Thanks for the great reply. I'm comfortable setting up cron jobs and some minor aspects of server management. I am looking to take the next step so I have more flexibility but I want to avoid all the work it'll take to customize a 'blank canvas'.
I've been analyzing slicehost and they look great, but it looks like I'll have to do too much of the server admin myself, including security. Plus, they are currently back ordered unless you prepay. Says alot for them though that they refuse customers due to server loads.
MediaTemple's dv offering seems to be 'dedicated light' in that apache, php, mysql etc are preinstalled. Also MT has a security update option where they updated tested versions of apps as they come out.
Looks like that could take alot of server admin work off my hands, which is what I'm looking for.
Those guys are cheap. Kinda scares me a bit that they say they've built everything themselves. How is the control panel? Is there any way to view the real time statistics (cpu, database connections, etc) on your server?
I'm talking about starting with 1 small server and scaling it up with ram and cpu, then possibly needing to add a db server. That's about as far into the future as I'd like to look.
The surfer crowd could be a good market here. You could probably find some traffic by posting in their forums.
California looks to hurricane development off Mexico all the time for swell, but I see you are only covering the atlanitc here...
Anyone ever make revenue sharing deals for content? If so, what was the percentage, and deal structure? I'm dealing with seeding my site now, but want to keep costs down.
Thinking:
x% as long as creator maintains content
x% up to 3x market value of content
x% up to 3x market value or x% till n time which ever is better for content creator.