Webfaction’s virtual hosting is more than virtual hosting

What does it mean "virtual hosting is more than virtual hosting"? Well, normaly, people think virtual hostings are all like that, upload your application by ftp, there is only few types of web application you can run, might be php, asp or some out-of-date web stuff. And you configure your site with control panel like cPanel or whatever, and that’s all what you can do with your host, pretty little isn’t it? You buy the service, but they limit what you can do.

Webfaction, they give you full access to your SSH account, you can do almost everything you like with that. You can install whatever you like in your home directory, but indeed, they already installed most of popular tools for you.

login to WebFaction's SSH account

For example, you can compile and install software you like in your home directory, You can even compile a server wrote in c language and run it on Webfaction! I wrote an article to demonstrate how. You can read the article here: WebFaction能不能跑自己的C/C++語言Server? (it is in traditional chinese)

Create a custom application by Webfaction's panel

Compile and run the c-server

That's it!

Another example, as I said, it is more than virtual hosting, actually, that also means it is more than web hosting. What if you want to run a non-http server? You have to buy a VPS, right? No! You can use Webfaction virtual hosting to run your non-http server! I wrote a little chat room server for my Andriod chat room client, and it runs well on Webfaction! (It is not running now, because I have no time to maintain, and there is lots of problem in my client, it consume lots of cpu even it is running in background, I did’t handle the life cycle event well, so I just stop running it, until I got time to update)

Also, full access to SSH brings much more convenience to deal with your web applications. For example, it is a big trouble to deploy your web application by uploading all stuff by FTP. You have to remeber what pages are changed, and upload them manually, it is killing me. With Webfaction, I use SVN to deploy my web application. I do develop web application on my machine, then, I check out my web application on Webfaction, and everything is there! If you just modified some pages of you site, you can commit them and run "svn update" on your application directory, and that’s it! Well, if you don’t like svn, you have your choice! You can install git, or if you like mercurial more than git, you can install them, too.

run svn update in my application's folder

Easy to use panel, install most popular web applications in few minutes

What if you don’t know anything about linux commands, SSH or those geek’s stuff? Well, actually, Webfaction give you extra right by allowing you accessing SSH. But if you don’t know how to use SSH, that’s okay, you can use their powerful and easy-to-use control panel to install most of poplular web application without typing any lines of command, just fill the form, and click, then everything is there.

There is so many popular applications that you can install with their control panel, e.g. wordpress, django, turbogears, trac, joomla, ruby on rails, subversion… and etc. They use a simple but powerful architecture to let you configure your websites.

As you can see in this figure, you mount domain names to application, that is, a website. It is pretty easy to use once you knows how it works.

Friendly customer support

Webfaction provide the best customer supporting I have never seen. When I encounter problems, they always give me good answers, they are willing to help you out. That makes me feel happy, they do care about how customers feel. Also, they know much about techniques, although they provide so many cool new stuff, they still know technical details about those stuff, and they can help you out with their sophisticated experience. Their nice customer supporting never let me feel regret to recommand.

It’s balance between convenience, freedom and price

You might ask, why I don’t just buy a VPS? Well, that’s obvious. First, I have not time to manage a VPS, it is not a happy job to upgrade your server, monitor it all the time. It is annoying to receive a database down warning message when you are sleeping. All I want is to run my sites, why I have to take care about so much details? Second, as you see, I got some new stuff to run, like TurboGears2, I also got some non-http servers to run, why I have to buy a VPS just because some new stuff or non-http server? Finally, the price is the matter, it’s not cheap to buy a good VPS. So the conclusion is, Webfaction is the balance between convenience, freedom and price. That’s why I choice it.

Finally

Finally, if you’re interested in WebFaction‘s hosting service, you can just try it, they do provide 60-days money back guarantee, so you can get the money back if you don’t like it for any reason. And when you’re filling the signup form, you can fill my account "victorlin" in the "Promo code or referrer" field. I will be appreciate.

首先是伺服器的部份，因為只是作業，我寫的是一個很無聊的伺服器，client會丟一個數字n過來，而server會計算出這個數字在費伯那契數列中的第n個數然後回傳，只是為了示範，所以只以簡單為主，以下為程式碼片段:

<![CDATA[
#include "tcp_socket.h"
 
/**
    @brief Handle incoming request
    @param [in] Socket to handle
**/
void handleRequest(int s) {
    string request = readString(s);
    // remove \n
    request = request.substr(0, request.size()-1);
    stringstream stream;
    size_t n;
    stream << request;
    stream >> n;
    cout << "Receved request : " << n << endl;
 
    size_t i;
    int a = 1;
    int b = 1;
    for(i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
        int temp = a + b;
        a = b;
        b = temp;
    }
 
    {
        stringstream stream;
        stream << b;
        writeString(s, stream.str() + "\n");
    }
}
 
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    try {
        if(argc != 3) {
            cout << "usage: fib interface port" << endl;
            return 0;
        }
		const string interface = argv[1];
        // get port
        int port;
        stringstream str;
        str << argv[2];
        str >> port;
 
        // listen
        int s = listenTCP(port, 5, interface);
        cout << "Listing on " << interface << ":" << port << " ..." << endl;
        for(;;) {
            // accept
            sockaddr_in addr;
            size_t len = sizeof(addr);
            int client = accept(s, reinterpret_cast<sockaddr *>(&addr), &len);
            if(client == -1) {
                THROW();
            }
            cout << "A connection from " << ipAsString(addr.sin_addr.s_addr) << endl;
            handleRequest(client);
            cout << "Close connection" << endl;
            close(client);
        }
    } catch(SocketError &e) {
        e.print();
    }
    return 0;
}
]]>

有了程式碼之後，我們要如何把它丟到WebFaction上面跑呢? 這部份比較討人厭，我個人不是很喜歡在unix-like的環境下開發C/C++程式，因為實在太麻煩了，各家OS的header都不盡相同，文件也七零八落，不知道去哪裡找，不像M$雖然邪惡，可是他的MSDN就在那裡，也只有一份，比起來要跨平台Python方便多了，寫一次到處跑，還好這作業原本就是在unix-like下跑的，所以只差了errno的link問題，解決後就可以編譯了

首先，我們需要從WebFaction的control panel中開一個custom app，也就是自訂的Server，因為port如果都任憑大家亂開，撞port號碼是個很大的問題，因此WebFaction的port是交給他們統一分配的，如下圖所示，操作面版就可以建立一個custom app

如你所見列表裡還有一堆其它程式可以透過這樣自動建成，不過我們今天重點不在那裡，而在自製的server，所以那些部份留在改天再介紹

這個步驟他會在你的home/webapps/下建立一個c_server_demo的資料夾，基本上，WebFaction的所有自動生程的程式都會在webapps下建立相對應的資料夾，而該安裝的檔案也會放在裡面，因為我們建立的是custom app，所以裡面是空的，不果我們還是照慣例，把我們的server程式碼丟進去，而在建立完c_server_demo之後，除了他會自動建立資料夾外，他還會分配一個port給你

有了這個port，稍後我們的server就可以開在這個port上面，我們先進行編譯的工作，編譯完成後就可以執行我們的server，把它綁在我們想要的ip以及port上

接著，server上線了，就可以來試著連線看看

成功了，就是這麼簡單，啥? 你說為什麼會有怪怪的數字? 因為server本來設計是接受binrary的整數，telnet丟字串給他當然會出問題，以上就是對於WebFaction跑自行編譯Server的示範，因為有60天無條件退款，所以有興趣的朋友們別客氣申請來試試看，可以的話推薦人請填victorlin，或是從部落格的文章連結進入申請，還有其它問題的話可以問我，或是我幫各位問他們的客服