Free SMF + TP hosting?

[khoking]

Since I have a domain (www.smfonline.net) and some free space on my server, what is your opinion if I offer FREE SMF + TP hosting on my server?

I was thinking of Free 100MB space and 1GB bandwidth/month, no catch and FREE and can be hosting at www.smfonline.net/YOURNAME

For those who needs higher space and bandwidth later, I am thinking that maybe I can charge some money on that. What price do you think is reasonable?

What is the RISK of offering FREE SMF + TP hosting? Hope to hear from experienced members here.

Any opinion? 

[domineaux]

Forums take alot of memory space and bandwidth, especially mature well used forums with several hundred members.

Then if you allow downloads, and attachments inside postings you really bump up the usage.

It's nice you're thinking about the community.  If you have a plan to make such an offer become a promotion for a business then it might be a start.

Otherwise, I'd leave well enough alone.

:up:

[Jpg]

Well if you owned the server and have like...over 100 gb on your server and you have unlimited bandwidth...then I say why not...

[G6Cad]

The offer is somewhat nice

But what about the practical things ? How would the ones that using your server connect to the diffrent things they need ?
Cpanel accounts ? PHPMyadmin, Sql access ? FTP ? Mailaccounts ?

There is a lot of things to think of when you are charing your server.

[khoking]

I owned a dedicated server with 160GB of HDD, 1500GB of bandwidth, 1GB of ram. Currently using around 20% of what I have.

CPU busy time is 0.44 and memory is 25% busy (I will upgrade to 2GB of memory in future when needed).

I was thinking of offering a purely SMF + TP forum, no cpanel access, as I do not want people to install any other things which might cause security risk to my server. No email as well as I hope they can use those FREE one out there (gmail, yahoo...etc.) which I believe is better and easier.

I have a question, will installing of MODS cause security risk to the server? Eg. insecure mods? Personally I feel SMF + TP can do also ALL of what a forum needs, so there should not be any other mods being installed. I want to show people how good or complete SMF + TP can be, without the needs of installing other mods and making upgrade of SMF and TP in future much easier without having to worry about mods (changes to the files).

[Jpg]

Oh you mean of making a site like smfforfree.com but with TP?

And ummm... I doubt anyone can mess up your server with a mod because then you'll need access to the mod if it's a script...but the whole thing is that all the folders are chmodded so you can't view them or directly access them.

[Pale Rider]

One thing you will probably want to consider if you decide to go this route is to offer the sites with "pre installed" setups of TP and SMF. 

If you do it that way no one will be able to gain access via FTP or CP and everything will stay as secure as you want it to be. You could set individual sites up under their own sub-domains to personalize them and make the users happy.

I think that if you do decide to do this, you will eventually find yourself regretting the decision to do so. People can really be finicky when it comes to their web sites, and just as sure as I am typing this, they are eventually going to bombard you with requests to install mods and such on their sites. And also, if they use the admin section of SMF to install a package or an upgrade, and end up breaking something, guess who is going to get the call to fix it?

Free is great, but you would be surprised at the folks that would really kick your arse around if something got stuffed, even though they aren't paying one red cent for it in the first place. The people that are always looking for the free stuff are the worst when it comes to moaning and groaning with dissatisfaction

Just my .02 worth .... PR

[Jpg]

Yeah but that's why you put ads on their sites so that you can get some money off them...don't be stupid.
It'll make it more worth you're time.

BTW, I suggest make one of those sites where you need to post 25 times in order to get an account.