[FlameUK]

Hi,

I'm new to the Free Hosting business, but not new to actuall hosting in itself. I'm usually either running or helping to run paid hosting services. I've worked as support in a server hosting business and are currently setting up a new paid hosting venture. Whilst doing this to get known a little bit I have decided to offer Free Hosting but I have a few questions.

1) Illegal Files.
Ok, So we all know kids(and sometimes adults) like to upload MP3's to share with their friends. We all also know this is illegal so how would I go about banning these files? Is it a case of manually searching for the files in SSH using Root? (Breach Of Privacy anyone?) or using a Crontab to check for set extensions every day? Or is there another way?

2) Ad's.
I've read a few posts about forcing ad's. Personally I don't see how people can run a free hosting company without forcing somekind of money making add on people? So how could it be done without imposing add's on my paid accounts as well? (The paid accounts will be on the same server as the free accounts but we will be limiting the intake of free accounts) Is there a way for this to work?

3) Manual or Automatic?
Personally I would run my paid hosting company with a manual setup system so I can verify payment ect before the account is created. With free hosting is this feasable?

4) Support.
I would encourage my staff to give the same support to my free accounts as they do to any other customer. Is this common or do people tend not to give support to free accounts?

I think that is all for the moment.

Thanks!

[DKM Hosting]

1) What panel will you be using? With XPanel you can ban files with their system. If you have CPanel and would like your users to have it, than IPanel can do the same thing. Other than that I can't help ya much with this.

2) Again, what panel will you be using? If you have CPanel, I suggest you get IPanel. You can force ads with that and offer CPanel. If you don't want to offer CPanel, I suggest XPanel. Again, you can force ads without needing CPanel.

3) ??. I don't understand the question. Generally, you don't use the panel for both free and paid hosting.


4) Everyone thinks this first. Support should be equal. But not only do the free hosting questions come more in quanity, they come in lower quality too. Free hostees never mention their account name, what EXACTLY the problem is, and they never read the FAQ first either. I'm not saying that all free hostees are like this, this is just in general.


Best regards,
275mb.com/DKMHosting.com

[FlameUK]

Hi,

What I meant for number 3, is how are accounts usually set up? Is it going to be feasable to set up all accounts manually or have some kind of automatic signup system.

Thanks,

[DKM Hosting]

Originally Posted by FlameUK

Hi,

What I meant for number 3, is how are accounts usually set up? Is it going to be feasable to set up all accounts manually or have some kind of automatic signup system.

Thanks,

Helllo,
Do you plan on getting IPanel or Xpanel? If so, yes. You can manually approve all accounts.


Best regards,
275mb/DKMHosting.com

[S3RiOUS]

hello

i would advise a script like xpanel, cpanel was designed and is designed for paid hosting, offering it with free hosting is not a good idea

1. its too powerful
2. it was designed for around max 100 accounts per server, therefore it can become bogged down

i myself use xpanel, although there is probably other similar scripts, i have a host with 10k accounts and am setting up a second with 30k accounts (with php and mysql) in a multiple dual core dual xeon cluster , i find it works very well.

one of the majour features is the file checking perl script which checks both files uploaded via ftp and the filemanager. This is EXTREMLY useful for getting rid of phishing sites, for example you could remove all of the phrases "bank of america" etc.. and as soon as you found a phising site that got around it, you could just add a check to the list.