Free ColdFusion Hosting - Live to the public!

Do you know which CF engine and version the free hosting service uses please? Or how much disk space and bandwidth it provides?

It doesn't say if MS SQL Server is an extra cost or if MySQL is supported?

Thanks.

Hey Pablo, congrats on that. I've added it to my list of CF hosting alternatives (http://www.cf411.com/#cfhost)

One thought: where on your page you offer a link for those who want a development/sandbox version, it may help some readers if on that development page you start out by pointing out they can get CF free for development. There are really still many who don't know that. It would help with evangelism of CF to repeat that fact wherever we can. :-)

This sounds like quite an undertaking. Hope it works out well for you.

OK, on to more serious matters. :-) I really agree with the other comments above: it sure seems, Pablo, that you ought to have more info about the service available before signing up. I mean, there appear to be no links at all to any info about the service. Am I wrong?

As Gary noted, the version info would seem critical to some (not just whether 8 or 7 or 6, but whether Enterprise or Standard, or indeed if it's even CF. Perhaps you're running Railo or OpenBD. Nothing wrong with whatever choice you've made, but people do need to know, it would seem.). And there certainly must be SOME diskspace limit, and possible bandwidth limits.

And how many DSNs can people have? And are there any limits to what DBs you'll support. You list Access, SQL Server, and Other in the signup form. Does that "other" mean you may consider running other DBs, but it depends on something? And are you providing email? How many email addresses? and so on. And what about what security controls you've implemented: are you disabling any tags or functions?

People may also want to know what sort of support you'll offer (a forum, perhaps, so users help each other), or what means you'll use to notify customers of outages (planned or other), etc.

It just seems that this vital info is nowhere to be found. Not trying to be critical at all. Rather, I'm assuming you have this info somewhere, but perhaps it's shown only after people register. That seems a mistake, as many may not bother signing up until they know these answers.

Indeed, the signup page says that it's for those "that have live production ready websites only." Here's a modest suggestion: if they do, then they already are hosted somewhere, right? So it seems then that it would be more clear to say that it's for those who "already have live production ready websites only, which they'd like to move to this free server." May seem a minor point, but sometimes a word here or there can make a big difference in avoiding confusion.

That then brings up the whole notion of supporting people in making the move. Do you offer any info on that? Many folks aren't too experienced with the challenges of moving a site from one server to another (moving code, databases, mailboxes, domain names, DNS propagation, etc.). It just seems you need to offer folks at least some info. Naive people may even fear filling out the form if they think it may somehow cause an instant move, so you could calm them by clarifying that this is not the case, pointing out the info above about how the actual move would work.

Finally, since there isn't any sort of identifying info at all on the site (no "about us", or "contact us"), it seems you just won't know how many people come to the site (perhaps pointed to by others) and have these questions but with no way to present them to you. If you fear answering them all directly, then a forum (for the site) would seem an awesome solution. Ray's free Galleon forums would certainly do the trick.

I'm sure some will read all my comments here and think I'm raining on your parade. Please hear that I'm not. I'm only offering them here in support of those who may have the same questions on visiting the site but will not connect it back to your blog to raise them.

Some will say, "well, what do you expect for free?", and that's certainly one way to look at things. I'm hoping, instead, that perhaps in all the effort to get things set up these minor (but important) points have just slipped under the pile of to do's. If it's helpful, great. If not, please know that I'm really not "trying to tell Pablo how to run his business". Some people seem to get really sensitive about this, so I hope you're readers will really hear what I've said, and accept it for what it is. Just trying to help.

Awesome, Pablo. Wow, CF 8 Enterprise 64 bit. You go, boy. :-) I do notice that the Test/Dev server is only 32 bit. That's a little unfortunate, if one were to find that moving from test to prod had some issue due to the difference. But I suppose beggars can't be choosers. :-) (And I'll add that I already have free hosting, so I'm really just asking all this as a member of the community, and a supporter of your effort.)

And I see you say all tags/functions are available but "might be removed if account is found to be abusing the service". That's curious: are you saying then that you are sandboxing each account? Or are you using a different instance for each account? Either would seem to be useful to clarify. (I see that you call the development hosting "sandbox" but it's not clear if you mean you're really using that feature, and my question is as much about the prod server.)

As for the bandwidth, is it the sort of thing where if someone exceeds it, you'll notify them before pulling the plug? :-)

As for the databases, since you list "other" on the reg form, is it that you may be open to adding others, especially a free one like MySQL? Or are you reluctant to add that until a lot of people indicate they want it.

Thanks for addressing the couple of suggestions.

Finally, I see now that there is also a contact page and even a forum (though it's under "help", which may not be too obvious to all observers. Might want to call it "forum" or "discussions". Your call, of course.) Anyway, I suppose that discussions like this ought to now take place there,but since this had already started here I figured my comments might as well continue here.

Like others, I am also receiving the "Invalid data '' for CFSQLTYPE CF_SQL_INTEGER. " error message.

In the meantime good luck and thanks for offering this service

Thanks for everything you do. I've been using your tutorials for years. I have my own dedicated server but I may get this free hosting a try.