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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."
First things first: Ask them what, if any, conditions there are to their "gifts".
If they are providing the hosting or bandwidth, be sure to read the small print! Make sure that you aren't signing away any rights that you might care about. I'm not just talking about copyrights and trademarks, I mean things like the right to publish your work elsewhere, change hosting services or servers at any time, how and when access is provided to the server, if and when backups are done (started/completed), what you can expect in case of an unacceptably long downtime, etc.
What I would do is accept them all and setup each server as a subdomain. (www1, www2, www3 etc)
Where the main domain resides is an account that is in your control and redirects the request to one of the other servers.
This way if one goes down you can simply remove it from the list of mirror servers. It also maintains you in control of the setup instead of giving one person 100% control of the site by putting it on their server.
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Make sure that you can trust the person who's offering the bandwidth. Beyond that it'd be even better if you have somebody who lives near by who can physically pull the plug if need be or rescue any hardware. I took up a free hosting offer. My equipment and code was stolen (by the Chris Kuivenhoven mentioned in my .sig)
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
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.