[AktiviX-discuss] CSC website hosting

[Alan]

Hi GDM

Thanks for your suggestions and all your points, very helpful.

I was told by the techie who arranged our move to loaned space and 
set-up it's security, that the hacking was due to the hosting company 
and not due to our CMS. Streamline.net was also just terrible to deal 
with (see http://streamlinereviews.wordpress.com/)

Still, my preference for hosting would be for a managed host (where I 
don't need to perform maintenance) but with a control panel, probably 
similar to what commercial hosts offer since that is what I am used to.
I can set-up and maintain the CMS.

Not sure about hosting in the states.. Colombian government is supported 
by U.S. government so would hosting there necessarily be safer for us? 
Also any delays with accessing the website from the UK

Though I work with Drupal myself and would prefer the site to be made 
with that, I think we're stuck Joomla due to the effort required with 
migration and that I've trained others to use the site.

We need to move off the server soon, though no deadline was given we 
want to get going with it as previously we've been asked about moving off.

Thanks
Alan

Garcon du Monde wrote:
> hello alan,
>
> On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 12:34:44AM +0100, Alan wrote:
>   
>> I was hoping to ask here for any advice or recommendations about secure  
>> web hosting for the Colombia Solidarity Campaign
>>
>> Our website in the past had been hacked due to poor server security (we  
>> were on commercial hosts streamline.net), and so it was moved to loaned  
>> server space setup with SSH and HTTPS web access which has worked well  
>> for us.
>>
>> The website runs on an old Joomla CMS install, with diskspace usage of  
>> about 170MB. The hosting would need PHP and a MYSQL database. It's not  
>> particularly demanding of server resources, the main thing is that we  
>> need it to be really secure.
>>
>> We need to be able to count on the hosting for privacy and security, and  
>> that the website wouldn't be deactivated for offending Colombian  
>> government supporters (our loaned server space got a letter along these  
>> lines).
>>
>> I'm not a sysadmin so I couldn't set-up and maintain a virtual server  
>> myself, but also I think the campaign could only justify hosting costs of 
>> £100 or so a year. Maybe Aktivix can offer hosting, which we would gladly 
>> pay for.
>>
>> Thanks for any suggestions you might have
>>     
>
> i am not sure what you mean by poor server security - i would imagine
> that a commercial host actually provides quite a bit stricter
> permissions than non-commercial, although maybe those restrictions
> also limit how you secure your website. 
>
> what i am saying is, do you want virtual server hosting (which you
> would have to maintain the server) or do you want an organisation that
> provides (and maintains) a web-cms that you can then use?
>
> the two suggestions i have are:
>
>  * tachanka.org - for hosting a virtual server with. 
>
>  * mayfirst.org - for hosting a website with (they provide drupal cms
>    for groups: allows the groups to do what they want, but then
>    mayfirst maintains the sites in terms of security updates, etc).
>
> in both cases, you'd need to ensure that you agreed with the principles
> of the relevant organisation (for example, tachanka:
> https://aerosan.tachanka.org/wiki/PublicAbout ).
>
> there are also other groups and individuals who maybe able to support
> you: some in the uk and some overseas. from what i've seen, though, it
> sounds like you would want to be based somewhere like the states which
> tends to have stronger freedom of speech laws than the uk.
>
> i hope that some of this is helpful to you, there are probably others
> on this list with different experiences to me. also, how soon do you
> plan to do this (sounds relatively urgent to me)?
>
> solidarity,
>
> 	--gdm