This blog article deals with the question, where you might host your project. Whether self hosting, free hosting and if free hosting, where? There are somethings you should think about.

Just use your shared hosting account…

When you’re starting a new project, the decision to host it on your own webspace, which is usually a shared webhosting account. This may not be the best solution. When your project grows, then you might get help and you probably want other people to help you with maintaining the homepage. Do you want to give them your credentials which also has access to your private homepage?

When your project does a new release and get’s slashdotted, then your hoster might get angry or force you into a bigger webspace contract. With more users you might need more bandwidth, more memory and maintaining the software that runs the homepage might lead to a bigger workload too when you switch from a static homepage with a webforum to a full blown CMS.

You’ll also need a version control system for your sourcecode and a bugtracker to keep track of the bugreports. Maintaining these for yourself maybe pretty painful if you don’t have much time or experience with this kind of administration.

Long story short: When you’re not an administrator, decide if you are really capable of maintaining the site in the long run.

Free project hosting – but where?

There are plenty of hosting sites out there. I just want to point out two sites that are outstanding in my point of view. Of course the other sites like berlios etc. are fine as well. The hosting sites offer unlimited bandwith, preinstalled software for most tasks (version control system, bugtracker, tasktracker, …), backups and a fine grained permission system to be able to split the work among the team.

The big old man in project hosting is sourceforge. Everybody will have downloaded software from there before. They offer easy project creation, bug-/task tracker, very (very) simple forums, simple news, downloads, limited shell access, cron jobs, Mailinglists etc. It’s the all you can eat buffet in project hosting. Not the best solutions, but a big selection of services.

[UPDATE: Kenai has been suspended. Looks like Oracle has not seen it's potential :-(]

A relatively new project hosting site that has been published during the JavaOne from sun in 2008 is Project Kenai. The concept is very nice. They use standard software and provide a homogeneous web-interface. They offer Mercurial/Subversion/Git for version control, Bugzilla/Jira for Bug-/Tasktracking, mailinglists, Wiki, forums, … And you can access them vie their regular API, which is especially with jira neat, because the Mylyn integration is great. The project are not limited to java projects, it can be every technology. Have a look, it’s really nice.

In short: If you don’t want to do everything on your own, consider free project hosting, especially in distributed projects.

Dedicated server for the project

When cthe project grows you might have special needs. Then a dedicated server might be the best solution. You are not bound to the memory/cpu constraints of shared webhosting and you have free choice of the installed software. But you need to have good administration skills (in your project). Backups and security of the installation are important things to keep in mind. It’s one of the publicity nightmares for projects when the sourcecode or the downloadable files are compromised by hackers. Take this seriously or your efforts of building a great product are wasted. As a summary: Dedicated servers are risky, but they offer the most freedom. Take your choice.

Conclusion

There are many choices for project hosting. Every option has some advantages or disadvantages. Most projects will be served best by choosing free project hosting, but the other two options also have their charme.

early-phase · hosting · introduction · talk

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