If you take a gander back at what the Hermetic Library looked like from its inception until the year 2000, you will notice that the original tag for the site was “Web Hosting for the Spiritual Arts”.

You may also know that I offer domain name registration services as a reseller for OpenSRS, which is the registrar created by Tucows in Canada. (You may recognize Tucows if you’re a Internet veteran as one of the original file repositories, where free software and shareware were made available. They still offer that service, in fact.) I created a temporary logo for the service, and you may have seen that around as one of the sister sites to the library:

What you may not know is that one of the things I wanted to do, when I first took over the Hermetic Library, was to create a niche service specifically to offer hosting to sites and projects using the same infrastructure as I was using to host the library itself, and all the related sites I have developed such as the Hrmtc Underground and the Hermeneuticon. I also use the same infrastructure for my personal sites, such as Arlecchino Malbenvolio, and offer to host sites that I develop for others through Xarc Design.

The truth is you might not know that because I really have not done much to tell people about what I was doing. I bought an incredibly powerful and reliable dedicated server that could have completely run a small hosting service, with all the bells and whistles including RAID 10 and more bandwidth than God. (Seriously, even with all my sites on there, I barely registered on the CPU or the Network capacity!) I really did create the infrastructure to offer professional, high quality and full featured site hosting for those interested in supporting the library and working with a service provider that was aware of the needs of esoteric sites. I wanted to do better than some commodity hosting service, or worse one that has an “Evil in a Bad Way” CEO. After all, why pay people who have nothing to do with the community to host an esoteric site, or deal with a hosting provider that doesn’t know and doesn’t care about the community, let alone about simple decency in general.

But, honestly, after paying for the best, I just did not do much to leverage that infrastructure into a full-on implementation of my plan for Hermetic Hosting. I ran out of money to support it on my own. After shouldering the cost of a really amazing but expensive server while at the same time not doing anything much to get the word out that I could offer hosting that was in service to the community, I migrated all my sites to cheap commodity hosting. Yeah, the same kind of cheap commodity hosting to which I wanted to offer a better, more reliable and more responsible alternative! And, I’ve really been slumming it for a while now. Frankly, it sucks. There’s not enough bandwidth and they really aren’t reliable. They also are not really very responsive to support request even when they cause the problem. And, they’re constantly under attack from DDoS since they host so many sites. It’s kind of like a bad dream, really, a nightmare.

I want to wake back up to the happy dreamlands of a dedicated server! Seriously, when I had the dedicated server, I had zero downtime and no site throttling issues while I watched other sites go down multiple times and have all kinds of technical issues. It was, quite simply, a dream setup for the site, and would have been amazing for other sites too.

However, the only way I can do that anymore, is if I start with a number of people committed to both supporting the library and also to hosting their sites on the same infrastructure. And, so, Phase Zero of Operation Resurrection:

Hermetic Hosting will offer shared web-hosting services that have all the buzzwords and features, and it is the service on which I will run the Hermetic Library itself, so you know I’ll be committed to keeping it up and running! In summary, the service is reliable, secure and highly configurable; suitable for a wide range of clients from individuals who are just learning to put together their first site to the professional website developer looking to place their own clients with a superior hosting service.

This will be professional quality hosting, where you have full access to all the tools you need to manage and configure your services. Service will be on Robust, Enterprise-class Infrastructure; be Secure and Safe; have Full-featured Email; allow you full Website Management, Traffic Statistics, Pre-installed Programs, Advanced Web Features; and, all the Developer-friendly Features you need to do just about anything you can imagine.

So, that’s just the introduction! I’m going to write more about Hermetic Hosting, and specifics, in the coming days.

Whether you want to be part of the founding 10-20 initial people who will commit to being part of Phase Zero, or you wait until the service is completely up and running and join during Phase One; you should consider Hermetic Hosting as a partner in your project. I’d sure like to be of service, and hope you’ll be part of the project.

I’ve got more to write more about Hermetic Hosting, and some very special offers for people willing to help Hermetic Hosting get off to a great start, in the coming days. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions, comments or concerns; or, you know, if you want to join in Project Resurrection!