Some of you will probably remember a pet project of mine known as Project Pages -- a simple free webhost with a really bad design. Well, it still exists. And a new version is coming. A version people will actually want to use. There are going to be much prettier skins and a lot of new features to boot. It's almost ready for prime time, but I need some serious help testing it. I need to be sure that there are no serious bugs, and the system is very easy to understand for new users.
I am looking for a team of 5 or more people to take a decent chunk of time over the timespan of a week (Starting a week from today -- June 14th) to test out all of the features, and basically do whatever they would do if they intended to actually host a website with the site. It's not an incredibly complex job, but it will help me diffuse some problems with it before I roll it out to the public. The testing will be done in an isolated area away from the main of Project Pages; one that is closed to the public. Anything you post there will be kept there unless you ask me to move it.
Anyone who joins the team and actively tests the site for a decent chunk of time will be offered a free upgrade to a premium account on the site. A premium account currently grants its user 3 major things. The first is no ads. The ads on the site will be replaced with the text of your choosing, (can be blank) and will be labelled with your site's name instead. (Basically a persistant little place to leave messages to your users.) The second is extra pages. The old limit on the number of pages you can host was low, and has gone up already. Premium accounts however can host even more pages. Finally, you will be able to upload more files/images, and bigger files as well.
I am not sure how I intend to price premium accounts, however using them will not be necessary at all. The free hosting option should be more than enough for most people; all features that were there before and then some new ones are coming too. Upgrading to premium will cost very little money too, if people decide they really want the upgraded storage and the such. Do not panic about them; I do not expect them to become very prominent, nor do I expect to make much money at all from them. I simply coded the feature in, and decided I might as well make use of it and give my beta testers some incentive.
If ppages hosting won't cut it for you I can also offer you some storage space and a mysql db if you need it; I have no problem with doing this, just ask me.
UPDATE: I *will* allow people to join the testing late if they are interested! Please just get in contact with me personally and I will tell you where to look. For anyone already signed up, I'll be sending out an email to all of you telling you where it's hosted, what to look for, and what bugs I'm already aware of. I'll compose that very shortly, and you should have it by midnight.
You can get in contact with me personally by sending an email to admin@ppages.org, iming me at cppchriscpp on aim, or heading into the chatroom (#ppages on windfyre.net; you can just use the chat applet on the main site if you'd like)
The main site will be updated one week from saturday. There will be an hour or two of downtime, though it will be around 1 in the morning so it should not affect many people. Afterwards I encourage anyone looking for hosting to give ppages a try. (or a second one; a ton has changed since the first release)
Thanks for your interest, and I hope to hear from some of you soon!
~ Chris
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Topic: PPages Beta Testing is STILL OPEN (Read 1844 times)