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Out of the hosting business

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By Bryan - Posted on 30 October 2008

Earlier today, I officially canceled my reseller account for Dakota Hosting.  I started the account at the same time I started to build websites as a side business.  I finally decided to stop pushing the hosting business not because I was losing money, but because it wasn't personally rewarding.  I learned a lot about the business and decided Web hosting just isn't in my blood.  I will build a Website now and then for a friend or acquaintance, but to be honest my IT job during the day keeps me plenty busy.  I'd rather find some new challenges using my free-time for doing good instead of the sole goal to make money.

What I have found rewarding these past few years is blogging here at CMSReport.com.  I enjoy not only taking a look at the various content management systems in the market, but also getting to know the people behind the application.  I tend to be drawn more to the open source projects than the propriety content management systems due to some of the cool people behind those projects.  With business fast becoming dependent on the same social network model that their customers use, I can't imagine the propriety-only business model having as significant of a future as it once had in the past.

So, with one less "side business" to worry about, I hope to keep the promise I made to myself more than two years ago.

Random Moments

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By Bryan - Posted on 24 October 2008

There is so much that I want to do here at CMS Report, but my time has been limited these past couple weeks.  Some things that have been going on in my world:

  1. As a judge for Packt Publishing's Open Source CMS Awards, I gave the publishing company my vote on the "Most Promising" CMS.  I dedicated a couple weekends to get the job done and I plan to post my reviews after Packt announces the winners (October 28).
  2. I made the decision to drop my reseller account for Dakota Hosting.  The number of clients I host are few and over the past two years I've only been breaking even.
  3. My post on Dell's Inspiron Mini 12 netbook brought in quite a bit of traffic to the site.  It looks like I may be a couple weeks off in my prediction for when this new netbook will finally hit the market.

Drupal on a Budget

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By Bryan - Posted on 31 May 2007
During the past couple years I have recommended to people that they host their Drupal sites on a virtual private server (VPS) instead of a shared hosting plan.   While a large number of people do not have problems running Drupal under shared hosting plans, I have always felt that there are less headaches with using a VPS to host your sites.  For example, with a VPS I don't have to worry whether the shared hosting plan gives me the necessary MySQL privileges needed by Drupal (especially CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES and LOCK TABLES).  From time to time, you also hear from people with "Drupal friendly" shared hosting plans eventually find that their hosting company isn't so friendly toward their Drupal site.  Planet Drupal contributor, Clancy Ratliff, is one of the most recent  examples for having a host provider not really happy she is using Drupal.  So I often ask myself, is shared hosting for Drupal really worth the trouble?

I don't know if shared hosting is worth the trouble but a chain of events have brought me to giving shared hosting another chance for my Drupal sites.  Last month, I pushed my VPS so close to the bleeding edge that it became unstable.  While I was able to get my sites back online, the downtime clearly told me it was time to move my sites to a new server.  While most visitors observed a performance improvement  for my Drupal sites since the server migration, it's only now that I'm letting the cat out of the bag.  For the past week, CMSReport.com has been under a shared hosting plan and not a VPS.   I'm currently running my site using a budget shared hosting plan through my reseller site which is comparable to the hosting plans offered by GoDaddy.

I don't know how long I'll keep my site on a shared hosting plan but I am currently enjoying a break from the work, worry, and experimentation that comes with administration of a VPS.  While I may go back to a VPS, I thought it would benefit some newbies and other Drupal users my experiences and thoughts on migrating my sites from a VPS back to a shared hosting plan.

Booting myself off the server

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By Bryan - Posted on 24 May 2007
First, let me say thank you for everyone that stops by to reads my blog as well as seeing the latest articles I bookmark on content management systems.  You people are the greatest and this has been a very fun year for me!  Secondly, let me say you may not be able to read this post through the weekend.

I'm moving CMSReport.com off of the server it has been running on for over for the past year.  The server currently runs on Fedora Core 4 and really need to be upgraded to a more current and better supported operating system.  I'm also trying something new so the up/down time for CMS Report will be more sporadic than with a typical server move.   I expect most of the changes to take place on Friday but I'm not sure how site performance will be next week.  What I can say is that I'm excited about the gamble I'm about to take and if it works...I may have a new recommendation for how best to host Drupal.

When I'm done...I should have plenty to talk about server administration, site support, and web hosting.  I also have  quite a few new ideas for future discussions.  Hint?  Perhaps the "C" in CMS Report is for more than just content?  Stay tune...