Basic web hosting from TalkAboutComics.com. (See caveats before signing up.).
$4.95/month
- "Virtual Server" for one domain name*
- Up to 50 email addresses
- Apache 2.0.46
- PHP 4.3.2
- qmail server
- MySQL 3.23
- FrontPage Extensions
- mod_python 3.0.3
- Mailman mailing list manager 2.1
- Webalizer
- PhpMyAdmin
- cgi-bin and Perl interpreter
- 50 Gigs of Transfer/Month
- 5 Gigs of Storage Space
- Plesk 7.5 ™ control panel allowing you to easily manage the above features and more in a Windows XP-like environment, without knowledge of Linux server administration arcana. (Info about Plesk 7.5 here).
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*Note: it is your responsibility to register your own domain name and/or point it correctly to our server -- we'll provide email support for those having problems performing these tasks, but we can't and won't do these things for you.
TalkAboutComics has been the "community center" for online comics generally, and for the Modern Tales family in particular, for about four years now. This site has had various incarnations ( detailed here). For most of its lifespan, TAC has not been obliged to have any particular revenue stream of its own: its purpose has been to support and grow the other, more commercial, aspects of the Modern Tales website network. Recently, due to increased traffic, database load, and general stability concerns, we had to lease a standalone dedicated server for the site. In order to get the best possible deal on bandwidth, we purchased more service than we needed. The box we've leased came with all the tools and automated services necessary to resell web hosting to other people -- in fact, this is precisely the kind of infrastructure that most bargain-basement web hosting companies, themselves, lease. Basically, they get one of the boxes like we've got, which comes preconfigured with lots of software allowing them to easily provide hosting (and to easily configure separate control panels for hosting clients to use to manage their accounts -- add mailboxes, ftp services, check stats, etc). Don't be fooled by their marketing-speak. For the most part, they're just individuals who have purchased reseller accounts from rack providers like Rackspace, Dreamhost or Ev1Servers, or some similar company.
Anyway, in short, without wishing or intending to go into the web hosting business, we ended up with the ability to do so very easily.
Since TAC is no longer piggy-backing on the hosting plans of our other, commercial, websites (and therefore needs to be able to pay for its existence), and since TAC users have expressed some resistance to more-intrusive advertising (which was our original plan to recoup the expenses of this new dedicated server), we have decided to offer "standard" web hosting to a very small number of clients, at very favorable terms, with some important caveats:
One: this is not WebcomicsNation! Buying hosting from TAC is the same as buying hosting from any inexpensive "reseller" of web hosting. Having a TAC hosting account will not make your life any more difficult or any easier once you decide to switch over to WCN (that is, after it launches). Likewise, you will not be forced to switch over to WCN ever. It's just standard hosting. The only thing special about it is that you will be buying it from a known entity (Joey Manley/Modern Tales) rather than from some random anonymous company you found with a Yahoo! search. Another thing is that we're not putting a mark-up on it: we took the amount we're paying for the server, divided it by twenty, and then took the amount of bandwidth and harddrive space we've got, and divided those by twenty, to come up with the price and the plan: $4.95/month, 50 gigs of transfer, 5 gigs of space. When we've sold 15-17 accounts, we'll stop taking orders. Those 15-17 people are basically getting service at the same price we're getting it, albeit broken up into much smaller chunks -- so think of this offer as sort of a co-op, not a result of a for-profit business model (though getting much of the cost of the server off our backs will help our larger business's profitability).
Two: while we will keep the server up and running to the best of our ability, there is no implied guarantee that it will never go down, or have problems of some sort or another. The only implied guarantee is that, as long as one of our own very important and vital sites is hosted on the same box, you can be assured that if there are problems, we will be as stressed out as you are about them, and will do our best to get everything up and running again as quickly as possible.
Three: we don't want a lot of customers. We just want enough customers to make up for the extra line-item in our budget represented by the new TAC server itself. After we have reached that number, we will likely stop taking new customers. This isn't something that we are marketing for widespread buy-in -- and we will pick and choose our hosting customers fairly carefully. Basically, the longer you've had some sort of active relationship with us (whether as a TAC forum-owner, moderator, or admin, as a Modern Tales subscriber, etc), the more comfortable we will feel selling hosting to you. If you are an unknown quantity, we may politely decline your order. Email Joey Manley if you've got any questions about this.
Four: we cannot provide programming help and support, or any support in installing third-party PHP, cgi, or other server applications. We will provide working PHP, MySQL, and cgi environments -- what you do with them is up to you.
Five: we can accept payment by PayPal recurring billing only. If you do not have a PayPal account, or if you're not willing to sign up for recurring billing, we can't sell you hosting services.
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So, that's pretty much it.
Thanks!
Joey Manley