On 11/1/2013 10:45 AM, Joel Rees wrote:
On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 9:00 PM, Jerry Stuckle <jstuckle@attglobal.net> wrote:On 11/1/2013 4:27 AM, Joel Rees wrote:On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 7:53 AM, Craig L. <craig@gtek.biz> wrote:Hello all, I have a good friend that is in a sticky situation and has turned to me for help. I'm not 100% sure of how to advise him so I figured I would pose our question here. He lives in Texas, in the USA. He is starting his own business, and a bit sooner than he planned. He has a domain registered to him. He needs to be able to set up email service asap, with an eye towards eventually setting up a web site for the operation. I know GoDaddy offers these types of services, but I'm not a big fan of GoDaddy. Since I will probably be the system administrator for a while, I would prefer a hosting service that offers a Linux OS, preferably Debian, and PostgreSQL or MySQL, again preferably PostgreSQL. May I trouble you good people for suggestions that meet these needs? We would like to have at least one working email address by close of business tomorrow (Friday, 1 November), or Monday at the latest. Thanks, CraigIf you're in that kind of hurry, google can do some cool stuff for you, but they don't seem to be settled about what they provide. I've been using a combination of google apps and dyn.com's dynamic dns, but dyn changed their business model, too, and I can't freeload any more. (Sob, sniff.) Heh. Everybody seems to be in the process of changing their business models these days. What I did, and I think you can still do it with the paid stuff at google, was register a subdomain from dyn, mapped it (dynamic dns) to my personal server here at home, used that as my domain for google apps, and let google handle the mail. Dyn still does free subdomains, but the subdomain I was using is now "premium". When my financial stuff settles down again, I'm probably going to become a paying customer at dyn. They do registrar stuff for the common top-level domains too, now.I would *never* run a business site from home. Data centers have multiple communications links (from different suppliers), backup power and techs on duty 25/7. Can you provide that from home? JerryDid I say I had a business site on the server? I look back at that and I don't see anywhere I said that I had a business site on that server. Do you see anywhere I said I had a business site on that server? No? I didn't think so.
No, but you're giving advice to someone who is requesting recommendations for a business site.
Now, to forestall your next diatribe, Craig said his friend needed an e-mail address and a net presence in a real hurry. He did not say he needed a full-blown business site, just a net presence. He did not say in a couple of days, he said tonight.
I've set up sites in as little as 30 minutes on shared hosting companies - including email and a simple home page. It's not rocket science. And it's a heck of a lot faster than setting up a web server and associated necessities on your own server - especially if you've never done it before.
Running a business on a Google site is stupid, but it is a good option to get a site and multiple e-mail addresses up quickly. You only need a domain and a server for Google to communicate with. Any server will do, even a vanity server. Using dynamic DNS to publish a home server that will immediately be transferred to Google is one way to do that.
There are much better options - and then you don't have to move your site later.
Once you're up and that pressure is off, you can focus on getting your real site set up. Once you've found a set of options (hosting or co-location or such) that works for you, dynamic dns can actually help in the transition, among other things. It's one set of options that may or may not be useful, depending on how fast and reliable the other options are. Now, I'm sure you're going to waste a lot of time thinking of reasons all of that is stupid. Go for it. Waste your time. I've got other things to do.
As I said - setting up a server on a shared site is neither rocket science nor is it time consuming. It can also be done for as little as $5/mo. from a good hosting company (you can find cheaper, but generally quality suffers). Probably the one thing that takes the longest is getting your credit card out to pay the first month's bill.
Hosting companies provide a good service, and are well worth the price for what they provide.
P.S. Please don't CC me. I am subscribed to the list. Jerry