New WebHosting Company

Hello All. I am starting a new WebHosting company due to the fact that my company (JCHosting) has been taken by JCHosting.com. That isn't my website but someone with a similar idea who sort of " beat me to the punch" of getting that domain. I am looking for a New name for the WebHosting company and a New Co-Owner for it. If anyone is intrested in Running/Owning it with me or has a name for it, Please PM me or reply to this thread.

Also, I wanted to add that we will not just be webhosting. We will also be WebDesign and "Server Selling" if thats what you want to call it. We will be selling RAQ servers as well.

Hehe, I do the same thing. What kinda server you gonna use? I use a red hat for some webhosting and subdomains and I use windows for selling computer space. What do you use? And what kind of bandwidth connection do you have? Just wondering.

Im probably going to use redhat. Im not sure about connection. Would you want to be apart of it? Got idea's for names?

Lol, I got my own system going. was hard to get customers at first, but it pays for a lot of tihngs. As for names, is this all purpose? Is it for younger people? If it is pick something like kewl or 1337. If it is all purpose pick something that you wouldn't mind. I stress mind here 'cause not everybody is gonna like your name. And connection is a big problem. My friend who moved away did the same thing. He has an OC3 connection, he didn't pay for the whole pipe though, but it still cost thousands a month. I think my local university also uses OC3 and pay $11,000. Thats how expensive these things can be. And you will probably want a few drives with low capacity, maybe 4 30gig drives to increase speed. And you might need to create some scipts to prevent abuse of your system, maybe some kind of complicated sign up process. And you have to decide on payment, most people prefer cheques as paypal.com costs money but then you need to get a P.O box so people don't find your address.

JC...I have no formal experience with any of this, is there a way I could get in on it sort of like an apprentice type ideals, see how it goes, contribute what I can...basically on the sidelines as a learning internship deal? I'd be willing to contribute whatever I can. My knowledge is mostly of webdesign/graphic design, but I want to learn the rest of what you're doing.

What do you think?

Sure, and if you don't pick up as well as you want, you could atleast work in our WebDesign Dept.! Got any idea's for a name though?

i reckon call it "tuxhosting.com" due to the fact you are considering using linux as a server, and it is sorta good name :D

Hmmm...I'll try thinking up a list of names to contribute...JC is your name, correct? Do you want something along the lines of the same type of personallization? More dramatic? It's hard to just come up with something off the top of my head. I'm kinda weird like that, if you don't tell me what type of names you want, I'll come up with something completely off the wall and kinda wacky.

And I'd love to help with design, always a newb, but love to practice.

EDIT: tuxhosting sounds great, but wouldn't it be some sort of copyright violation? I mean, it would almost be the same as what Michael dealt with when he created Lindows, since MS seems to own the word Windows...I don't know though, at the same time, tux is pretty ambiguous, but then again not....I don't know, because Linux is opensource, and people can make their own distros and such, but can you use tux in your company name?

hi

i started my own webhosting more than a year ago, just something to do in my spare time (i have a full time job as a network admin / helpdesk sorta guy for a linux company). its been in various phases of testing (and i suppose in this industry, will always be), and its near completion - just gotta add one more box in. my friend / business partner are both into sci-fi / fantasy fiction, and have named our business Sorcerer Systems. i have named the boxes after elven homes in sci-fi - elvandar, qualinost, silvanost... doing this has helped me learn linux a lot and improve my systems admin / security / networking skills. it has been really fun, but a fair bit of pressure as well.

anyway, i suggest you name your boxes after a theme of your interest, and as for your company... make it somethng interesting too. imho there are too many hosting companies with *host* or *web* in their names... BORING! =)

good luck with your operation.

regards,
mark.

I found an interesting links that may suggest some names or give you some ideas on what to name you business:

http://www.businessownersideacafe.co...iness/name.php

I had been looking into starting my own personal webdesign business, but I decided against it because it was kinda late and everyone on the internet seemed to have one or the other, and I chickened out seeing some of the things people could do, and I certainly wasn't ready for the commitment at the time. I did come up with some spiffy names from suggestions and hints from that site...It's a great resource on all aspects of starting your own business. Definitely a great read.

GG > The best way to start your own web design business/sideline is to look for local companies in need of a site. You wont get alot of money but there are bound to be a few who dont want to pay large amounts of money for a site. One of the companies im making a site for had paid £3000 for a site which turned out pathetic. Im charging him £500 . So far he likes the work im doing.

hi

if you don't have a theme in mind for a business name, how about naming it with a totally random name, like totallyrandom.com (ooops that's taken) or whatever.com (taken too) or idontknow.com (wow, its taken too - and its a web design / hosting page too!)

or if you want to annoy some AOers, name it after their usernames, like redgore or greekgoddess or something. but then, i'm just tired and you shouldn't consider that at all as it will probably piss them off big time - unless if they think its a tribute to them, in which case, just hope they don't ask you for royalties for using their AO username. and if you want to use secretagent dot anything - well, please tell me in advance so i can ask you for royalties. j/k =)

just an idea.

regards,
mark.

Hey JC you may wanna ask these guys about the scripts they use for keeping track of their hosting site http://www.l33t.ca/ They use red hat as well and pay for an OC3 line. Its a pretty nice site. I don't need to use any scripts since all my customers found out about me through my paper and they all live in the same city as me. But if you want to put a sign-up script online then you may want some way to protect yourself from abuse unless you don't plan to offer a free sign-up option in which case this doesn't matter. BTW l337.ca is set up by people who aren't very old so they'll probably be happy to help you out. And which version of red hat are you running?

Yea, thats a nice site. You need to think about your system more than you need to think about your name. Check out the specs on l33t.ca That is a good system for hosting, fast, and stable. You are going to need a faster processor for more customers, think about how many people you will be hosting. And like khakis said smaller hard drives are almost the only way to go because if multiple customers try to upload and download things at once from a big hard drive then they will all slow your service down. You should probably just buy a simple server from a local reseller and then add a few hard drives to it.

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Originally posted here by melikesredhat
You should probably just buy a simple server from a local reseller and then add a few hard drives to it.

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or build it from scratch (get all components and assemble it yourself) if you can. you'll probably feel more attached to it that way.

regards,
mark.

And another thing, you need a disclaimer JC, you need to make one that suits your site, some sites have none but if you plan to offer people the option of allowing access to their files to other people than you need one. Other people could be in law enforcement and they could see all the warez and kiddie porn somebody stashed on your computer. It is best to post a law or a link to it on your site, it'll take care of it for you.

hahaha you can use my username if you really want to...I would be flattered. Just as long as you don't use Goddess Unleashed, since that's the title of my homepage and someday I will be l33t and pay for my own domain and actually invest the time to rebuild it after the huge crash it suffered a few months back due to a guy that I pissed off...

redgore: I have actually tried your idea. It's funny, webdesign and graphic design and such is a great hobby. I've been learning it since I was 15, and I've evolved so much from my mile long front page that contained all of my content on just that page with no linking to other page...hehehehe I've designed sites for a lot of local companies, for a decent income. The problem though is that it started to become a job, and I hated it. So I tend to work as a courtesy...just for experience to make my own website better. I don't want to do it as a job because it's no longer any fun because I'm working...I got a lot of great referrals for it, and was charging a lot less than the companies that they had originally design their pages.

I'm weird like that, I guess.

I had a couple of links to a privacy policy and legal disclaimer generator I used when I created a clan a while back and made the site for it pretty professional. You can ultimately edit the finished product however you want, but these are a couple of great tools to get you started once you figure out your policies, what you're going to do with information, name, etc.

http://www.the-dma.org/library/priva...ing.shtml#form
http://209.204.219.152/free_disclaimer.htm

I think we should create a private conference room, once more people respond and we find out who's really interested. I'm joining as an "Advisor/Webdesigner" not looking to profit, I guess just kind of hang out and watch it take off...contribute whatever I can...just don't EVER call it a job... *LOL* I haven't gotten to try out the conference rooms yet...but it would be a great place to exchange ideas on this without any interference from irrelevant parties. Keep it private...Just a thought.

GreekGoddess that are really usefull links.
I think it's very important to add legal notice / disclaimer

Im either going with TuxHosting, OzTuxHosting, JGHosting, or any other suggestions. Would anyone want to co-run/own a WebHosting buisness with me? PM me or reply. Also, I wanted to know if JP could help me with a small thing and allow me to change my name since Im changing the company? Could I change my name and keep my stats or do I need to sign up again? I hope I dont need to signup again.

Also, I might stay with JCHosting due to the fact my name is Jason Copeland and I'd want to keep it that way. The guy on JCHosting.com doesnt have a copyright so maybe I can work ym way that way! I dunno..

GreekGoddess you know that you can get domain names for about 10.00 ea right? Well worth it just to hang onto a good name :) When I get home from work I can post some cheap sites if you'd like.

Yes you will need a good disclaimer. Cover your... at all times man.

I posted this in another topic, but I figured I would post again since we're talking about disclaimers and stuff.

My first words of wisdom is: BE CAREFUL!

If you're hosting the sites on-site (which I'm assuming you are), make sure you're on top of things 24x7. Make sure you have some kind of monitor running at all times and can wake you up in the middle of the night before you get a phone call from one of your customers. Especially if you're going to be keeping a day job.

Somewhere you're probably going to have to give an uptime guarantee, so make sure your backbone provider is reliable. This is definately not the area to go with a cheap bandwidth wholesaler.

Other than that, good luck to you! I've wanted to do it myself, I just don't think it's enough for a permanent job for myself yet...and I can't afford the downtime losses if it goes down while I'm at work. Especially since I can't just walk out and say I have to go home because my router took a dump.

jezter: those are some of the finest words of wisdom i've heard all month.

jc: i honestly had a fantastic idea about the whole issue about half a year ago and have been looking for someone to get it off the ground with me. i have a feeling this will take up copious amounts of space on a server and would rather host than rent. i dont want to talk about it here, for obvious reasons, but i sent meself an email about it a while ago, essentially trying to copywrite the idea. dont know if that will hold up in court, but ar least i'll have a paper trail. email or pm me if intersted. im going to have to teach myself some graphic programming to complete… dont know how to go about it, but the plan is solid.

greekgoddess: pretty much the same goes for you. since we're both in ohio, it might be easy to get something quick up.

YES!!! Ohioans unite to help Jason with his l33t webhosting project. *giggles*

And JC, I would definitely keep the name if you really want it. I'm sure that there is someway to go about getting it, you might even be able to buy the domain from the existing owner for the right price. If it's not copyrighted, it's free game, IMO, and if that's definitely what you want, I'd recommend pursuing it. Maybe going about copyrighting the name and taking his domain anyway. (I don't know if that can be done, but I would look into it. Grrr...I'm shady)

I was also wondering about the types of hosting that you had in mind, certain features that are provided to certain packages and whatnot. It's like Angelfire is a free webhosting community, but there are so many limitations to the type of scripting and such you can use with them, whereas you go to a different, pay provider, and based on the amount you pay, you are granted certain new features, bandwidth limits as jezter6 had mentioned. I think that will determine a lot of where you're going with this, what you're going to need

I think Demented.org is a good example of the idea that JC is trying to throw out with his new company. They did run into some bandwidth issues recently with their free service package and had to disable signup of any new free accounts. I wasn't sure if you were going to offer something like this, but I thought I would throw that up there just in case:

http://www.demented.org/?news

Edit: I started a conference room to get the ideas rolling and have invited JC along with qwerty. If anyone else would like to contribute to this project, post your interest here or PM one of us and we'll invite you to join in the conversation.

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Originally posted here by GreekGoddess
YES!!! Ohioans unite to help Jason with his l33t webhosting project. *giggles*

And JC, I would definitely keep the name if you really want it. I'm sure that there is someway to go about getting it, you might even be able to buy the domain from the existing owner for the right price. If it's not copyrighted, it's free game, IMO, and if that's definitely what you want, I'd recommend pursuing it. Maybe going about copyrighting the name and taking his domain anyway. (I don't know if that can be done, but I would look into it. Grrr...I'm shady)

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Things like websites (<edit>ie. domain names</edit>) are about "fair use" - which doesn't really have a thing to do with copyright, trademark (tm) or servicemark (sm). If you can prove that you have the domain so as to not poorly influence another's business and you have a legitimate use for it, chances are you can win a domain dispute. People that "steal" things like coke.com (one of the landmark cases in domain disputes) are going to have a tough time proving they 1) have a legitimate use for the domain and 2) that having it and not giving it to coke.com significantly impacts their online business.

I have to disagree about the copywrite issue with all due respect.

As a business owner with a website, I've lost two different copywrite battles and all that needs to be proven is first use. Thanks to the internet you are an international organization once you put up your website. My attorney is no slouch, she's been a trademark/copywrite attorney for quite a few years and has argued trademark/copywrite law before the US Supreme Court and what she says, I do. The first case was a identical name and while the other company hadn't placed a copywrite on their name they had first use and were going to sue me. Personally I don't have the time to be tied up in court nor do I want to waste a bunch of money on it.
The second case was over a similar name (my domain) and they played very dirty. I've since changed everything and my copywrite is almost through the process and that alone has taken over a year to put through.

So I would have to strongly disagree with just do it, you can fight it and win, cuz that's not always the case sadly.

<edit>(just to point out, this isn't saying "TC is wrong/offbase/whatever" (she's not) - just a bit of clarification, with any luck)</edit>

It also tends to boil down to "who's going to fight for it." First use does not guarantee victory, etc. Unfortunately, lawyers cost money and many people that own domains do so for a hobby or just because they think it's cool... they're not about to waste hundreds or thousands of $US to protect a $US35 investment unless they're somehow tied to it financially, I'd venture.

I've seen domain disputes won by late comers who came in and got a copyright and "stole" the domain and I've seen copyright/trademark owners lose a dispute to someone who had fair use. I think it all comes down to how much you want to put in to the fight, etc. But yes, both copyright and first use can influence the mix... though it's also precedent that "legitimate use" tends to be the deciding factor for ICANN (though they're not going to stand in the middle of a trademark dispute - which, technically, is a completely separate (legal) argument).

Mr. Wizard, I agree. Explaining more would go into more detail than I would wish to in a public forum, but suffice it to say, they had a lot of money and I don't..didn't...still don't. :D

Point being, with the second one, they had the domain about the time I did and it was similar in nature to mine. Along the time they filed their copywrite paperwork I suddenly began getting emails from them that were supposed to be for someone else within their organization. All this did was prove confusion to gather them a toehold in the event they went to court. The wonderful part about all of this is even though I was the innocent party, I was forced to hire an attorney and I was forced to become involved in a ridiculous legal battle that never should have been.
They played dirty, they had deep pockets, they won. Life's not fair kids.

Yeah, I wasn't too sure about that, but I figured I might as well suggest it since it came to mind. I guess the only option left to consider is making an offer to the existing owner to see if you can buy the domain from him. If he doesn't want to give it up for a reasonable amount of money, I guess it's back to square one in renaming your business.

Going to the Coke example, and if JC wanted to pursue this, which I don't think he does, out of curiosity...If the current owner of JCHosting.com had nothing to do with it's name, could you fight for ownership of it due to the fact that JC is going to make a real hosting company for it, along the same principle of "Fair Use"? Like I said, I'm not very knowledgeable about the whole copyright/domain owning policies that are out there, nor am I legal savvy along those lines, I was just curious from that example if something similar could be won?

I'm interested in at least giving my knowledge/advice/help/whatever to the project for you guys. Feel free to PM me the room/key if you'd like me to join.

The problem is JC isn't coke. The name JCHostingadmin isn't a publicly knowledgable name and would fall under first use. How would this other guy even know JC existed?
No offense JC, he did what you should have, grabbed a domain you wanted. Sucks..been there..done that. :(

GG..do me a HUGE fav..fix your sig..or is the misspelling intentional? :p

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Originally posted here by GreekGoddess
Yeah, I wasn't too sure about that, but I figured I might as well suggest it since it came to mind. I guess the only option left to consider is making an offer to the existing owner to see if you can buy the domain from him. If he doesn't want to give it up for a reasonable amount of money, I guess it's back to square one in renaming your business.

Going to the Coke example, and if JC wanted to pursue this, which I don't think he does, out of curiosity...If the current owner of JCHosting.com had nothing to do with it's name, could you fight for ownership of it due to the fact that JC is going to make a real hosting company for it, along the same principle of "Fair Use"? Like I said, I'm not very knowledgeable about the whole copyright/domain owning policies that are out there, nor am I legal savvy along those lines, I was just curious from that example if something similar could be won?

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The problem here is is that JC would have to prove that the person that owns the domain has no legimate use of the domain... that's often extremely difficult to do, especially with something that isn't a recognized trademark or servicemark. Either that, or he'd have to prove that the person took the domain just to damage his business or prevent JC from getting it... again, that's not an easy thing to do.

But yes, making an offer for the domain is about the only thing that peple can do... and believe me, $US35 or "to pick up registration fees" is almost never a legitimate offer (the person wouldn't have registered the domain just to give it away like that, I'd guess).

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Originally posted here by TechieChick
GG..do me a HUGE fav..fix your sig..or is the misspelling intentional? :p

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Technically, it should probably be attributed as well... but I'm nit.picking again.

ok ok here it is…

the new name for a hosting biz? symbiot or parasite…

"symbiot… let us be your host."

Symbiot is taken, check here and parasite doesn't currently have any computer related trademarks assigned to it.

I should have posted this link earlier..sorry.

Name Protect

I just wanted to say, I can try to copyright JCHosting and that if I do get it, he'll have to fork out the domain.

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Originally posted here by JCHostingAdmin
I just wanted to say, I can try to copyright JCHosting and that if I do get it, he'll have to fork out the domain.

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The point is/was: having the copyright/trademark on it doesn't guarantee you sh*t other than being able to enforce infringement. He's technically not infringing unless you can show that it costs you business (and larger, well-recognized trademarks (like Coke) have a fairly easy time doing this - but if no one's heard of you, chances are you're fighting a losing battle).

Considering that "Jeff Curry" owns the domain, and he's held the dot-net since 2001/05/15, you're probably looking for a fierce battle. Not to mention they claim to be a subsidiary of a another, possibly larger company...

<edit>I'd also venture that trying to prove that Jeff Curry doesn't have "fair use" on any jc* domain is going to be rather difficult, even with a good lawyer...</edit>

JC! Before you start thinking of a name start thinking of the business aspect. Trust me, it isn't easy to get customers to sign up for anything online. One of the most important things to think about is how much you are going to charge which depends on your levels of service as well as your hardware and bandwidth. Draft a pricing plan based on what you have.

Okay...a couple of questions...does it have to be jchosting.com? Can it be .net? Or something else? Lots of nifty ones out there......and as far as jchosting...couldn't you try a variation of the same name? Like jc-hosting.com? Or maybe categorizing your site like:
hosting.jc.com/design.jc.com/or whatever? I mean, it's ultimately up to you to find a variation you're satisfied with overall, that's not a call I can make for you, but it's not like it's impossible to keep your current name.

Why not get something like kewl-ass-hosting.ass? I don't think they have .ass for sites, but can't hurt to shop around. Maybe 3leggedhosting.net or circusfreaksites.com just to make your domain more memorable.

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Originally posted here by GreekGoddess
JC...I have no formal experience with any of this, is there a way I could get in on it sort of like an apprentice type ideals, see how it goes, contribute what I can...basically on the sidelines as a learning internship deal? I'd be willing to contribute whatever I can. My knowledge is mostly of webdesign/graphic design, but I want to learn the rest of what you're doing.

What do you think?

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hey the same is with me also .. i have exp. of web designing .. and i can also contribute .. what do u say ??

If you want to work for/help out JCHosting and Designs, PM me.