Hello everyone. I am developing IsMyWebsite as a partnership with EvenHosting and am trying to get some input. Firstly some ideas I have:

Your account starts as a Noob account. After 3 weeks of activity and a good site built up, you are advanced to a Basic account. From there you can advance to an Advanced account, and finally a lucky few should make it to a Pro account. At every stage your site will be reviewed by experienced volunteers. Using this approach, I can give more system resources to those deserving of it, and help weed out the less deserving sites.

My second idea was to allow individuals to have almost full control over the placement and colouring of their ads. I realize this has a lot of potential for abuse, so anyone deliberately hiding or inappropriately displaying ads will be shut down the moment it is noticed without warning.

Other features I was planning:
• Sub domain(yoursite.ismywebsite.com)
• PHP support(limited in Noob account)
• HTML editor
• File Upload
• FTP(for Basic, Advanced, and Pro accounts)
• Auto-forwarder Email Address(yoursite@ismywebsite.com)
• MySQL support
• Noob 10MB storage space, Basic 100 MB, Advanced 1000 MB, Pro 10000 MB
• Noob 100 MB monthly transfer, Basic 1 GB, Advanced 10 GB, 100 GB Pro
• Forum for webmasters
• Link Exchange Program
• Custom Error Page(after Noob)
• Statistical Analysis

Is there anything I should add? Any thoughts?

How are you planning to monitor ad abuse? Free hosts tend to get a lot of clients..

As I already said, if I catch them it's instant ban without notification. If it gets to be too much I plan to add a small bar at the top saying 'If you cannot see ads below, click here to report the site' or something along those lines and visitors can report the site to help me out.

Anyways if a site decides to be annoying then whatever. It's going to stay a Noob account because it needs a review to advance to Basic, and a Noob account does not require very much server resources. Sooner or later they will get caught and the more traffic the higher the likelihood. The longer it takes the more of their site they have to rebuild later.

How are you planning to cover server costs from this. If you have loads of people on Normal or advanced accounts your gonna be killing yourself and demand would be huge. I mean i guess as its a freehost you could over allocate recources. But even if ads are on each site for you will it recoup server charges?

on Pro you could give SSH if possible. is always something that does not exits on regular free hosts :P

i was thinking of doing the same thing i mean it is a good idea offer blog hosting and forum hosting too and only give them web wased admin acces with restr. on noob acc for example


if you guys have more ideaskeep posting something fruitfull must come

i am also thinking of offering ebay related hosting for free new ideas of what you guys would like tp have or requests for a free account just pm me

Wow the input I am recieving on this forum is the best so far out of any of them. Other forums its just 'good idea' or 'more space' but here you guys actually have a lot of good suggestions.

Nickcarswell: Advertising is going to be the main source of revenue. I have noticed a lot with other free hosts that ads are placed in obstructive locations that would not warrant click and basically make the site look horrible. But with IsMyWebsite and users being able to place ads themselves and work them into their design, the result would most likely end up as more traffic and more clicks.

Also I am working with Evenhosting, which already has hosting contracts with many sites and the necessary resources already available for use, so costs are greatly reduced. And of course there is the over allocation as well. Evenhosting has assured me they have all the necessary space and system resources and would even be willing to upgrade the server if necesary for this project. Really nice people...

Ttechpt: Not sure what SSH is. But if I’m going to include it I would probably include it for both Advanced and Pro accounts. I’ll check with Evenhosting on this.

Icotico: Blog and forum hosting would be pretty easy to do using PHP. I plan to include code snippets for websites and one of them could be for ‘pre-baked’ forum or blog code.

Update: Anyone interested can now join the mailing list to recieve an email when IsMyWebsite finally launches at http://www.ismywebsite.com/

I would love that - but would it be secure for the host??

From what I can find out on the internet, it's basically some kind of remote access. From what I see of it if it is included it would be for Pro and maybe Advanced accounts. Is it just a protocol or what software is necessary to run it? If it costs a lot it may have to serve as a later addition to the hosting plans.

Have just completed a new layout for the site. Any thoughts on it?

How will you manage all this *FREE*????