Floyd: New sites

Web sites at otala.com

New web sites are accepted into the Floyd system at no cost, provided that they meet our criteria:

No high volume commercial sites
No spam, or site hijacking

Features:

Web site (domain, subdomain or start page)
Unlimited number of forwarding email aliases, first come first served basis for name collisions
POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP mail protocols for local mailboxes
Spam filtering
2 Gigabytes of storage (web, mail and logs) per site
Local Unix account for SSH, TELNET and FTP access
Access and error logs via web interface
Scripting in sh, Perl, Java along with Servlets, JavaServerPages (JSP) and PHP3
Password restricted pages, directory pages
I'm also working on:
- Streaming media (Real audio, real video)
- Mailing lists (Majordomo)

Support and service wise you basically get what you pay for... and since you don't pay anything... well, it's not that bad -- really. I try to help friends whenever I have the time.
However, unlike other "free places" on the net... Here you (and your visitors) don't get spammed to death, and there are no ads or other nasty windows popping up all the time.

To get a web site here, you have to be invited by someone in the otala.com or grandpeyrot.com domains. Then you need to set up details with me.

To register, or not to register?

One thing you might want to think about: you don't need a domain name to have a web site.
It is possible to have a subdomain (floyd.otala.com) or a start page (otala.com/floyd). In both cases, you get an URL (http://www.otala.net) which is the entry point to your web pages.
Then you can build all the rest from that starting point.

Domain: you get page access statistics (who visited, when, etc), and the URL is shorter.
Subdomain/start page: no cost at all, not even to InterNIC.

Of course, for a subdomain/start page to work out, you'll have to find a suitable domain (e.g. otala.com or grandpeyrot.com) and talk to the person in charge about getting a subdomain/start page. For domains and contacts.

How to register a new domain

Finally, the registration begins:

Go to Network solutions web site (you can click on the link, this window will remain open so you have the "required technical information available" while filling in the information)
Type the domain you want to register and click Go.
You should get a screen with Congratulations. You can also select additional names (not recommended), just click Continue
Now you should choose the Register (as opposed to Reserve since there'll be no web page with Reserve).
Fill in your name & address on the screen
Contact informationLeave Administrative and Billing contacts empty (unless you already have a "NIC handle") and fill your contact information in the "New contact information".
IMPORTANT: for Technical contact type TO236
Name Server Information
- Primary name server/Hostname: ns1.otala.com
- Primany name server/IP address: 63.242.247.75
- Secondary name server/Hostname: ns3.otala.com
- Secondary name server/IP address: 63.242.247.76
- 3rd name server/Hostname: ns1.granitecanyon.com
- 3rd name server/IP address: 205.166.226.38
- 4th name server/Hostname: ns2.granitecanyon.com
- 4th name server/IP address: 209.166.62.198
- Also, remember to add in your email address for the order confirmation status
Note... this is your last chance... this will cost you $70 for two years after which you can continue registration for $35/year.

That's it. This will register a domain name, which will be hosted at the otala.com system. New names become active in about 24 hours. Meanwhile, you should start thinking of some contents for the web page already. When I create a new site, I will merely put a "Site under construction" animated graphic along with the site name.
You can use products such as HotDog or FrontPage 98 or even Microsoft Word to write the contents (text & graphics) of your web page.
Along with the web site, I will also create a Unix login account so you can FTP transfer the contents of your web page.

Transferring an existing web site

It is fairly simple to transfer an existing site/domain name.
I will be adding instructions [shortly] on the procedure, but basically you go to the same Internic/NetworkSolutions web site and choose the "Make changes" option. Then you merely change the Primary & Secondary name servers as described above...
One thing to note, is that you may want to copy (utility called wget) the web site (if you had already built one) over. This is a very simple operation that will copy your existing entire site, so that it is ready at the new system when the name server change takes place.
Of course, if you have developed your web site on a PC/Mac, then you don't need to bother with this, merely upload the contents to the new site when you are ready.
Domain transfers can be performed so, that the new site is up & running before the change takes place. This way there will be no interruption in service. For a duration of about 24hrs people looking at the web site will "semi-randomly" end up at either the old or the new system, but if the contents are the same, then it doesn't matter where they end up.