[haxenext] Commercial Neko hosting.

[JLM]

It has been discussed several times, but I think it would be useful if
the foundation/community could build links with a couple of commercial
hosting companies with an aim to providing competitive neko hosting
plans.

[JLM]

Is anyone interested it creating a Cpanel module for simple Neko
installation... this would make it much easier for haxe users to
request from their hosting, and I think was one of the ways ruby has
become more common on shared hosting.

[Juraj Kirchheim]

That would definitely be great.

I think it would be very good for Haxe to have at least one service,
where you can simply get a managed virtual machine with batteries
included (Haxe, Neko, web server, MySQL) to ultimately create the ease
of use that PHP has and that made it so popular.

From my own experience, I can say that I like neko a lot, but I am not
very much into server administration. The last time I had to choose, I
went with haxe/php, simply because I knew there'd be no problems that
I couldn't solve right away.

I would be less than useless in tackling this, but I just wanted to
confirm that there are people out there, who could very much use such
a solution.

Regards,
Juraj

[Philippe Elsass]

Ready-to-use plugins for things like CPanel sound like a great idea - it should suddenly widen the possibility to use Neko.

--
Philippe

[Philipp Klose]

CPanel sound great, also it's not available everywhere.

Installing neko and libraries on a 64bit Linux is and was always very complicated, so more important and also easier to realize would be to get some kind of *.deb or *.rpm package that work out of box.

Another interesting option would be to provide a preconfigured image that could be used in AWS or other cloud services. 

[JLM]

I am the least server savvy here, but I have collected some info, in
the hope at that someone else will.

To get :
wget -N http://httpupdate.cpanel.net/latest

Instructions here:
http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/11_30/InstallationGuide/InstallingCpanel

But you should probably have a license, there are test ones maybe
someone from the foundation could apply for a test license.
https://www4.cpanel.net/store/index.cgi

There is a section on cpanel called software see here..
http://www.justinfront.co.uk/cpanel/cpanelImage.tiff

**For something like ruby install, I have found an example cpanel
script, I can forward it privately for reference if anyone wants to
give it a ago or take a look.

There is a forum where requests can be made, there is an irc channel
#cpanel.

I was thinking that having a hxwiki, poko and ufront module would
really get users in. For my personal vps server space I am struggling
to setup hxwiki, maybe something to do with cache mod_neko anyone want
to give me a hand?

Cheers Justin

[Juraj Kirchheim]

If commercial neko hosting is the subject here, I've come to think we
should take this to the haxe group.

Firstly, we should get a sense of how many people would be willing to
use such a service, if it existed. Commercial hosting comes with a lot
of infrastructure (support, maintenance etc.). It doesn't make sense
if only a handful of people are going to use it.

Once we have determined the need, I think this will also get the
attention of those in the community who'd be willing and able to
provide such a commercial services. While we can discuss many aspects
here, it ultimately requires a lot of doing, the bulk of which goes
beyond mere tooling. That doesn't mean I want to dismiss the value of
this discussion. I just think we should be realistic about how much of
the way it will never cover ;)

I don't really think it's necessary to install any of the projects you
mentioned. If haxelib is on the machine and works properly, then all
of it is easy to install. There's more value in a couple of tutorials,
although that's more work to do of course :)

Regards,
Juraj

[Philipp Klose]

I agree with Juraj on that.

It's very likely that there isn't much of a market for that. Many people
using neko are able to compile and install neko own their own. The first
step to make neko deployment easier would be to provide binaries for the
most common platforms. Then you can add a CPanel module or whatever later.

For example: There is currently *no* way to install neko on a 64bit
Linux box without using a compiler and installing a few development
packages on your own. It would lower the bar for a neko deployment if
everybody just could do: "sudo apt-get install neko apache2" and then
"sudo a2enmode neko" (or whatever you use to install packages) and then
upload you *.n files.

The same applies for the Haxe compiler. It would be really nice to have
precompiled, easy to install binaries for both on most common platforms.

Philipp

[Nicolas Cannasse]

Le 08/06/2012 12:20, Philipp Klose a �crit :

> I agree with Juraj on that.
>
> It's very likely that there isn't much of a market for that. Many people
> using neko are able to compile and install neko own their own. The first
> step to make neko deployment easier would be to provide binaries for the
> most common platforms. Then you can add a CPanel module or whatever later.
>
> For example: There is currently *no* way to install neko on a 64bit
> Linux box without using a compiler and installing a few development
> packages on your own.

It took some time, but we have added 1.8.2 Linux 64 binaries here a few
weeks/months ago http://nekovm.org/download ;)

Best,
Nicolas

[Juraj Kirchheim]

On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Philipp Klose <m...@thehippo.de> wrote:
> I agree with Juraj on that.
>
> It's very likely that there isn't much of a market for that. Many people
> using neko are able to compile and install neko own their own. The first
> step to make neko deployment easier would be to provide binaries for the
> most common platforms. Then you can add a CPanel module or whatever later.

Well, being able and wanting are two different things. There's quite a
difference between just pointing customers to a supported hosting
service instead of trying to get things to run on whatever crappy
setup it is they think might help. Maintaining code is enough work -
it would be nice if somebody else could maintain the system and not
actually work against you (which isn't unheard of ;)).

Making neko deployment easier for individuals is also desirable, but
it's not the original topic here. Of course we can drop that original
topic, although I personally think there's a lot of value in such a
service and with the momentum Haxe has gained recently, we might
actually have the critical mass to make this profitable for whoever
would pull it off.

Regards,
Juraj

[Philipp Klose]

Am 08.06.2012 13:01, schrieb Juraj Kirchheim:
> Well, being able and wanting are two different things. There's quite a
> difference between just pointing customers to a supported hosting
> service instead of trying to get things to run on whatever crappy
> setup it is they think might help. Maintaining code is enough work -
> it would be nice if somebody else could maintain the system and not
> actually work against you (which isn't unheard of ;)).
>
> Making neko deployment easier for individuals is also desirable, but
> it's not the original topic here. Of course we can drop that original
> topic, although I personally think there's a lot of value in such a
> service and with the momentum Haxe has gained recently, we might
> actually have the critical mass to make this profitable for whoever
> would pull it off.
>
> Regards,
> Juraj

You are right. There are 2 different things.

First: Make deployment for an individual easier. (Shouldn't be that hard.)

Second: Provide ready-to-go service.

This is actually not so complicated as it sounds. You need to set up a
small company, build an image with neko and all the stuff you need
preinstalled and find a webhoster which offers a reseller program and
accepts custom images. (E.g.: gandi.net would be suitable for this.) (As
everything is very "cloudy" in out days I wouldn't think about making
some shared webhosting, it's hard to secure and to set ip) If you image
is stable all technical support could be forwarded to the hoster. You
also would need a website selling this service and maybe some legal advice.

But MORE imporant: I think we really should me a poll on the mailing
list how many people would interested in a neko hosting service and how
much they would be willingly to pay for such a service (I think at least
15�/month).

Philipp

[Axel Huizinga]

Hi,
shouldn't be a standard virtual root hosting package which is available starting from less than 10 � a month and comes
with own ip sufficient to do the job for most cases?

Cordially,
Axel

[JLM]

But MORE imporant: I think we really should me a poll on the mailing
list how many people would interested in a neko hosting service and how
much they would be willingly to pay for such a service (I think at least
15�/month).

Philipp

Not really we need a basic shared neko server solution hitting the 5pounds / 5euros / 5dollars mark, for future haxe developers that were using PHP, something low risk.

For instance I have a VPS and broadband here:
http://www.saq.net/hosting/

They offer a basic plan

• Control Panel
• Multiple domains
• CGI bin
• Web Stats
• 100Mb space
• 1Gb data transfer per month
• Web site backup
• Unlimited sub domains
• SSH Shell Access
• 5 FTP accounts
• MS Frontpage
• FREE Email Support
• FREE Transfer In
• FREE Setup

Now we need to make the tools right ( cpanel modules etc.. ) so they can add to the list something like..

• Super charged with Neko, preinstalled wiki and Poko blog.

Initially the foundation may need to create a working group to provide support to these companies and free training etc... 

Then host links to these offers on haxe an haxenme sites and encourage every current haxe user to take one plan from a list of two or three companies for atleast one year... then we will start to establish many more neko real world use, you can justify doing a site for a local business with no hassle.  We could try to setup a company for this but really I feel we need to form ties with companies who do this currently and have proven experience.

It maybe just a matter of creating a special program and working group that focus on getting haxe solutions onto service providers basic hosting plans.

[Juraj Kirchheim]

Axel, you're absolutely right saying this is possible. Right now,
everybody can get some hosting package and install haxe and whatever
they need. But still, this involves quite a bit of work and might not
be what you want to do.

As for the fee: It doesn't seem uncommon to charge 30€ a month for a
vServer with RoR: http://www.railshoster.com/

I know there are people who enjoy making everything work themselves.
But personally, I would happily pay 5€ more for having someone take
this off my hands, especially because it's going to be somebody in the
community, who cares about Haxe.

Also, you should never underestimate the customer's perceived need for
"support".

Regards,
Juraj

[Joshua Granick]

I would be interested in using a low-cost, ready-to-use server with Neko installed.

Personally, I have a shared hosting server for all of my sites. For $10 a month, I get "unlimited" bandwidth, storage and domain names, and I do not have to spend any time worrying about stability, security and all the other concerns that go along with being an administrator.

I signed up for a VPS some time ago in order to test a Neko server for the first time, but the amount of work it took to get the server running, and then if I were to have used it for hosting actual sites, was prohibitive. This probably sounds strange to people who are used to managing their own servers, but it was too much work for me. I would rather focus on other things (like NME) than dealing with my server.

If there was a $5 hosting solution for Neko, or my $10 host offered Neko in addition to PHP, et al, I would consider using it a lot more. Of course I like Haxe more than PHP ;)

--

Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

[Lee Sylvester]

I had started on an ISAPI dll for Neko so that it can be run under IIS.  It will be a little time before I get round to completing this, but this could make it easier to get hosting for Neko.