[plt-scheme] Application with Scheme Language

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 9:16 AM, Geoffrey S. Knauth <geoff at knauth.org> wrote:
> situation is better than before, but these days I have to buy time on a
> virtual dedicated host completely under my control to set up PLT-based web
> servers.  If someone tells me, "use this ISP," I feel stuck.  Or, is there
> another way?

Hi Geoff,

The economics of being an ISP are poor when you're targeting a market
of 6-10 customers. For example, I could offer to set up a machine
where PLT Scheme for web hosting would "just work". However, I have to
handle backups, billing, security, updates, and a host of other things
just to keep the machine on the air. Unless, of course, those 6-10
brave souls are willing to pay for a service that might die and go
dark for days at a time. (That I can do easily... but it probably
isn't what you want.)

How much are you willing to pay per year to have a dedicated PLT host?
$900/year? More? Running an ISP for one customer is an expensive game.

If you don't actually want to throw large dollars at someone to be
your personal sysadmin, there are several ways you can do this:

0. To write web apps, any machine will do. I test and develop on my
Mac. No special services required. Linux or Windows will work as well.
You don't need an ISP for development. If you don't have an app
already, or aren't close to releasing one, worrying about an ISP is
moot.

1. Set up a VMWare/VirtualBox instance of Linux, and do your testing
locally. You don't have to worry about deployment until you are done,
or ready for public consumption. Get the VPS, set up PLT, do a
checkout of the code from your repository, and you're good to go. Set
up something like JungleDisk to route all of your data via rsync to
Amazon's S3 service, and you almost have a server you can sorta maybe
trust a bit, almost.

If you go this route, get a VM from Bytemark. They're open-source
friendly, and will knock 10% off your bill if you're writing/hosting
open-source code.

2. Find a friend who will be your sysadmin for you for
free-or-whatever-you-are-able-to-pay-when-you-can-whenever-that-is.
This has worked OK for some people I know.

If all of those sound like too much of your time to be worth it, then
you need to find someone who will accept your cash, and take the
responsibility of administration on for you.

Best of luck. Sysadmin work isn't particularly fun, unless you like
systems administration.

Cheers,
Matt