Could my site be hosted ad Dreamhost?

Hello,

I've been reading some posts at this forum but I still have some questions about your hosting.

My site is dedicated to share files of a Radio program called "La Rosa de los Vientos" at Onda Cero Radio (ondacero.es). They allow their audience to share their radio program (La rosa de los vientos) on the internet and they even encourage people to do it. I would like to know if your TOS allows hosting those files here.

My files are mp3/asf but compressed in RAR format with a size from 0.5 MB to about 20-25 mb each one maximum. I do not want mp3 podcasts because the files are rather old (between years 2001 and 2004). The website is all in html with basic and minimalist layout, only one image and the rest is text. No forums and only the webmaster email account, so the bandwith used is mostly for the rar files.

The last 3 months I had an average of 70 visitors/day and not all download the files, with a monthly bandwith of 300/380 GB being used. The problem is that every day 5 or 6 different users download everything as if the next day the internet should close with a result of 2.5 GB used bandwith each one. I do not see a problem here because you offer a big amount of bandwith that I will never use.

But One question is, if those users use some download managers and have 12 or 14 files downloading at the same time, could it be a problem consuming a lot of server resources? To avoid that, could I use some script to force the downloads to a maximum of 2 or 3 files each time for each user/IP and have a track of the downloads? I think that "Count it good" could be fine to control it.

Also, is there a day bandwith limit or a day hits limit? And is there a Script php/CGI time limit? If using count it good I'm not sure what would it be that used time.

I'd appreciate your suggestions. Thanks,

Marina

In your case, I think as far as your content is legal to share through Internet, there will be no problem. Your main usage is bandwidth and diskspace which is more than enough here. Downloading will not use up much CPU/RAM which is shared between different host in same server and so will not cause much problem.

So, I think Dreamhost is very suitable for your case.

If the radio program allows this then you would be entitled to do this I don't imagine it would violate the TOS at dreamhost, basically as long as it is legal you should be ok.

There is no daily bandwidth limit but it is possible to set up limits (monthly I think) if you want.

I imagine it would be possible to limit the number of downloads, I'm sure someone else will know how, and it may be a good idea as people wanting to download everything would have to stay at your site longer.

Don't forget to specify that content is legal on your website.

Dreamhost may look at websites with really high bandwidth usage to check if the content provided is legal.

I would suggest also adding a link to the radio station site showing that they allow this

I had a similar site, but for podcast (like... we begin when the "podcast" term wasn't created)... and use mp3 without compresion, also had less hits, but have actually no problem with Bandwidth.
http://cobacha.animeproject.org/audio In spanish.

Others have already provided excellent recommendation regarding hosting the files at DreamHost. If you're really worried about bandwidth or being nice, you could consider both directly hosting files as well as providing links to the files hosted at one of the free file hosting sites like QuickSharing.

Also, you might want to contact Dreamhost to get the official answer on this, as this is a primarily customer-to-customer forum, and we can only speculate on how they'd respond. You can use the form here:

http://www.dreamhost.com/contact.cgi

Thank you all your your help. Most of my doubts are anwsered and I'll do as you suggest contacting Dreamhost for an oficial anwser. And yes, I'll point them to the Radio owners webs first.

Vicm3, may be you know that radio program I spoke about. they have a section where they talk every saturday night about comics and sometimes about anime or manga :)

Thanks again,

Marina

But there's a problem on QuickSharing.com and that's if any file isn't downloaded atleast once a month it'll be deleted. Its a bigger problem because every file may or maybe be downloaded once a month. I think its better on box.net if you store files less than/equals to 10mb. There's no bandwidth limit and also files will not be deleted if its not downloaded atleast once every 30 days. Box.net provides 1gb space on free account. But is there any other file hosting provider with larger space plus box.net's all features?

Exclusive promo codes:
FUN=$97 off
FUN55=150% disk space & bandwidth
FUN6=xtra 6 domain
FUNIP=1 IP $60 off
FUN1D=200% disk space

Just posting to say that I've just asked for a plan hosting, changed dns, deleted domain from previous host and upload an index page diferent from the old one (no more than 30 minutes) and dns are working, the page loads and email works fine. Cool! Now I can test a couple scripts.

Thanks again for your help,

Marina
http://rosa-ventorum.net

Welcome to DreamHost and good to know that all is working fine for you.

Welcome =) I am sure you will enjoy your stay

Save