As a Webmaster would you use this?

[WHS]

We are looking at a product that will let webmasters create Virtual Storage (Similar to the old X-drive) but will also give them the ability to FTP directly into the Box. Looking for feedback from WebHosting Companies as well as Webmasters. Basically the reason for this product would be so you don’t have to keep all the TGPs, movies, Content, Code on your computer at home/office but would rather keep them on our Hitachi Machines and be able to seamlessly move data between Storage and the actual Site. This will also give the Admin ability to assign different level of access for different users.

So what do you think?
If you have any more questions please post here or ICQ.

[WHS]

If you dont mind posting a reason as to why not that would be great.

[sarettah]

Originally posted by WHS@Mar 4 2003, 11:39 AM
Basically the reason for this product would be so you don’t have to keep all the TGPs, movies, Content, Code on your computer at home/office but would rather keep them on our Hitachi Machines and be able to seamlessly move data between Storage and the actual Site. This will also give the Admin ability to assign different level of access for different users.

That gives you too much control of my data, at least if I came to rely on it. I have no problem with the concept, but I would still be keeping my stuff down on my local box so if you (the hosting company) or me (the webmaster) got pissed at each other, I could move to a new host with minimal hassle...

If I became dependent on all my data being up in "storage" on your server boxes, then if we get to pissing for some reason, you have all of my stuff to hold on to and fuck with me over......

In a hosting situation, the host definitely has the upper hand already, you set the rules of what can be hosted, you set my level of access, etc...

This would just give you that much more control over me :)

imho of course

[Carrie]

Response as a webmaster:
I could see folks on dial-up considering this solution, but unless you toss GD2 (good) or ImageMagick (better) on there to resize content and make thumbnails as well, it wouldn't be worth it. They could send content straight from the provider to your storage area, but they'd still have to download and resize it before uploading it to their sites.

Couple it with a resizing solution and you might have a winner.
Couple it with an optional CD ordering feature (pick what content you want burned on a CD, pay a fee, and it gets burned and sent to you) and you might also have a winner.

Response as a web host:
If you do this, make sure to market this to the mainstream folks as well. There are plenty of folks who pay me just to store large amounts of data for them; I toss up an upload/download script and they can access it from work and from home without carring around zip disks. I also make sure to implement access-levels so that they can allow other people to download or upload certain things (at their own discretion).
There are other ways to market being a storage solution - I make a nice side income from it. You may want to talk to Sleazybear over on Netpond, he used to have an entire network of servers just for this purpose and eventually sold it for a very pretty penny.

[Opti]

Sounds more like a solution for surfers wanting to share large files..

Maybe there is a webmaster application as a mass storage backend for content management systems like Dravyk's Content God (http://contentgod.com/)