Feasibility of small biz owner getting a server

[truedelphi]

My husband runs a small publishing company.
Any advise or comments appreciated.
We are considering getting a server, which through connections I can probably purchase for $ 600 or less.

Then we can use an email list we purchased to use to drum up a customer base. We currently have this email list on "hold" - if we use it now, the customers that feel they are being spammed never contact us, but contact our server-for hire organization, and that org doesn't have the ability to tell us who complained about being spammed. So then we can not use the list again - as if we contact more than ten people who wanted to be removed from the list, they can complain and have our whole website shut down. (We have had extensive conversations about this with server-for-hire org - they really cannot let us know who wants off the email list, or so they say.)

Is is possible for a small husband/wife team to get a server up and running? Will we be able to run our entire website off of it? How much knowledge or skill would we need to do that?

Servers are very dependable, correct? They do not break down frequently, or so I have been told.

Any breakdown, and unless the warranty operated in a magnificent fashion, and we would be screwed.

Again, advise and comments appreciated.

[ChromeFoundry]

1. Generally, yes.. you can do all of these things... BUT

(there are a lot of buts)

You will have to configure the server OS, applications, build and host a website, setup an email server, come up with a maintenance plan, purchase a UPS, firewall the server (requires networking knowledge), constantly install patches for OS & apps, hardware driver updates, run backups.

Would you be running this in your business or home environment? You will need a bit of bandwidth (mostly Upload for web sites and mailing lists pushes). If you are sharing this bandwidth, your local computers may have an effect on the availability of the site (i.e. streaming content, downloads, Windows Update, etc...).

If you could get by with renting a hosted virtual server with your own domain (such as something found on Go Daddy or others) you may have a lot less headaches. I'm not sure how technical you are, but expect that your email contact info displayed on the site will get a lot of SPAM daily, and you will get hundreds of script kiddies trying to hack into your website hourly. Please don't store credit cards on your server...you don't need that type of liability.

If you are buying a server and renting rack space, this may be a bit less challenging if the provider does any of the maintenance of the server (usually they only do this if you lease from them directly).

For email list publishing, I would contract through a third party as to not get your domain name blacklisted if you are sending out frequent media blasts.

Just my $.02, hope it helps.

[RoyGBiv]

3. This is good advice ...

A note about script kiddies to provide some bit of perspective.

When I enable my Apache server, it logs about 2 port scans per minute, and this is a server that is not attached to a static domain name, rather a quasi-static name that gets updated with my dynamic/shared IP information daily. And, it gets basically no real traffic. I just use it for personal stuff and open it occasionally for friends or colleagues to facilitate doing some project. It's offline the vast majority of the time.

I had it up one day for about twelve hours and had two different people in different parts of the world trying to attack Apache with old hacks.

What a real server has to deal with every day is orders of magnitude more obnoxious, as you of course know.

[truedelphi]

5. Thank you for the good advice. You say:

If you could get by with renting a hosted virtual server with your own domain (such as something found on Go Daddy or others) you may have a lot less headaches. I'm not sure how technical you are, but expect that your email contact info displayed on the site will get a lot of SPAM daily, and you will get hundreds of script kiddies trying to hack into your website hourly. Please don't store credit cards on your server...you don't need that type of liability.


I am not sure if we are renting a hosted virtual server. I need to see if that is the case. (We use Webmasters.)

[ChromeFoundry]

6. I mentioned a "Virtual Server"...

only because the costs are dramatically less and there are some benefits. Most companies do not require the power of a dedicated server. The virtual environment makes it very easy for your hosting provider to take a snap-shot of the current environment and move it to a more powerful server in a matter of minutes, rather than days. The drawback is that your virtual server is susceptible to the actions being performed on the other virtual servers on the same box. Most providers cap performance across the virtual servers so that they do not degrade the other environments running on the hardware.

[RoyGBiv]

2. This is a high knowledge situation ...

Running a web server is not for the uninitiated. An e-mail server can, in some situations, be even more problematic.

This is not to say it can't be done because it certainly can, but, to be blunt, if you're not sure if you can do it already, you probably can't until you immerse in learning about the subject. There's a reason people hire others to do this for them.

I have a LAMP server that works for certain purposes, but I don't keep it running because, while I understand the basics, I don't have the time, energy, or knowledge to maintain it 24/7 and hope to keep my system secure.

Out of curiosity, do the e-mails you end out to your list not have a clearly displayed opt-out notice on them that directs back to an automated process for removing them from the list?

If all you have is contact information with some sort of comment that you'll remove them from the list if they ask you, that could be the source of one of the problems. People won't do this, nor will they fill out web based forms to do it. Both those methods are actually used by real SPAMmers to create lists of e-mail addresses that go to a real person, which has caused people not to trust them. A SPAMmer will acquire a list of hundreds of thousands of e-mail addresses, send out SPAM with an opt-out notice that requires the recipient to enter their e-mail address or e-mail someone directly asking to be removed, and they'll then take this list of "good" addresses and sell it to someone.

Anyway, the most people will do is click a link that leads to an automated removal process, i.e. all they have to do is click the link, and your system takes care of the rest. (Never mind that this could be used for the same purpose as above, but for whatever reason, people don't think that way.)

[truedelphi]

4. We do have the "Click here to opt out link"

But people will not do that, they have been reporting to the website that hosts us, and then the website host can get mad at us. But again as said in the OP, the website host will not divulge the names of those who complained to them, or who asked them to scrub their names off the list.

So we can only use each list we purchase once - otherwise we have been told we can be shut down.

So I guess since we need touse the email lists, and we cannot really afford the time and energy to run a server ourselves (Learning SQL etc) I don't know what to do. If there was some website hosting outfit that WOULD tell us the names of those asking to be scrubbed from the list, that would be great.

But every one I have contacted says that if complaints or requests to be scrubbed come to them,
they cannot pass the info on to us.

[Why Syzygy]

9. Are you at least

building an opt in mail list? Maybe rather than opt out, you should write the email blast as a "one time only" UNLESS, they choose to click a link to go to your site and opt in. The returns will be small, but at least you might salvage a fraction of each email list. Does your host give you email accounts with your own domain name? Or is it 'trudelphi@*their domain*.com'?

[truedelphi]

10. We have our own domain name. However, I am beginning to

Suspect that rather than use the text link that the domain and website host supplies, and that automatically deletes users when they click on it, my husband designed something he thought was "cuter" or more creative.

And thus people were suspicious and didn't use his link to get scrubbed from list. Instead they contact the web host.

[Why Syzygy]

11. How do they know who the web host is?

IOW,if your email address is TD @ YOUR DOMAIN NAME, the complaints should come to you?
Or is it TD @ YOUR WEB HOST?

Yeah, people don't trust "cute" in unsolicited mail.

[hunter]

7. I'll say it also -- you don't want to run your own server.

The server and bandwidth are cheap but it's like leaving a good bicycle in a bad neighborhood.

[CK_John]

8. Before you get into any tech stuff take care of the ownership and legal stuff first.

Can you access and make a copy of every file contain on your web site and any support file. Many times the small print in lease agreement may transfer ownership/control of files to the service provider.

[truedelphi]

12. Good advice. We are very careful about that.

Due to my writing for a publication that was also posted on the internet, I always determine if some "Cheap easy web host service" has a clause taking ownership of anything posting on it.