Dru Devore's Blog: March 2008 Archive

Java can compete against other languages, scripting or not, even for small sites, but it needs the support of the industry and the availability of reasonable hosting to do so. I know that Java is not the same as PHP and other scripting languages but I would think that the hosting could at least keep up a little better than it has.

Question

Java has been around for a long time, has a large following, and was created, at least in part, for the web. So where are the hosts that are reasonably priced and current?

My Experience

Years ago I tried out a Java enabled Go Daddy site and found it difficult at best. Recently I had the desire to create site and found that Go Daddy has reasonable prices and supports Java. Since I need a site anyway I decided to go ahead and get it and give it a whirl, figuring that they would have updated the Java support by now I was wrong. Today I decided to put something on it to see what happens, now I remember why I stopped using it a couple of years ago.

Problems

The problem with Go Daddy is that they are using Tomcat 5.0.27 on a shared server. They restart the server every night at 1:00 am Arizona time to reload any changes in the deployed applications, which would be fine for a stable site. My use of the site is considerably little less than production ready release on a schedule so this doesn't work well for me.

The Need

My need and I am sure many others is for a site with more control at a reasonable price that I can put an application on for testing, something that is not on my home server because my ISP might get mad if people start hitting me. I need a site to put my programming musings, similar to the ones found in this blog but with less words.

The Call

I have searched for Java enabled sites for years and have never found anything within reason for a reasonable price. I would like to see someone offering a site with JEE 5, Glassfish would be nice, and a reasonable amount of space for a good price. Something like what Go Daddy is doing but with a more resent server and hot deploy enabled.

So who else would like to see something like this and how can we as a Java community do to get someone to do it?

I think that Sun should do something like this for small sites and offer it for free for development, demos, and Open Source projects. Like what SourceForge does but for Java deployment. Just think of the Java promotion this would provide.

Powered by
Movable Type 3.01D

java.net RSS Feeds