[Ben]

Win a Virtual Server free for a year
We've teamed up with Heart Internet to giveaway a brand new VPS with some pretty hefty tech specs (worth £530):

-2vCPU
- 100GB hard drive
- 3GB RAM
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Linux or Windows (your choice)
- RAID 10
- Plesk or cPanel (your choice)
- Full root access
- Red Hat KVM
- Out of band SSH access
- 99.99% SLA
- Find out more about the VPS

You'll also get a free .com (1 year) or .co.uk (2 years) of your choice as well.

Entering is nice and easy too. In fact all you need to do to is leave a comment below telling us what you would use it for, and we will pick the winner at random. The competition closes on 23/11/11, so be sure to have your comment posted by then.

Best of luck, and thanks for reading webdesignerforum.co.uk!

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[Renaissance-Design]

Bit of a boring answer, but... I'd use it to develop apps with large databases (ie, with SQL dumps over the PHP upload limit), because I'm fed up to the back teeth with not having SSH.

Also Magento. That's a pain to wrangle without SSH too.

[RobbieD90]

I'd use it to start a business.

[Gaelen]

I'd use it to host one of my online forums , largest one sees about 100,000 unique hits a month and as the winter hits the traffic only goes up.

[oakleaves]

Hmm, now there's an offer you don't get every day.

I'd use it for one of my client projects that I anticipate will have a large amount of traffic.

This post has been edited by oakleaves: 09 November 2011 - 05:29 PM

[MikeChipshop]

I'd use it to start a rival web design forum where i could rule as king! King i tell thee!

OK... i'd use it for a project i've got planned that would need this as the traffic i'm expecting would be more than my current set-up could handle. No sneaky peeks just yet but it should be fun and i'll be needing the help of the beautiful (except Oakleaves obviously ) members of WDF!

[Tommo]

Pretty generic but true : I would use it to host my (and friends + people I know who need temporary hosting's) coding projects (seriously we start lots of em) and to improve my skills in general.

[Sazzad]

I guess I could use it for Geekius.com. Since it's a college news site, a vps will help with the traffic we expect to get in the coming months. Either that or gift it to my Server Admin. He has been quite helpful and he just loves experimenting with a variety of things. It would be more a wedding gift for him. He runs a tutorial

[mrchristoph]

Porn.

[oakleaves]

It's just occurred to me that after the first year it will cost me £530 per annum. I think I may need to retract my bid!

Besides, I cannot compete with mrchristoph's bid either..

[MikeChipshop]

I'd donate it to WDF to help cure brightonmikes woes

[Black Nova Designs.co.uk]

I would use this to increase my business aspect, and to supply more user friendly environment and also use it as a testing bed for applications and providing services to all customers and possibly set-it up as a test bed for WDF members to help them develop their skills.

[zed]

I'd start posting on the forum again, add nothing to a few old threads and have a Miss World moment to try and curry some favour with the decision makers.

[Black Nova Designs.co.uk]

zed, on 10 November 2011 - 01:39 PM, said:

I'd start posting on the forum again, add nothing to a few old threads and have a Miss World moment to try and curry some favour with the decision makers.

+1 clever idea. =]

[Renaissance-Design]

Black Nova Designs.co.uk, on 10 November 2011 - 03:10 PM, said:

+1 clever idea. =]

*facepalm*

[kingy da killa]

ild use it to write a novel ive been working on

[timtamboy63]

I would use it to finally start freelancing. The only thing stopping me is that I'm a broke student, and can't afford a domain name or hosting (yes, that broke haha). I'd also use it to finally learn server administration, something I've been wanting to get into for a long time

[CityCM]

Running multiple web hosting servers already, I would use it to offer free hosting to WDF members with our high class customer support.

This post has been edited by CityCM: 11 November 2011 - 03:19 PM

[AlexsDesign]

I would use it to help set up a new business...

This post has been edited by AlexsDesign: 12 November 2011 - 08:12 PM

[HuntyDJH]

I would use it to start my very exciting web design business, creating many upon many great designs for the small/start up business' to help boost income and get through the rough times which are on as at the moment. At only 18, this would be the perfect opportunity to start something so exciting which I am passionate about!

Fingers Crossed!

[MikeChipshop]

kingy da killa, on 10 November 2011 - 04:29 PM, said:

ild use it to write a novel ive been working on

Where some friends become enemies and some enemies become friends?

[JoshD]

I would use it to start my own hosting business as it's something i have been looking at for a while and think it could give me that boost to get going!

[kingy da killa]

MikeChipshop, on 14 November 2011 - 02:38 PM, said:

Where some friends become enemies and some enemies become friends?

ahahahhaa is that a stewie qoute?

[MikeChipshop]

kingy da killa, on 15 November 2011 - 04:52 PM, said:

ahahahhaa is that a stewie qoute?

Haha you started it!

[skidz]

I'd use it for DDOS attacks on the Federal Government / Buckingham Palace.

If that failed, I'd use it as a dumping ground for peadophiles which automatically alerted the police every time there was a visitor.

Failing that, I'd use it to host websites.



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In the interest of competition, I really would just use this to host websites!

[MikeChipshop]

skidz, on 15 November 2011 - 05:02 PM, said:

I'd use it for DDOS attacks on the Federal Government / Buckingham Palace.

If that failed, I'd use it as a dumping ground for peadophiles which automatically alerted the police every time there was a visitor.

If i could pick a winner, you sir would have been that winner

[Tom Lovick]

I would use it as a testing ground for a very exciting project I am working on that can only be run on a VPS or Dedicated server, and as I cannot afford to buy one this would be perfect.

I would also use it for hosting clients websites and my own sites.

[Spitfire]

I'd have grandeur plans to use it as a gaming server or to host an awesome community site. However, I know full well that if I did win it I'd spend so much time faffing around with designs and getting distracted by other projects that it would just sit around gathering dust until the free year was up.

[SEOLover]

I currently have multiple web hosting accounts with various companies, so i'd use this VPS to consolodate everything under one company and if needs be, adjust requirements over time without having to upgrade/move to a different server.

[CSN-UK]

Potentially a bit of an interesting one this so I'll let rip, it's somewhat come about following a discussion myself and a few of my team had about wordpress and other such projects and opensource in general and what they would do if given a server to play with, as such:

The big idea:

"Create a website focused around the submission of ideas for open source projects, these ideas would be then voted upon, the chosen idea would then be put forward as the next community project on which everyone would be invited to expand and contribute, at the end of a set period the project would be released as an open source product for all to use, expand, redistribute (freely) etc"....

It's a somewhat unrefined idea similar in a way but not in others to the pear libary, but based mainly around the community it attracts and commitment to projects but it could tackle problems in a way that provides hands on experience and constructive support to those new and experienced to coding, webdesign, and development in a somewhat structured approach and more importantly distribute the results freely

It would be nice to tie into WDF as in a sister site or similar though for such an idea, if ben where interested.

-On a side note- It was one of the better suggestions over yet another minecraft server... the office servers allready have 15 instances of minecraft servers

This post has been edited by CSN-UK: 17 November 2011 - 02:36 PM

[tabbaz]

If lucky I would use this to expand my SEO business. I am at the stage where I really do need this now so it would be perfect timing.

[ayoungh]

I would use it to get some great new websites online and share it with some fellow WDFers - Maybe do some colab works with some of you guys....

[ryandigweed]

Count me in please.. Coultd start my portfolio !..

[webdesigner93]

I'd use it to pick my nose, i got a big booger up there

This post has been edited by webdesigner93: 17 November 2011 - 11:49 PM

[WBC]

I'd use it to host some big project concepts, i've got brewing! And I don't mean a website about tea!

[rjdejong]

oakleaves, on 09 November 2011 - 11:55 PM, said:

It's just occurred to me that after the first year it will cost me £530 per annum. I think I may need to retract my bid!

Besides, I cannot compete with mrchristoph's bid either..

Was thinking the same thing, what happens when they year runs out? You have to move your websites back to some place affordable again?

[Ben]

rjdejong, on 18 November 2011 - 02:39 AM, said:

Was thinking the same thing, what happens when they year runs out? You have to move your websites back to some place affordable again?

It's a VPS..... you can scale it upwards or down..so you can reduce the costs significantly after the year if needed

[haxel]

I would give it to my son as he always has computer projects/games running for him and his university friends.

[WebSetGo]

I would use it to create and run a web app that allows people to easily create mobile websites using MODERN technology like jquery mobile, html5, etc. This would all be done via a really simple GUI that protects the person making the mobile site from having to dig too deelply into the code. The server would host the actual app and the created sites. Once users have created sites, they would be able to export them as android, iOS, etc - apps with minimal changes to the site’s structure – in many cases it would be as simple as one click.

I imagine a large range of APIs for users to take advantage of such as twitter, facebook, flickr, stocks, web-search, advertising platforms. All built right in with drag and drop functionality to make use of them.

The idea is to have the mobile web finally be a place worth browsing. New and inovative mobile sites instead of re-hashes of standard desktop sites are the order of the day; Though the latter would be fine, too.

This post has been edited by WebSetGo: 19 November 2011 - 10:35 AM

[MikeChipshop]

Ben, on 18 November 2011 - 10:53 AM, said:

It's a VPS..... you can scale it upwards or down..so you can reduce the costs significantly after the year if needed

Duh, hadn't thought about that!

In that case I would use the opportunity to consolidate all my clients and company assets to one server instead of spread over several different companies, accounts and servers. I could then stick with heart for the foreseeable future and feel a lot more stable about things.