New Host Server

Further to discussion that started here, I am posting this new topic outside all of the individual project forums because of its potentially broader implications for all concerned.

As discussed at some length under the preceeding topic, I believe there may be some significant potential benefits, both for project managers and for end users, in the availablility of a "non-denominational" host server under which various WinPE projects and related resources could be consolidated.  It would permit the developers and managers of various projects, at their own discretion, to locate any or all of their project resouces at a "unified" location with full administrative access* for managerial convenience.  And it would permit end users readily to find all such resources and tools thus located "under one roof" for their own WinPE building purposes that may often range across several PE# project levels and Windows architectures.

Accordingly, pending further discussion of the concept, I have gone ahead and registered (in my own name for the time being) two new domains (pebuilder.net and pebuilder.org) as necessary to initiate the establishment and set-up of a server for that purpose with a hosting service.  These domain registrations (with 1and1.com) will prevent their registration by anyone else while under discussion here and, once processed by the registrar, will also permit my initiation of a hosting service contract with HostGator.com, one of the largest in North America served by SoftLayer.com (formerly "The Planet") with multiple heavy pipeline connections to the internet backbone.   For those knowledgeable about hosting services, it would be what is known as a "reseller" account, but without any resale fees or charges.

In anticipation of some possible concerns, let me make one point very clear at the outset.  The "generic" domain names that I have chosen for server setup initiation do not [repeat] NOT exclude or limit in any way the use of other domain names for access to those same server resources or any particular project or other resource component thereof.  Secondly, in offering open free access, my single stipulation is that it is and must remain non-profit, non-commercial and (excepting "promotion" of the project site freeware resources themselves) ad-free.

My initial intention would be to work closely with Galapo and ChrisR, who currently manage subdomains on my own virtech.org server for their PE1 and PE2/3 projects, toward "upgrading" those current resources onto the new independent server with their own direct "cPanel" administrative access.*  In the longer term, however, I would see the potential for wider participation.  At this point, therefore, I'm inviting anyone who may have an interest to join this open discussion.

Regards to all,
Richard Virtue ("Arvy")

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* See "cPanel" demo here.  Complete documentation here.

Hi Richard,

Thanks again for you work on this! 

I do like the idea of consolidating things. One place where a webpage, updates, and packages is served from. It would make using the php scripts I sent you quite easy and convenient since the ZIP packages would not need to be then uploaded to virtech.org. This is what I had dreamed of for the server I had set up, but at the time I was also hosting the LiveXP project and it was beyond my resourses (over 10gb per day). That's why we went to mediafire to host the ZIP packages.

Lancelot was wanting to contact me on icq to talk over some things we need to consider, but I missed him. So I need to catch him the next couple of days.

Thanks again,
Galapo.

No problem at all.  Take all the time you need.  I just wanted to take these intial steps to avoid its "getting away" while we were thinking about and discussing it.  (And also before we built up too much more stuff in the virtech.org subdomains.)  There is no huge investment that cannot be abandoned if it doesn't actually fly.  The domain registrations themselves, for example, are only seven bucks each for the first year.  And Hostgator provides a 45-day "full money back" guarantee of satisfaction, after which it's strictly on a month-to-month basis.

So please don't feel that you or anyone else is under any pressure.  You're definitely NOT at all.  It's merely a suggestion and offer.  If people like it, that's fine.  If they don't, that's fine too.  No personal "bruised feelings" either way.  And, although I am certainly not rich, no bankruptcy either, at least not on account of these small initial steps.

Thanks for explaining a bit more, that's helpful.

I'll wait now until I discuss with Lancelot things we might have missed considering.

Regards,
Galapo.

I do like the idea of consolidating things. One place where a webpage, updates, and packages is served from. It would make using the php scripts I sent you quite easy and convenient since the ZIP packages would not need to be then uploaded to virtech.org. This is what I had dreamed of for the server I had set up, but at the time I was also hosting the LiveXP project and it was beyond my resourses (over 10gb per day). That's why we went to mediafire to host the ZIP packages.

Yes, I think it would make a lot of sense in many ways, total file mangement access with completely independent admin control for each "client's" project being an important one.  (See the HG hosting account features here.)  Looks to me to cover just about anything that any "client" might possibly want.  I think I could probably accommodate you and Chris easily under the "Aluminum" account level, but upgrading is easy if needed.

For the time being, however, I've tested the packaging scripts you provided and created one of my own for the copy/transfer process.  It all seems to work quite well.  One or both of us will need to help Chris to adapt your packaging scripts for his own project, but the copy/transfer script is more or less universal. Either GNU wget or PHP5 file_put_contents works fine and they seem equally speedy; so I'm inclined toward the latter as a "native" PHP function.

What I'll be doing next is to add a password protected admin folder to each of the two subdomains and put the copy/transfer script there to be used whenever either of you update one or more of the packages on your own respective project servers.  I think a password protected admin folder is more secure than including plain text login names and passwords in the scripts themselves.  It also avoids multiple logins if we add other admin scripts later.  Agreed?

Thanks Arvy,

Happy to help any way I can and, since my developer skills are strictly amateur, I thought this might be a good way.

Anyhow, if you are also in agreement, along with Galapo and Chris, I think I might as well get started on setting up that server.  That still doesn't impose any final commitment on anyone, but the initial server configuration will take a few days and it will give anyone interested a chance to examine the "real thing" close up as the set-up work progreses.

--
Note for ChrisR:  You may want to consider registering your own domain to be able to take full advantage of a "virtual server" for yourself.  Just a suggestion, definitely not required, but the registrars I use (1and1.com) are quite inexpensive and the registrations there, unlike some others, are completely under your own control, including their DNS settings.

Hi Arvy,

before doing things....
I feel you are the one who have the most free time around ;) .....

Although you wrote pebuilder name taken to get a start and can be changed easly, please think about nicer name. pebuilder is verrrrr....rrrrrrrry wrong name.

Let me share things in my mind with Galapo first, I know you have difficutly to catch reading basic englished loooong posts and feeling you also misunderstand......

I am truely exciting and greatly thankful to you for providing such thing  thanks again. 

As I have tried to explain repeatedly, the server name is NOT an issue for ANYONE.  You're much too hung up on "branding", or whatever you want to call it.  You can use ANY NAME YOU WISH for your own part of it.  Honestly!!!  Don't you believe me about that? 

Even the primary server domain itself can have A THOUSAND NAMES, if anyone wants to register them all and point them all to the same place.  Choose anything you like.  I'm not going to get into a months-long naming debate.  Life's too short.  Sheesh!

You can use ANY NAME YOU WISH for your own part of it.

Although you wrote pebuilder name taken to get a start and can be changed easly,

I know you have difficutly to catch reading basic englished loooong posts

Correction, also short ones  .

I fully understand you Arvy, even my short post shows I understand you, doesn't it. 
As I initially wrote, that is the reason I want to contact Galapo first. 

and again (if missed), thank you. 

I can see now this is going to turn into a real hassle.  Just forget it.

I can see now this is going to turn into a real hassle.  Just forget it.

I agree, Just forget it.

I hope to find a little more time on the evening of next week.
For now, I'm busy with other things, childrens, summer weekend and after holidays.
and I have not followed everything.

For the name, it is true that pebuilder is too close to bartpe pebuilder and already widely used (eg: pebuilder.de).
I am torn between a descriptive name and a name without any real link, as Galapo and Lancelot did for Gena and The Oven (I like).

I have no knowledge about PHP development to write a packaging scripts to use on the project server.
I'll try, when I find a little time, to adapt Galapo's script (if you have a script up to date, I'm interested).

There are copies of Galapo's packaging scripts (along with the new copy/transfer script page) in that password protected win7pe.virtech.org/admin/ folder that I created for you.  You can get them there via either your FTP login or your HTTP login (just leave off the @virtech.org for the latter login) at:
http://win7pe.virtech.org/admin/GenGenaAppetizer.php,
http://win7pe.virtech.org/admin/GenGenaMeal.php, and
http://win7pe.virtech.org/admin/GenGenaSweetsAddOn.php.

You need to put one or more adapted packaging scripts on your own Win7PE SE server, of course.  Galapo's PHP coding is quite straightforward. The critical item for adaptation with appropriate includes and excludes is the line that begins:

Code: [Select]

echo htmlentities(shell_exec("zip" ...

As for the generic pebuilder.org/net name that I chose for setting up the server, I simply refuse to waste any more time arguing about something that matters to no one else at all.  Yes, I have some free time left on this earth (I hope), but endless obsessive debates about trivialities isn't my idea of a useful way to spend it.  My decision is made and is registered on the world wide web.  It's a done deal. For the time being, they're both just "parked" on my virtech.org server.  And if anybody's not sure what domain parking means, don't worry about that either.  It's just a temporary expedient, with absolutely no horrendous earth-shattering implications for the world wide web or its users.

IF I proceed with setting up the new server and IF others (including pebuilder.de) want to join pebuilder.net at any point, that's entirely up to them.  But no one is forced to use that name if they don't want to, neither now nor at any other time, regardless of whether they take up the offer or not.  In your case, I see that you're still using mediafire for your updates anyhow.  So it's clearly all a matter of individual free choice, definitely including my own free choices, especially when they affect no one else.

Actually, the way this painfully slow so-called "Oven" has been working and not working intermittently today, I think some of its "Chefs" should probably be paying more attention to that than to my own inconsequential and largely irrelevant naming decisions which aren't up for endless further debate anyhow.   In fact, that is my FINAL word on that aspect of my offer.

The next decision on where we go from here (if anywhere) is now up to the potential initial beneficiaries -- i.e., the currently designated PE project managers themselves.  So it's over to you and Galapo for a definite answer one way or the other.  Assuming you both to be the masters of your own free choices, it should be a pretty easy one to make.  You either want to "graduate" from a subdomain on my personal server to a server where you can exercise TOTAL CONTROL over your own virtual share of it, or you don't.  It really is that simple.

Hi Richard,

I think we need to clarify a few things for people.

As far as I'm aware, the domain name pebuilder.org/net is for setup purposes, which we can use or not use. Right? That is, in order to "host" something you have to have an address.

However, we are free to add on domains currently registered or registered in the future, but hosted on the server which for setup and personal preferances (totally fine with me ) has been given one of the two domains above. Right?

The beauty of this is that we can host everything at the one place, whether we use the address pebuilder.org/net or any other domain names we currently have which we can add on and have hosted (theoven.org being an example). Right?

Thanks,
Galapo.

Short answer: Yes.

Slightly longer answer: Total control means total control.  Please look again at all those hosting service features that I linked in my answer to you above.  Your partner, Lancelot, claims that he already understood my previous explanations, but obviously didn't, not really.

Frankly, the only other time I've ever encountered such a big fuss over such entirely unimportant naming issues (for a stupid server, of all things) was when I was doing a job for a federal Minister of the Crown (in right of Canada) whose bureaucrats would spend weeks (literally) arguing about whether some esoteric position should be called "Coordinator of XYZ" or "XYZ Coordinator" until I finally persuaded the Minister himself that he could have either progress or obsessive petty bureaucrats, but not both. 

 

Thanks, hopefully that clarifies things for those involved.

It means naming is NOT an issue. Everyone is free to name things as they please. This is all about consolidating the location and hosting of files to make administration of projects easier.

Regards,
Galapo.

Thanks, hopefully that clarifies things for those involved.

Well, I hope so too.  God knows I've tried my best.

In view of all the confused and confusing fuss up to now, however, I'm taking no further action until I get a clearcut AYE or NAY response from both you and Chris.  Besides, I haven't quite decided whether to start with the "Aluminum" or "Silver" package.  For that, I need some real data inputs, if we can ever get past this silly naming diversion.

Let's see what Chris says.

I'm for it personally -- so there's one vote. But I realise that this costs you money, so no pressure at all.

I'm also happy with virtech.org and what you've implemented there. It already makes things very easy to maintain.

Regards,
Galapo.

Well, there is more than one alternative.  I could open a separate hosting account for each of you like my own "unlimited" account with Hostgator.  If it's only going to be for one or two people,  that would actually cost less than what I was contemplating originally.  Either way, Chris would need a domain name for himself, which I've offered to take care of for him if he wants me to.

On the other hand, if you're both happy sharing my own server, there's nothing to stop us from changing that from subdomains to full domains of your choice either.  I can't give you total cPanel control there, however.