Re: [Slashcode-general] Can I run slashcode via cgi-bin of an ISP?

[jesse h. <je...@ta...>]

just wanted to jump in on this thread. its been interesting as a barometre
of perception. i think the subject line touches upon many aspects, most
noteably of course is the last acronym/word. in the last few months i've
spent a considerable amount of time looking at web hosting companies and
co-lo deals, etc., while at the same time have continued to run a number
of servers under a number of different guises (tao.ca and openflows.org).
in the case of the latter, we recently setup a server dedicated to running
the slashcode, since so many of our clients wanted to run it (these are
existing clients not new ones). in the course of which, we've also
tinkered with the idea of offering "slash hosting" as it were, but are
still unsure about pricing. our existing client base doesn't come to us
for slash per se, but after working with us (around the internet in
general), see what it is (in juxtaposition with other gnu apps) and want
us to implement it for them. these people pay us by the hour, per project,
and the hosting is pretty much free. we prefer to organize revenue
according to our time, and absorb resources/facilities into that cost. it
thus makes it difficult to think of pricing or services that focus just on
hosting...

the reason i like slash is because of the quality factor. its nice to see
a gpl code make it to 2.0. a lot of the economics behind hosting companies
is to do everything as cheaply as possible. reduce the costs, multiply the
tools and space, charge as low as possible. i just think, especially
post-dot-com-mania, that it makes more sense to go for the quality and
complex over the quantity and simplicity.

> >Oh, and I was accounting for more of the general audience in estimating 20
> >minutes installation of a PHP weblog (however poor the coding of that log
> >may be).  I would expect (hope) that you could do it in 5 or less.

phpnuke.org is an obvious example. its really easy to install, comes with
a ton of "themes" that make it easy to customize, and it has a large user
base to contribute back fixes and add-ons etc. now with that said, i think
it has serious limitations. the way i've explained it to people, is that
phpnuke is written/maintained by hobbyists, while slashcode is
written/maintained by professionals. in the former you get easy-to-install
code, in the later you get robust and stable code. i found phpnuke to be
too easy. like so easy it made it hard to really change. it made it hard
to keep up with constant updates. it made it hard to keep up with a users
email list with 100+ traffic a day, 99 of which was en route to /dev/null

> No, it would take me a lot longer, since I don't have mod_php installed
> already, just like a lot of bad Apache builds don't have a good mod_perl
> configuration.

i compile my apache with perl and php, and i'm sure i've got a relatively
poor config ;) but the point is i do get it all working in the end. and
honestly, i'm not much of a techie (writer and activist by trade) nor do i
have the patience to rtfm, nonetheless i'm able to get code running,
humming, and working just fine... last client (their own p3 server) we did
apache, mysql, php/perl, slash, cpan... in definitely less than 20 mins

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