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Considerations When Accepting Bandwidth Donations?
dnotj asks: "I'm involved in a project that is growing fast and is going to soon outgrow it's current hosting location. I've had a couple of offers for donating bandwidth (and servers in one case). Basically free colocation or dedicated servers. Since this isn't a revenue generating project, it's going to be necessary to migrate this project and it's related website to a location with adequate bandwidth. What kinds of questions should I be asking these generous organizations that make these offers? I just want to make sure I cover all my bases before jumping on one of these offers."
beware of something like "well give you 1Mb/month of free bandwidth for you project with a cost of 99.99 per byte over 1Mb
also look at stability, is this a service that is going to be going up and down, or might just disappear suddenly.
As others have said, you should also be sure that you are not prevented from posting your content on any other sites.
If you are worried about ads, you should also look into that
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
The free service (up to 5 domains) at ZoneEdit would be helpful in conjuction with this strategy. I've been using the service for a while now and though the site isn't much to look at, I've never had a DNS outage with them.
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
You should ask the same questions and perform the same due-dilligence as if you were paying for the service.
o Keep you own backups of your site out of the hands of the hoster.
o Make sure that any contracts you sign keep your stuff yours.
o Keep your domain names under your control.
o Have a contingency plan in case things don't work out.
If you were paying for service, you would probably be asking for SLA and reviewing technical details about the hosting plant. With free service, it is a bit harder to ask for too much. Plus, how much of a rebate do you want against zero.
Once you are up and running, be sure to give the hoster appropriate thanks and credit. A link on your home page is probably the least you should do. Also, don't do things that cost the hoster money and/or aggrevation. Be self-sufficient with your servers and applications. Use the bandwidth that you are getting sparingly. Don't overdue the photos and graphics. Just because you are getting something for free doesn't mean you should use as much as possible.
Also, try not to attract riff-raff with your project. You are getting stuff for free. Returning the favor with a DDOS attack is probably not the best idea.
Make sure you're the owner of the domain name from the start. Use another service, such as mydomain.com or the registrar's own service, to point the domain at the server. Do not use an email address within the domain, or within any other domain under that entity's control, as a contact for the domain.
By taking these precautions, should that entity ever start misbehaving, you'll be able to move your content to another server without too much disruption.