Sorry If I Am In The Wrong Place Question about starting isto hosting

[mrdee 1]

Like the title of my post says: I apologise if I am in the wrong place here, but I have been here for more than four years now, and since that time I never needed to set up a new hosting account but now I do.I have had a look round the forums, but once again, after such a long time, I couldn't find what I was looking for, even after typing in some search terms, so, could someone here either poin me to the right place, or answer my question?I am trying to find out wht the procedure is for starting a hosting account.I seem to remember that, in the past, you had to accumulate a number of credits, and then apply for your hosting.Has that changed at all, or is it still the same?(I want to help someone start hosting their account at Xiato).Could someone point me to the right place on the forum, or briefly explain the correct procedure, please?All help will be much appreciated.

[Baniboy 3]

You go to https://support.xisto.com/ and log in. After you've logged in, you should be in the client area. On the right side, there are navigation links. Click "Order". Now there's a list of hosting packages of which you can choose. Continue by filling out information and clicking the continue button at the bottom of the page after.

Edited September 12, 2011 by Baniboy (see edit history)

[mrdee 1]

Right,in that case they have changed the system then.Like I said, after having been here for four years and never having needed additional hosting, I hadn't really followed the evolution of certain things.I remember when I signed up, you had to have a certain number of posts first, then you had to post in a certain topic where you had to give a number of details and apply for your hosting.After that you had to wait for approval, you got an email about ths (If I remember correctly) and it was posted in a special topic too.Well, it has surely become a lot simpler now.Thanks for the explanation.

[k_nitin_r 8]

Hi!I got my hosting on Xisto about four years ago through posting on Xisto and the hosting involved accumulating myCENTs through posting on the forum, then going to the Xisto - Support and Billing area to order web hosting packages. The only thing that has changed is that the myCENTs are harder to come by and so you have to post a lot more to get the same amount in myCENTs. In the distant past, however, getting hosting was just the way you mention it - posting to the forum and then requesting one of the administrators to get you a web hosting package. The posts related to obtaining hosting were made in a special section of the website, as you've suggested.Anyway, good luck with getting hosted and do post back to the forum if you need help with setting up your website.

[mrdee 1]

The only thing that has changed is that the myCENTs are harder to come by and so you have to post a lot more to get the same amount in myCENTs.

 

Yes, they certainly seem to be, however, what I still do not understand (I have mentioned this a few times, but never had a satisfactory answer) is why the update of the MyCents credits seems so irregular.

 

Sometimes my credits get updated in a very short time, sometimes it takes three to four days before anything moves.

It is really odd, i know there is a special script in place that deals with the whole MyCents system, but you would think that, within that script, there would be some code that says "Update credits every day at 12 noon", or "Update credits every three hours", or something similar, but that does not seem to be the case.

 

And, I don't want to be told I am seeing ghosts or something, I can only observe what I see, and that is what I have noticed.

 

I am not saying the credits do not update, nor am I saying the credits are not being paid in a fair manner, it is just that irregularity of the MyCents credit updates that still puzzles me.

[k_nitin_r 8]

The only logical explanation that I can make about the irregularity of myCENT updates is that there is someone out there who manually executes the myCENT scripts rather than having the script scheduled to occur at a specific time every day. Well, it's either that or the scheduler runs the script only when the forum does not have any load i.e. when there are no users on the forum and if the no-users-online condition does not occur for three days then run the myCENTs script. None of the members will be able to give you a definite answer except for Opaque who writes the script and has it scheduled to run. Often on high traffic websites or on websites located on shared servers, intensive processing applications are scheduled for execution during off-peak hours. Some shared hosting servers may prohibit any CPU intensive or bandwidth intensive operations, in which case the operation would have to be performed by exporting the data to anothre system and re-importing the data or doing something similar by retrieving the input and making an update to the 'count'.

[mrdee 1]

Yes, maybe that is the case, the fact that the MyCents script is ran manually (looks likely, now that you mention it).Another thing which I must agree on is the fact that it does seem a lot more difficult to accumulate credits than it used to be.I found this statement on the fact that I have noticed a few times that, when I am on a total of about halfway (¢50), or even more (¢70 and more) and I make a number of considerable posts, with which I mean four to five posts of about one screen long, I often expect I will get into the next but one dollar (meaning, if my grand total is $1.50 at the time, I sometimes expect to make it to the $3 mark or more, but every time I only make it into the next dollar, with about half a dollar to spare).So, yes, I knew times when it was somewhat different, and while I understand that this is probably a sort of strategy to make sure people write posts of better length and quality, it does seem a shame that, where effort, judgement and some planning for decent work was needed in the past, it now seems to be required to write about a whole chapter from a novel to get a nice amount of credits.Now, and I apologise in advance if something like that does exist and i have missed it, but I think it would be good if we could find a detailed explanation of how the CURRENT MyCents credit system works somewhere here on the forum. (One written by Opaque, since he is the one who coded the whole MyCent script, so he will probably be about the only one who knows the script in every nook and cranny).Such a post would also help us to plan our posts even better and give us an idea how substantial a post really should be in order to get certain amounts of credits.

Edited September 13, 2011 by mrdee (see edit history)

[mrdee 1]

I don't blame Opaque for not giving out his source code neither, because I never asked for it in the first place.Although it might be interesting to see the source code of such a, what I assume to be substantial, script, it is obviously true that it could lead to lots of abuse and looking for holes which could help not so correctly minded people to abuse and/or damage the system.Second point is, it is Opaque's work, so, obviously the source code is his 'secret recipe' so to speak.What I did ask for was a detailed description telling us, for example, the length of posts needed to earn certain amounts of credits, the frequency with which the script goes through the member database and updates the credits and things like that, so, simply things which could be informative and useful to the members.I understand that no one in his right mind (not even me) would ask a programmer to reveal all the hard work behind his scripts/programs.The source code (even if it did appear here) would not be of much use to me anyway.I probably would not have the patience to go through thousands of lines of coding and jumping back and forth to look at the subroutines the script refers to, and I am also not competent enough to analyse and understand a script which goes beyond the most basic commands (I am aware of it, since I was recently told I need to learn to code a website).So, no harm done, all I was looking for was a bit of further information, which could have helped me and other members to increase the quality of their posts.

Edited September 14, 2011 by mrdee (see edit history)