to luck and success -
Scott