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Create a free web hosting service?
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
Let me just sum up some of the problems with free webhosting.
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.
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!
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.
This is such a cliché that people who like to badmouth LET usually use one of these threads as an example.
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.
And Webmin offers more options in regards to all of that than cPanel? I've not played around with Webmin all that much.
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.
I've got one running for indie game developers using kloxo ad setting them up manually.
Hmm, what MyBB plugin is that you speak of?
@teohkay This one: http://jmd.cc/bb/showthread.php?tid=221
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.
+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.
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
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.
Sigh. Really didn't want to spend time writing a client management system.
Time to make some coffee.
@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