Running a Cool Personal Site? Get Two Months Free Hosting

[retep]

Are you using your RimuHosting server to run a personal web site? Want two month's free hosting?

We're looking for sites that are getting their RimuHosting servers to do something different and interesting. We will pick one site and give them two month's free hosting.

All you need to do is describe your site setup (e.g. using Horde/vBulletin/MovableType/custom PHP/Java webapps). Tell us a bit about how you went about setting it up (e.g. what howtos you followed, what software you needed to compile or apt-get install). Include a link to your site (so it needs to be a public site).

For right now we are just looking at personal (not business) websites.

You can post your info here in this topic. Or, if you are shy, email it to us at support at rimuhosting com with a "site contest" subject line.

We will feature some of the entries on the RimuHosting.com site to give an idea of the things fow which people are using their servers.

[swiftset]

I'm using my site as a blog with bonuses :)--

The blog, ChapterZero ( http://tangentspace.net/cz/ ) is powered by WordPress software, with the LaTeXRender plugin. I wrote a plugin for WP, IllustRender, so I can type in Postscript or MetaPost code directly into my posts and have them rendered. I blog mostly about interesting math (yes, there is such a thing!) and programming.

I also installed teTeX so I can write notes and assignments wherever I am, and not have to worry about carrying a flash drive around. My notes are located at http://tangentspace.net/mathnotes/ and the assignments are at http://tangentspace.net/hw/

I use Firefox at home and on several different computers/accounts at school, so I have it set up to store my bookmarks in XBEL format to the site so I can keep them synchronized. Currently, I'm trying to figure out a way to display them nicely yet dynamicly. So far, my best attempt is with XSL: http://tangentspace.net/xperiment.xml

Alex

[FuguTabetai]

I purchsed a virtual host so I could essentially set myself up with an email address that would be permanent. Thanks to placey's excellent how-to on this forum (http://forums.rimuhosting.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=38) I have an authenticating secure IMAP mail server for myself.

The other thing I do with my server is host some personal sites. One riffs a bit on my old alma mater's site on the fraternity system at Southern Methodist University: http://www.smugreeks.com vs http://www.smugeeks.com/, and the other is a place where I host some fan translations I do of Japanese manga.

The interesting thing there is that I translate manga using a program I wrote in Java for distributed manga translation using a client-server approach (Great Manga Application Onidzuka (http://FuguTabetai.com/software/GMAO/)), but since I only wrote a graphical server, and it is pretty memory hungry anyway using JAXP for XML parsing, I don't run that on the VPS. It is open source and is hosted on the 3rd website I run off my VPS though. I would like to set up some blog software for fugutabetai.com, but haven't had the time and don't know what plays nice with the memory restrictions here.

I do host some interesting output of the manga translation program that I thought would be useful for Japanese language learners, but that never seemed to pick up steam. When you move your mouse over a translated Japanese bubble on a scan of the image, my translation will pop up (http://mangatranslation.com/images/dogs01/contents.html.) If SVG were better supported I would like to do something interesting with that, but I still can't even find a way to display SVG inline on a linux browser.

I think swiftset's latex-aware blog is cooler though.

[UnrulyGrrl99]

I use Firefox at home and on several different computers/accounts at school, so I have it set up to store my bookmarks in XBEL format to the site so I can keep them synchronized. Currently, I'm trying to figure out a way to display them nicely yet dynamicly.

Sounds like a perfect situation for either: http://www.blinkpro.com or http://www.furl.net.
Both allow you to import and export entries. Both let you use little javascript snippets to dynamically generate
html based on your bookmarks. Furl lets you easily style the output with style sheets. BlinkPro is a few dollars a month,
but Furl is totally free, and it can save copied of web pages, not just keep bookmarks. To see some styled Furl entries, check out
my site (which is definitely not worthy of the 'coolest site'): http://unrulygrrl.org/css.html

[placey]

I use my Rimu host for a number of things.

I removed the Sendmail server that comes with Rimu and set up a Postfix server instead. The Postfix server can handle multiple virtual hosts (somesite.com, someothersite.org) with virtual users (don't have to have an account on my host). The SMTP server session is encrypted (STARTSSL) and relaying is not allowed. I use Dovecot for secure IMAP (not POP) access to mail and Squirrelmail over SSL for Web access. I also use OpenLDAP for authentication and Cyrus-SASL becuase Postfix needs it. Finally, I use Jamm to create new hosts and users.

I wrote up the whole long process of getting this installed, and posted it to my web site here: http://wanderingbarque.com/howtos/mailserver/mailserver.html. It's a pretty popular HOWTO, getting about 900 unique visitors a month.

I also use VirtualHosts on my Web Server to host a simple site for a friend who's a musician: http://patrickdurkin.com and my sister who runs a small business: http://annlaceydesigns.com (though that's currently redirected off site). Of course, I also host my own site: http://wanderingbarque.com. Outside of the mailserver HOWTO mentioned above, I host two blogs powered by WordPress (and MySQL) for myself (http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting) and my wife (http://wanderingbarque.com/everfixedmark).

I also setup Apache as a WebDAV server that allows my wife and I to sync our OS/X calendars. Finally, I've installed AWStats to keep an eye on how my site is doing. I'll expand that some more soon to watch the other sites I host and my mail server.

For now that's it. In the near future I will be hosting reference implementations of a new XML-based, Tuple Spaces server I'm working on called Moxie. I might host the source here too using Subversion, but I may use Sourceforge instead.

Pete

[alexander]

Hi,

I am using my VPS for several things. I have setup
Qmail + Vpopmail + Qmailadmin +Vqadmin + Courier IMAP + MySQL + Squirrelmail + Qmailscanner+ Clamav, Bitdefender and Perlscan +Spamassassin and other stuff to have virtual domains created by Webmin + virtualmin to have antivirus and antispamm protection.
Now I have Qmailmrtg to monitor e-mails. I also use it as a back-up e-mail server for my company e-mail server.
I have used a number of how-tos. For Q-mail the base how-to was taken from www.qmailrocks.org and then modified. Users can connect only via secure IMAP/POP3 (with exeption of Squirrelmail frol localhost).

I have to say a few words about Squirrelmail which has been tweaked completely. First, all users are redirected to SSL page to enter username/pass and then redirected to a normal webpage at 80 port.

Second, squirrelmail is completely based on MySQL together with "bookmarks" which I prefer to keep there, spellchecker and HTML editor.

Next, I have setup rsync for Windows and use VPS as a backup stuff for my home server. I monitor the status of the VPS via www.shestakovsky.me.uk/SystemStats2

Also I use vsftpd to store various files from my office PC / home PC..
I used to host a forum flash + php + mysql, but do not do this any more.
Also I used to have powerdns + webinterface but do to some downtime, I decided to host everything in Rimu DNS manager - its very simple and easy to use!

Finally, I am running Nagios to monitor ports on VPS and also monitor my clients servers together with SMS notification from http://www.world-text.com/

MySQL is managed from my WindowsXP PC with MySQL Control Centre and
locally with a help of phpmyadmin.

To recap: I am using my VPS for a number of purposes mainly these are relaying/receiving e-mails/backup/monitoring/testing php/asp/mysql/webdeveloping/hosting.

to do list:
-I am developing an ASP Photo Gallery and would like to have it running on my VPS by installing Chilli ASP.
- backing up the whole VPS on another VPS via rsync!
- developing php + html address/ phone book. Though I can use the one in Squirrelmail for the time being
- setting up a script to backup MySQL from my home server to my VPS
(mostly done!)

The 'to do list' is constantly growing! ;-)

Cheers

[SpaceAdmiral]

I am hosting 3 sites with my VPS (using Apache virtual hosts), although one of them isn't 'live' yet. You can see my personal site at http://www.fanehenderson.com.

I only put that site live a few days ago, so I highly doubt I have a chance at this contest. . . but feel free to check out my site and let me know what you think. There isn't a whole lot of content at this point and it's a work in progress. I plan on posting reviews of video games and books (at the time of this writing, I have posted 2 of each) in addition to anything else I think someone might find interesting.

Believe it or not, I really am a PHP programmer. However, FaneHenderson.com isn't spectacular, since it's just something for fun. (It's much easier to do quality work when someone is paying you to spend 40 hours a week on it).

My reviews and blog entries are stored in MySQL, as are visitors' comments about them. The pages use PHP not only for the comments et cetera, but also to randomize some of the text. (The "fine print" when you submit comments is randomized as is one of the pictures on the home page).

I spent a lot of time developing in Linux (when I was a student in University), but until I got my VPS from RimuHosting I was unfamiliar with even the most basic of Linux admin tasks (and I'm still very novice). So I'm quite happy with the tutorials:

I used the RimuHosting tutorials to set up Sendmail properly, including using virtusertable and aliases, and to set up my Apache Virtual Hosts. I also used the tutorials to get the newest version of MySQL (at the time I tried that, the tutorial was slightly out of date, but I emailed support@rimuhosting.com and they replied quickly with the extra information I needed). I even used the tutorials to set up Tomcat, although, since then, I made the decision to use PHP rather than JSP.

I'm also using the RimuHosting DNS servers and the Backup MX service.

[umdenken]

I'm hosting a personal site for myself, which is an online demo for me as a musician: http://robertstuart.info

I did all the coding by hand, using CSS as much as possible. It's being served by Apache, and I did the graphics with gimp.

A very simple, but effective site...

[alezhkin]

I am looking for good java hosting for mama.by.
I'm having big troubles with my current hosting (energizedhosting) :(( and can not setup my web-application. 2 free months idea and VPS solutions will be very good for my site :)

Now you can visit only my forum http://forum.mama.by

[alezhkin]

and i'm using hibernate & struts :)