Frequently Asked Questions

The NearlyFreeSpeech.NET FAQ (*)

Technology (*)

Do you support PHP? FastCGI? SSI?

What database software do you support?

What common web applications and frameworks work with your system?

Do you support TLS for member sites?

Can I use .htaccess files to customize my web server configuration?

May I install other types of server applications that are not web-based?

What type of control panel do you use?

What software can I use to access your system?

What are the most common things that do not work on your system?

Why don't you offer static IP addresses?

We have a corporate policy that we do not offer services that consume IP address space on a per-site or per-user basis. The most common example of this is when a web site is assigned one (or more) static IP addresses, but it also applies to anonymous FTP sites and some other types of hosted services.

Assigning static IP addresses on a per-site basis is a practice that has devastated the Internet address space, so we don't participate in it. Tens of thousands of IP addresses can be assigned to a single rack of equipment in a datacenter somewhere, but there is a shortage of IP address space. That's not the right way to do things.

We regard this as an "Internet environmental" issue, and it's one about which we're prepared to be a little extremist. Basically, we believe that it's wrong for us to do it, so we don't do it. Not everyone agrees with us, and we definitely do lose business because of this position.

For standards-compliant web hosting (HTTP/1.1), there is no need to assign a static IP address, and no supported browser remains available that requires this. Static IP addresses also severely limit our ability to reroute around equipment that has problems or is being maintained, and even makes it tougher for you to benefit from our load balancing technology.

The most common reason people request a static IP address is to point external DNS at a site hosted with us. As part of our hosting service, we provide our own special DNS records for each site that you can link to external DNS using the CNAME capability that work even better than static IPs. These records preserve full fault tolerance and load balancing.

Does 'NearlyFreeSpeech.NET DNS' support subdomains?

What is your hosting network like?

How big is a gigabyte?

How many MySQL databases can I have?

What sort of spam protection does your email forwarding provide?

What kind of hardware and OS will my site be running on?

Do you support IPv6?