Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Sign In Register

Quick Links


Categories

In this Discussion

› › Create a free web hosting service?
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

Create a free web hosting service?

IvanIvan Member
edited March 2013 in General

Hey there, people of LEB! So I'm a total noob here, and of course I'm not planning to really start a free web hosting company and become a provider, since I'm way too young and inexperienced for this sorta thing, but I want to learn how to actually build a free web hosting service, and still not spend a dime.
Basically I don't have any money right now to purchase cPanel/WHMCS, and I just want to build one and let, say 2-5 people test them out on my VPS. Is it a waste of time if I do so? I just want to do it for the experience and to learn.

So basically full fledged free web hosting service. I know there are free client management tools out there but they require paid control panels. Or is it impossible, because how would one user get their own IP? Man, I suck.
Can LET teach me more on this?

Comments

  • MunMun Member

    Let me just sum up some of the problems with free webhosting.

    1. Porn
    2. Spam sites
    3. Abuse of resources.
    4. Hate sites
    5. Viruses.
    6. DOS/DDOS attacks

    The main problem is when someone has something for free they really don't care about it. They just abuse and burn it, and move on. There is a thing about hosting for free and maybe hosting for your friends. Build yourself a webserver and put up a word press blog. Invite your friends to use you as a hosting service, but don't give it free to the public. It will end up eating you and making your vps receive a suspension or termination. Or find someone in your local area that needs a website, like a church or Museum and work with them. It is a much better and more attainable goal, and you will learn a ton more doing it that way.

  • PebsiePebsie Member

    I set up a small service a few days ago that I had running for a day.
    I used TheHostingTool and zPanel however I have discovered now BoxBilling which will probably do it better.
    Good luck! :)

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @Pebsie said: I set up a small service a few days ago that I had running for a day.

    It only lasted 1 day?

  • PebsiePebsie Member

    @raindog308 said: It only lasted 1 day?

    Much like the OP I did it for nothing more than experience and learning. I had a friend test it out to see if it could work. I'm pretty interested in starting a server hosting business at some point and all the knowledge that I can get before I actually do it will be useful as heck.

  • marcmmarcm Member

    This is such a cliché that people who like to badmouth LET usually use one of these threads as an example.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    Right now my side project uses MyBB with a free plugin for client management with cPanel for hosting management, but I'm really looking into switching from cPanel to Webmin just for more options. The cPanel license doesn't cost me anything but I am severely limited in the scalability, mobility, redundancy, and features of the service with a paid panel like cPanel.

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]

    @KuJoe said: The cPanel license doesn't cost me anything but I am severely limited in the scalability, mobility, redundancy, and features of the service with a paid panel like cPanel.

    And Webmin offers more options in regards to all of that than cPanel? I've not played around with Webmin all that much.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep
    edited March 2013

    @MannDude said: And Webmin offers more options in regards to all of that than cPanel?

    I can setup multiple VPSs in different data centers without having to pay per license. I have access to servers in 7 data centers around the US and it would be nice to offer free web hosting in all of them. :)

  • ATHKATHK Member

    I've got one running for indie game developers using kloxo ad setting them up manually.

  • IvanIvan Member
    edited March 2013

    @KuJoe said: Right now my side project uses MyBB with a free plugin for client management with cPanel for hosting management, but I'm really looking into switching from cPanel to Webmin just for more options. The cPanel license doesn't cost me anything but I am severely limited in the scalability, mobility, redundancy, and features of the service with a paid panel like cPanel.

    Hmm, what MyBB plugin is that you speak of?

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    @teohkay This one: http://jmd.cc/bb/showthread.php?tid=221

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    I think the main client management tool for free hosting is still TheHostingTool. It's not as slick as WHMCS by any means but I've been working with it and it seems to do the job.

    BoxBilling is also an option. The free version is pretty nice but it does not support subdomain registration (i.e., you own example.com and let clients setup whatever subdomain.example.com they want). Kind of a crippling feature for free hosting. No post to host or other support, though it wouldn't be too hard to hook in.

  • IvanIvan Member
    edited March 2013

    @raindog308 said: I think the main client management tool for free hosting is still TheHostingTool. It's not as slick as WHMCS by any means but I've been working with it and it seems to do the job.

    BoxBilling is also an option. The free version is pretty nice but it does not support subdomain registration (i.e., you own example.com and let clients setup whatever subdomain.example.com they want). Kind of a crippling feature for free hosting. No post to host or other support, though it wouldn't be too hard to hook in.

    I agree, TheHostingTool is good, it lots of good features for a free client management tool. I'm looking to experiment with it soon.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    +1 for THT.

    Grins

  • IvanIvan Member
    edited April 2013

    @KuJoe said: +1 for THT.

    Grins

    hey KuJoe, now I have a question here, after setting up Kloxo on CentOS 5, I get a hang on how things work a little with Kloxo, but I haven't set it up with THT 1.3.5 reworked yet though. Now every IP can be assigned a domain, the thing is, for users to actually register and get a working hosting account, they need to be given a directory, and an IP has to be set to that directory, right? How would I actually get IPs for each and every registrant? Or am I totally wrong here? I think I am.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @raindog308 said: I think the main client management tool for free hosting is still TheHostingTool. It's not as slick as WHMCS by any means but I've been working with it and it seems to do the job.

    I take it back. After wrestling seriously with it for several days, I've grown irritated enough with its bugs and bad coding practices that I'm not sure I can stomach using it further.

    My goals were pretty simple - add support for MyBB's newpoints, separate out some features by package, etc. But I found

    • there's no plugin system whatsoever, so every new version of the product requires a diff/compare
    • the code uses hardcoded vars in places that have no significance - e.g., if/else trees that return 1, 2, 3, or 4 depending on what happens. And then you get to go hunt down what 1, 2, 3, or 4 mean.
    • adding a new type of hosting means writing the .php, but also modifying the DB as there is a table of types there as well.
    • The templating is nice though dumping the CSS into every page ( followed by all the definitions) seems suboptimal compared to just keeping it in a .css.
    • my original idea was just to write a new hosting type, but then I had to write different templates, modify the database, etc. and pretty soon you end up with your own fork.

    Grrrr. I admit I was hoping to pop in a couple .phps to add the features I want without getting deep and dirty with THT code, but I think that's what you'd have to do to make any kind of significant modification. I do like the fancy ajaxify'd code but would prefer something that was more easy to extend rather than something fancy.

    Well unfortunately I think I'm down to writing something myself.

    • for free hosting, I don't want to pay $15/month for WHMCS, ClientExec, HostBill, etc.
    • BoxBilling is attractive but they don't support subdomain registration. Really frustrating because they did a while back, and the forums are full of people asking for this feature. Unfortunately the code is all ioncube'd so there's no way to add this feature. Deal killer alas.
    • @KuJoe has a MyBB plugin, but warns it's alpha code. Played with it a little but it doesn't have everything I want. No knock on @KuJoe - I'm sure he wrote it for what he was doing and it meets his needs.

    Sigh. Really didn't want to spend time writing a client management system.

    Time to make some coffee.

  • jkr1711jkr1711 Member

    @raindog308 Might not be ideal but I'm in the same situation as you. I decided to look back at my first shared hosting company and noticed they do reseller accounts with free ClientExec licenses which comes to a total of $6.80 per month which is a lot more reasonable.

    http://www.tech-hosts.co.uk/hosting/reseller/ I'm sure there are plenty others out there that do similar but I'm pleased with them

Sign In or Register to comment.