Hosted By Hyperreal

From its inception, Hyperreal has been a home for projects that didn't have a home before, projects that promote freedom of information and that support the community and culture that has formed around the memes of electronic music, raves, and alternative states of consciousness.

Who decides on hosting matters

• Brian Behlendorf (oversees everything) - brian @ hyperreal.org
• Mike Brown (oversees music) - mike @ hyperreal.org

Everything is ultimately Brian's decision, but if it's music related, you can ask Mike.

Who can have their projects hosted

• People with content that we like
  • PERSONAL FRIENDS and acquaintances ... but not just a personal homepage
  • DEDICATED INDIVIDUALS with a unique project like a web site or mailing list
  • Talented musical ARTISTS with no home elsewhere
  • RECORD LABELS, to an extent (depends on how commercial the site is)
  • Other people we invite to move their project to Hyperreal

Every project is considered on a case-by-case basis. All proposals are given consideration, but more than half are rejected. Don't expect much reason to be given for rejection; take "no" for an answer.

Who cannot have their projects hosted

• Most major CORPORATIONS (except certain record labels)
• Most DJs and PROMOTERS
• Musical ARTISTS who already have a primary home on mp3.com or elsewhere

In other words, Hyperreal is not here to drive traffic to your other site, to endorse your mixing or rave-throwing skills, or for you to run a business on. Ask yourself, how is hosting your site cool for us?

What impresses us most

• If it's a web site, having it already prototyped elsewhere, just in need of a permanent home
• Uniqueness of the project
• Having your project be a very obvious great fit for Hyperreal's themes
• A detailed and definite proposal that explains why just as much as what
• Being oriented toward community-building, support of the arts, support of culture, and less self-serving
• Having lots of quality, free (and legal, tasteful) content
• Being motivated to run it yourself, attending to it every day if necessary

What we can host, if we approve of your project

• WEB SITE
  • Disk space and bandwidth are essentially unlimited, though the bigger drain you are on resources, the more likely some reasonable donations will be mandatory.
  • You can have your own domain, if you register it yourself (see DNS section).
  • If you register foo.com, for example, we'll set up our web server to answer to foo.com and www.foo.com and any other aliases you want.
  • If no domain registered, we can put you at a location like hyperreal.org/foo or foo.hyperreal.org.
  • Server logs are kept in perpetuity. You have access to them but they are just the raw, compressed files. If you need to analyze them, you can download them and run them through an analyzer on your own system.
  • The web server is Unix-based: Apache with PHP. So if you need Windows technologies like ASP and FrontPage Extensions, you're out of luck.
  • To maintain your site, you get a user account. The account can be either FTP-only, which is what most people use, or can be a full shell (command-line) account that you access with an SSH client. You must be proficient in the use of an FTP client in order to use an FTP account, and we don't give out shell accounts unless you are have experience using a Unix-like system through an SSH client.
• MAILING LIST
  • Preference is given to discussion forums for a specific topic that fits with Hyperreal's themes.
  • Absolutely, positively nothing that could be construed as spam.
  • The list software is ezmlm. All administration is done via email and/or command-line tools. There is no web interface like Mailman.
  • Shell accounts are preferable for administrators.
  • List addresses are usually listname@hyperreal.org; we generally don't host mailing lists in separate domains.
  • Archives are very basic, just compressed mbox files for the general public, and internally the list software keeps its own maildir archive. There is no web interface to browse either one, and we do not allow the use of exploders like MHonArc, Pipermail, etc., because they consume far too many resources. Some lists have set up off-site archives using these kinds of tools, which is fine.
• OTHER
  • Contact us with your proposal.
• DNS for web sites
  • Clear it with us before you do anything!
  • You pick a domain name like foo.com and register it through a domain name registrar. You pay for it through them.
    • Don't sign up for their hosting packages. All you need is the domain name registration, nothing else.
    • Set the Administrative Contact and the Billing Contact for the domain to YOURSELF. It's your domain. You want to get the email reminding you to renew it, and from people wanting to buy it from you, don't you?
    • Set the Technical Contact to Brian Behlendorf (enter NIC handle BB123 if they give you that option). Contact us to get the contact info if they don't give you that option.
    • This is the most important part. Set the primary DNS server to NS.HYPERREAL.ORG (209.237.226.90) and the secondary to NS1.COVALENT.NET (64.84.21.103). This makes it so that the world finds out how to connect to your web site or send you mail by asking our DNS servers about your domain.
  • We'll set up our DNS server to tell the world, when it comes asking, that www.foo.com is another name for foo.com, that foo.com's mail is handled by Hyperreal (unless you want it to be handled by your local ISP), and that all other services (like http) should consider foo.com to be at Hyperreal as well.
  • If you need additional hostnames (something.foo.com) and separate web sites for these, tell us.
  • Mail doesn't have to be handled by Hyperreal. In fact, it's easier if it isn't. As long as your ISP's mail server is set up to accept mail for your domain, our DNS server can tell the world that that's where your mail should go.
  • If your mail is handled by us, we can automatically forward it to you at some other address. If you have a shell account, you also have the option of having the mail stay at Hyperreal, where you can pick it up via POP3 or read it online through your shell account and a program like Pine.
  • Allow up to 72 hours for any DNS changes to take effect around the world. DNS works on a distributed system with lots of caching of information.

Cost

• It's FREE. We do not charge for any services. Hyperreal is completely noncommercial.
• Yes, there are costs involved, and if you can help defray those costs by donating what you can afford, then that certainly improves your karma points. We haven't been aggressive about asking for donations, yet people have been very generous, donating quite a bit to the hardware fund, 100% of which has been put back into Hyperreal.
• Artists and labels hosted by Hyperreal sometimes send music to Mike and Brian. Such donations are gladly accepted and are often added to our playlists, but they are not considered to have any monetary value and they are not accepted as any kind of payment in exchange for services. It's just a nice gesture of mutual appreciation.

Restrictions

• Your project must not be commercial in nature. You can be doing it in the interest of a commercial business like a record label, but you can't be running your business through your project. This is a fuzzy area and it is basically up to Brian to decide if you've crossed the line. There are some definite taboos, though:
  • No order forms hosted on Hyperreal (off-site might be OK).
  • No banner ads / popups of any kind.
  • No "partnerships" where you link to a retailer that gives you kickbacks.
  • No sites that are just portals. Off-site links must be clearly designated as such, and your site can't be a gateway for some other site you maintain or have "partnered" with elsewhere.
• You must run things yourself and use your account. Inactive accounts are deleted without warning. No account sharing.
• You must subscribe to the Hype mailing list, a low-traffic list for announcements pertaining to Hyperreal as a host.
• Terms are indefinite and "at-will"; you can leave at any time, voluntarily or otherwise.
• Brian has ultimate authority on whether your project can be hosted or what additional restrictions need to be on it.