All the time I hear folks who have ideas for projects but then they say "yeah, but I don't have a server to put it on" or "I don't have a domain name for it" or "is this going to be the official site for X" or "I'd have to get a perl.org domain for it". And then that's where the idea dies for simple lack of hosting.
I am now taking away that excuse. Dreamhost has a promotion system where any member can provide a deep discount for friends to sign up. I have made such a promo. You can have a hosted account with then for $69.40 a year if you click this link and use the promo code "1001PERLSBLOOM". Pay with a credit card and you have three months to decide you want a refund. It also comes with two free domains and a unique IP address.
$69 for the first year, three months to decide if it's a good idea, two domain registrations, mail, wikis, a subversion repository, unique IP and a shell account. Their support is fantastic. Just look at all this crap you get! It's all the tools you need to put together your neat Perl idea for the cost of going out to eat.
"But... but... but..." yes, yes, yes it's not the absolute perfect system. Suck it up. This is the best you'll find at this price. If you wait around until you build your own you'll never do it. And you can always move it later. The important thing is "I don't have a server" is no longer an excuse for not doing your awesome Perl idea.
Go forth and let one thousand Perl web sites bloom!
(The one thing that is missing is mod_perl, they use FastCGI which is good enough for most things. But if you know of an equivalent service with mod_perl please post it).
(For those conspiracy theorists out there, no I'm not making money off of this)
I have a reasonably specced server with Burton Hosting that's available for perl related projects. I'll generally be able to set up whatever mod_perl related madness people want.
If anyone needs hosting, a shell account, MySQL or Pg, mod_perl, perl friendly sysadmin give me a shout. I run DNS and mail and stuff too.
Free of charge for good causes.
Straight from the horse's mouth
pne on 2008-01-31T19:11:04
http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2007/12/04/promo-codes-max-discount-dropping-to-5 0/Re:Straight from the horse's mouth
schwern on 2008-01-31T19:36:25
I did miss that. Their promo system still lists my codes at a $97 discount for the year. I wonder if it will still work... nope, just $50. Ok, I'll blow the extra $47 on features and put up a new code.
Re:TPF Nano-grants?
schwern on 2008-01-31T19:43:04
I think folks can cough up $50 to play around with a server. Keep the grant money for something more serious and unique like paying Nick Clark to continue his mad optimization sweeps through Perl 5.Re:TPF Nano-grants?
brian_d_foy on 2008-01-31T20:36:45
If they can cough up the $50, they don't need you to help them do it:)
TPF has a lot of money. They are not in a position where they have to choose:) Re:TPF Nano-grants?
petdance on 2008-02-01T05:15:00
My only concern with the TPF nano-grant idea is that it could add bureaucracy and delay and that gets in the way of the JFDI.To me an ideal solution would be that TPF says "We're got 10 open slots for nanogrants, first 10 people to put up something interesting gets the $50 from us." (Modulo logistics, of course) Key here is "Go do it, we'll pay you for it later."
Re:TPF Nano-grants?
brian_d_foy on 2008-02-01T06:53:10
The only one who can add bureaucracy is TPF. It doesn't have to be like that, though.
Not that I really care. I think if anyone had the motivation and ability to do something, and more importantly to maintain it, they don't need someone else to set up a web hosting account for them.
If you're willing to forego mod_perl and your own IP address, I've found http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ to be dirt cheap and more than worth every penny. Yes, you don't get as much as you might get elsewhere. But you don't pay near as much, either. Likely you can try it out for three months for less than fifty cents, unless you make something wildly successful, in which case I'll bet you can more than cover your costs with a paypal donation link.
Personally I wouldn't pay more or go elsewhere unless I had an application which required mod_perl or a dedicated IP address.
Re:NearlyFreeSpeech
drhyde on 2008-02-01T16:22:27
It's my experience that Paypal donation buttons don't work. I've had one on a mirror of software I run for an old 8 bit machine for *years* and have got a grand total of 25p. My Wikipedia proxy which strips all the crap from the pages to make them load faster has had no donations at all, despite being used fairly heavily.
Re:NearlyFreeSpeech.NET
jdavidb on 2008-01-31T22:01:17
Oh good; I'm not the only one who mentioned NFS.
:) For the record, I've installed almost everything you describe on NFS: a wiki, a subversion repository, domain names, etc. I don't think I ever installed a blog, but I've done webforums. I view no control panel as an advantage.
:) NFS expects you to do most administration through ssh, which means they are people who think like me. :) I think MySQL is actually no extra cost for only one instance, but I could be wrong, as I know that the pricing changed slightly on this during the last year. It's just that the price change has been so insignificant it hasn't been worth my time to look into it, yet.
:) Re:NearlyFreeSpeech.NET
pne on 2008-01-31T22:57:50
Yes, MySQL used to be free but is now $0.01 for the first process and $0.02 for every additional process. Plus $0.01 if you want InnoDB IIRC.
Re:Building a newer Perl ?
schwern on 2008-02-01T05:08:17
Yes, they still run 5.8.4. I believe it's Debian stable. I've asked them to upgrade and they said they'd do it if they got more folks to ask for it. So please ask for it.
I found that Perl will not compile in Dreamhost's environment due to a bug in Cwd. I've fixed that bug and you have to patch the perl source tree with it.
If this is sounding scary I can roll a tarball.
