Thinking Out Loud: Free hosting application?

reviewum · Post by **reviewum** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 7:05 pm

I hope this is the correct place to post this...

In addition to CMS systems I've also looked for free hosting solutions. I'm a member of a lot of communities (everything from LED lighting to backyard chickens) and would love to offer friends the opportunity to create / host their own websites on my server (since I have a little extra space).

One application I found is called "genesis" (found here: http://www.xav.com/scripts/genesis/ ). It does a lot of cool things, but isn't under GPL. One problem with this (and other similar apps) is that people can signup and drain your bandwidth. I had this happen when a user signed up for an account just to use it as an image host for forums, etc. Drained about 5 gb in a few days.

Anyway, I'm wondering if there is a way to get CMS to work like this, a hack or module? Basically a script where everyone has their own site off of the root URL, like www.siteurl.com/user/index.php

Well, just thinking out loud. Sorry if there is no interest or if this is not the correct place for this.

reviewum · Post by **reviewum** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 2:28 am

Patricia, that's a very interesting idea, but seems like a lot of work per user. A few questions:

1) Is there a way to completely automate the whole install process, including creating the DB, user, changing permissions, etc? I know very little about unix / ssh commands, but is there a way to create a batch file that could be run in ssh that simply does everything listed here: http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/pmwiki.ph ... stallation

2) As upgrades are made to CMS, what would be the easiest way to upgrade a bunch of different installs of the application? Does the "upgrade" script / page do this automatically?

Thanks again for the ideas and the help!

reviewum · Post by **reviewum** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 3:42 am

Actually I guess if all the installs are on the same site, but different sub-folders, then they could all use the same username / password for the DB. You'd just need to create a new db for each install.

Another idea: create a basic install with all the settings / templates you want to give everyone. Just copy this folder to another folder, manually edit the config file for the new DB name and path and I think you're done.

What do you think? Any other ideas out there?

reviewum · Post by **reviewum** » Wed May 31, 2006 6:30 pm

Well, since I started this old thread I guess I can be the one to dig it back up! ;)

I parted ways with CMS Made Simple about a year ago. I've been using editWRX for a while and really like it for sites that my individual site owners can edit. Problems are: 1) Only works with IE and may not even work with future versions of IE, and 2) Not really the best system for a community site.

I'm looking for a way to offer webspace to a few different communities. Some would be free, some would be subscription based, and some would be ad supported. Of all these groups, none of them are technical people.

I'd like to use a CMS but can't find one that does what I need. Here are my two main requirements:

• Ability for non-tech users to EASILY create pages (using wysiwyg editors) and upload images to those pages. (If I remember correctly, CMS MS does this relatively easily).
• Separate users' data from each other. Each user has their own section where they can create their pages and upload images. Once user's upload images I want them to only be able to access their images/data. (This is why I stopped using CMS MS... all the content pages were mixed up with all the users).

There are many other requirements that I've got in the back of my head (security, ease of upgrade, support, modules, etc.) but the two items above are the big ones.

I just installed Drupal which looked really promising, but it didn't seem like there was an easy way for a user to add images to their content. CMS Made Simple was my favorite CMS so far, but it was changing too quickly and didn't separate the content from user to user.

Any advice on if I should give CMS MS another try? Any suggestions on other solutions?

EDIT: BTW, I just downloaded my files and I'm using version 0.8.2 "Taunoa"!

rkuebert · Post by **rkuebert** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 8:47 pm

@reviewum,

reviewum wrote: 1) Is there a way to completely automate the whole install process, including creating the DB, user, changing permissions, etc? I know very little about unix / ssh commands, but is there a way to create a batch file that could be run in ssh that simply does everything listed here: http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/pmwiki.ph ... stallation

The link you gave is down, so I don't know exactly what actions it describes.
But I think it should be no problem to automate the necessary steps.

reviewum wrote: 2) As upgrades are made to CMS, what would be the easiest way to upgrade a bunch of different installs of the application? Does the "upgrade" script / page do this automatically?

If you have sites for different users, when a user asks you to update cmsms, just do it the regular way (you should be able to script that, too): backup ftp and db, copy page over, tell him to run the upgrade script (or do it yourself).

I did not really give any advice, I know. But if you got any concrete questions, maybe then I can answer in more detail.

Regards,

Roland

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