[maplab-users] Hosting or Housing?

[Daniel Morissette]

Andrea Simontacchi wrote:
> 
> In order to publish a webgis application developed with maptools what 
> are the minimum host requirements?
> Is there any host possibilities? where?
> Or else the minimum requirement is housing solution?
> Is better if i consider to run my own webserver, so i can run all the 
> binaries needed without any restriction or is there any cheaper solution?
> I am trying to find the cheapest one :D
> 

The minimum host requirements depend on the traffic that you expect your 
application to get, and the quality of service (uptime) that you want to 
provide.

The cheapest option might be hosting out of your PC (running MS4W) 
connected to your home or office DSL using a dynamic DNS service (e.g. 
tzo.com), this may work for a personal site with little traffic, but may 
not provide the speed and uptime that is required for a serious 
webmapping site. Another issue is that your ISP may not allow you to 
host a website out of a personal home DSL connection.

Then you could look at server co-location, i.e. renting a server in a 
data center, but unless you are hosting a large site that may be an 
overkill.

<shameless_plug>
Finally, there is specialized MapServer hosting. DM Solutions (and a few 
other companies I'm sure) offers high performance and high availability 
hosting services for webmapping applications based on MapServer/Maptools 
technologies. MapServer, PHP MapScript, and everything you need to host 
your webmapping site is preinstalled for you in your account on the 
server, all you need is to upload your PHP scripts and data to the 
server and you're running. Prices for the current entry-level package 
start at 200$CAD/month. This may be more than you are willing to pay for 
a personal website, we understand that and are currently working on a 
cheaper option for smaller sites that have lower requirements than what 
our current entry-level package offers. Please contact me off-list if 
you would like to get more details on the current packages, or would 
like to be informed when new offers are available.
</shameless_plug>

Best Regards,

Daniel
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  Daniel Morissette               dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca
  DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
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