subtly simple words about …

Well it took me a bit of time to get this blog/webpage up and running and during the process I learned a lot about domain names, hosting and what is good/bad. I tried to find this information on Google and there are bits here and there but the big problem is that no one just puts it into a simple breakdown. I think the Web Hosts are actually working to make it harder to figure this stuff out. In any case here are the few simple things i learned. There are really 3 main web hosting types and charging models that i looked at:

Shared Server — Monthly Pay

Examples: JustHost, GoDaddy, etc..

The idea here is that these companies have large farms of servers and they are renting out part of it to you. In general you dont get to pick the OS running on it and you don’t get to install custom software. You get a set of software choices that they have like WordPress, PHP5 scripts that have predefined, Site Creators that they have chosen etc.. This looks really too good to be true because it says Unlimited Space, Unlimited Bandwidth and only $5. It is unlimited in those areas but it limits your ability to really use it because the tools and services they have are highly restricted. For example, you can install wordpress but only install their “accepted plugins”. You can run PHP scripts but none that write to the disk. They try to glitz and glamor you into buying their hosting solution by giving you “a free domain name” or “Free Google AdSense money”. I would really recommend that you just ignore the hype here and go with simple and easy. This is a great example of something being subtly simple. This looks simpler because its all setup and you have choices to install your apps and you are going to up and running in minutes. But then you want to make this small change, you don’t like the way the UI looks or you want to store images there and suddenly all the shackles of these sites show up.

Pros:

• Very Simple to setup
• Tons of templates

Cons:

• Cant customize very much
• No custom software

Virtual Private Server (VPS) –  Monthly Pay

Examples of this type of service are LiNode (the one i went with) or slicehost. With this type of host you are paying a monthly fee for a pre defined amount of space and bandwidth. You can usually get the lowest version of this for about $20. The general idea is that you are just getting a virtual machine in the sky. You can install whatever operating systems that they support and then you get root access and you install whatever you want and configure whatever you want. There is usually a small admin UI that allows you to setup the virtual machine and manage it but you really only use that when you can get to your own machine through SSH because something is really broken in your own setup.

Pros:

• Simple to understand if you have some technical background
• Root Access which means put whatever you want on it. (Subversion, wordpress, drupal, django.. whatever)
• You can kill the whole machine and start over at any time
• Very customizable to your liking and is a good playground for just trying different configurations etc.

Cons:

• A little more expensive than the shared server
• Lots of your configuration so if you dont want to twiddle a bit this is not for you

Virtual Private Server (VPS) — Measured Pay

Examples: Amazon EC2, Rackspace

This is the same as the VPS Monthly Pay but they charge you based on the amount of space and bandwidth that you use. This seems like a good idea when you are doing tons of data or tons of bandwidth but its hard to figure out what it is going to cost you monthly. It is not just $X monthly it might be very little or a lot depending on how your site does. While this could be much more ecconomical in the long run i would suggest you just start with simple and then can worry bout all the math to figure out how much your site traffic and storage will cost you.

Pros:

• Might be cheaper if you dont have a ton of data or a ton of traffic

Cons:

• Not simple. You have to guess how much space you are going to have, how much data, how many requests etc and that is something as a novice user you are not going to know of the top of your head.

Summary:

There are many other types of hosting like co-locate and dedicated hosting etc. These are more for companies and people who really want to get into the hardware of hosting and not just the software. If you look at the above choices,  would really recommend going with a VPS – Monthly and then switching to a VPS – Measured when you have more stats about what it will cost you.

Ubiquity is an amazing firefox add on that really takes the keyboard in a browser to the next level. I can finally move around like i do on my desktop with Quicksilver but in my browser. More than that because its all text/html/css, it is super easy to create new plugins for it. This means that it can not just execute commands but also use the content of a page to get context. As with quicksilver, you need to use a key sequence to get the command prompt and this is one of those subtle things that i love about both these apps. Its out of the way but instantly there when you need it. Also the UI is really simple to understand even if you have never used it before. Once i get using it a bit more, I’ll write some tutorials and maybe put up some of my own commands.

Simple is defined as “not involved or complicated” or “Having little or no ornamentation; not embellished or adorned”. You can find a thousand definitions of simple by looking here. All the definitions define simple as ordinary, easy, not complicated. I have found that simplicity defines beauty, elegance, efficiency and utility. This is not just true for technology but for most things in the world. If you look at fashion, design, technology, books, poems, math and almost anything else the most beautiful things are simple. There is a very subtle art to making complicated things look simple. Its easy to see things like this in technology such as Web OS, but its much more subtle in a great suit or just the right touch of something in a dish. I hope to use this site and this blog to talk about the subtly simple things I come across.