Hello Karen and MTGenWeb,
I understand that you are considering hosting your main state site with
AccessGenealogy. I thought I'd share with you the same offer I make any
GenWeb or other non-profit project which needs hosting.
There is a cost to host with AccessGenealogy. It comes in the form of a link
from the main index page of any state or county hosted, acknowledging that
the state or county is hosted by AccessGenealogy. That's it. You can make
that link say whatever you'd like about us. I believe, a long time ago, that
was also the sole requirement to host at RootsWeb, and that's all that I've
ever required.
You will be hosting on a dual Xeon server with 3 redundant hard-drives. What
that means is I'll have a working backup copy on hand if you need it. If a
hard-drive goes bad, we have 2 hard-drives which already have the same
information on them, and there would be zero or minimal down-time. In the
event that all the hard-drives are corrupted in some manner, then I would
utilize a good copy on the backup drive.
You can maintain the
mtgenweb.org domain and all counties wishing, can be
hosted as a folder within it:
www.mtgenweb.org/countyname/
No website is ever free completely from the issues that have caused problems
with mtgenweb. The only way to completely protect a server from intrusion is
to take it offline; so in that spirit, all servers can be compromised, and
most at one time or another are. There are things which can be done however,
which can prevent the nuisance of amateur hackers. I run a firewall around
our server. For the most part this firewall will act invisibly in your
behalf, until you attempt to login 3 times in a row with the wrong login
details. Then it will completely block you out. A simple email to me,
however, and I can reinstate the account (the online site will not be
affected, only the ability of the specific county or state to login). This
is done to prevent a hacker from using brunt force program to guess a
password.
I have a dedicated support team which monitors the server, upgrades the
software for me, and basically gets me out of any jam I may get myself
into... I have learned over the years that it was cheaper for me to hire
this out, then it was for me to do it myself. I have entirely enough gray
hair already!
Currently we provide free hosting for
orgenweb.org,
algw.org, and several
county genweb sites. We have been quietly providing them with hosting now
for several years, and during that period the server has remained trojan and
virus free. I would like to continue that record... :-) As such I provide
the following suggestions to everyone hosting with me:
1) Please set your Windows program to AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE. Insure that it
checks at least once a week at Microsoft for any updated software.
2) Please set your Adobe programs to AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE. The #1 trojan
that I'm aware of currently is attacking older versions of Adobe Acrobat PDF
Reader... please insure that you're upgraded!
3) Microsoft now has a free anti-virus program called Microsoft
Essentials... please insure that you're running a current definition of
which ever antivirus program you're running.
4) All passwords will be assigned by the server. These passwords are
intended to be difficult...
5) If ANY of your home computers are infected with a virus or trojan, please
let me know the name of the trojan or virus so that I can check to see if
your login has been compromised.
I await your response.
Best Wishes,
Dennis
On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 9:35 AM, Karen De Groote-Johnson <
iagenieme(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Judy, yours is the site I was pondering very seriously. If we
can
still use
mtgenweb.org which we have registered than I would certainly
like
to investigate this further.