Eco-friendly website hosting
I've been toying with the idea, for 15 years, of creating my own website. I once started, but the editors around at that time (about 1998) were too bloody awkward for me to bother with.
So I've happily not bothered, just using online services where appropriate, gradually increasing my use of these as I've become more socially outgoing. I now have LJ, Facebook, g-mail & Twitter open almost constantly, and other cloud services when I remember them. I've even recently bitten the bullet and started using a feed reader, so I don't need to search for news.
Because cloud services aren't guaranteed (especially when they are free) I've returned to wondering about setting-up my own website, trying to work-out whether markup editors are now of sufficient quality to not need me to understand the ins and outs of web pages, just to write a portal with attached blogspace, photo hosting, etc..
A new issue I have with having my own stuff hosted is the ecological one. I've stopped running server machines at home, trying to minimise my carbon footprint (and utility bills), but I'm aware that all of my online input has an effect on the carbon usage of others, specifically whoever is hosting my data. It doesn't worry me too much about my registrations onto online services, as the adidtional carbon I'm using is negligible in comparison with what else they have running, but if I have the choice (by selecting a webhosting company, if I'm going to write my own web homepage) then I want to ensure carbon usage is minimised.
So I'm interested that I get quite a few hits when I google-search (yes, I've read the article about how much carbon is released into the atmosphere for every Google search, but I can't agree with the findings there, as there's no real data to analyse) for "green hosting". I see that I can have webhosting starting at £5 per month from various companies who use wind or solar power instead of the national grid.
Ok, so if I'm going to do this, I'm after ideas:
1. Which green hosting companies have reputations for good Quality of Service as well as being carbon-positive?
2. Which software is good, these days, for writing websites? The answer to this is dependent, I suppose on the answer to the next question, which is:
3. What should I do with a web presence that I create? My initial ideas are bloghosting & photo-hosting, even though there are cloud services offering these.
... 1 hour later ...
I've been thinking about data storage on the cloud, that would allow streaming music as well as document storage, all transparent to the application on my laptops, PDA (Windows Mobile 2003) and phone (Windows Mobile 6.1).
There are various options for this, like ZumoDrive, Dropbox, Windows Live Sync, Wuala, etc.. None of them advertise green credentials, and I'm sure they would all cost a few hundreds of pounds per year for hosting of my files.
So, would it be better for me to buy carbon-neutral / positive web hosting space and store my files there, use one of these already-existing sync services, or reinstate one of my laptops as a sync-file server and store all my files on servers owned (and hosted) by me?
So I've happily not bothered, just using online services where appropriate, gradually increasing my use of these as I've become more socially outgoing. I now have LJ, Facebook, g-mail & Twitter open almost constantly, and other cloud services when I remember them. I've even recently bitten the bullet and started using a feed reader, so I don't need to search for news.
Because cloud services aren't guaranteed (especially when they are free) I've returned to wondering about setting-up my own website, trying to work-out whether markup editors are now of sufficient quality to not need me to understand the ins and outs of web pages, just to write a portal with attached blogspace, photo hosting, etc..
A new issue I have with having my own stuff hosted is the ecological one. I've stopped running server machines at home, trying to minimise my carbon footprint (and utility bills), but I'm aware that all of my online input has an effect on the carbon usage of others, specifically whoever is hosting my data. It doesn't worry me too much about my registrations onto online services, as the adidtional carbon I'm using is negligible in comparison with what else they have running, but if I have the choice (by selecting a webhosting company, if I'm going to write my own web homepage) then I want to ensure carbon usage is minimised.
So I'm interested that I get quite a few hits when I google-search (yes, I've read the article about how much carbon is released into the atmosphere for every Google search, but I can't agree with the findings there, as there's no real data to analyse) for "green hosting". I see that I can have webhosting starting at £5 per month from various companies who use wind or solar power instead of the national grid.
Ok, so if I'm going to do this, I'm after ideas:
1. Which green hosting companies have reputations for good Quality of Service as well as being carbon-positive?
2. Which software is good, these days, for writing websites? The answer to this is dependent, I suppose on the answer to the next question, which is:
3. What should I do with a web presence that I create? My initial ideas are bloghosting & photo-hosting, even though there are cloud services offering these.
... 1 hour later ...
I've been thinking about data storage on the cloud, that would allow streaming music as well as document storage, all transparent to the application on my laptops, PDA (Windows Mobile 2003) and phone (Windows Mobile 6.1).
There are various options for this, like ZumoDrive, Dropbox, Windows Live Sync, Wuala, etc.. None of them advertise green credentials, and I'm sure they would all cost a few hundreds of pounds per year for hosting of my files.
So, would it be better for me to buy carbon-neutral / positive web hosting space and store my files there, use one of these already-existing sync services, or reinstate one of my laptops as a sync-file server and store all my files on servers owned (and hosted) by me?