

Nodester - Open-source Heroku-style hosting for node.js - cgbystrom
http://nodester.com/

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ianhawes
Just a heads up in the e-mail that I received from them:

"Our database was compromised and all of our data was maliciously deleted. (We
are still working with our CouchDB provider to restore this data and help with
forensics to hand over to the FBI.)"

Not a good start.

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futuremint
I have a project at work that uses CouchDB & node.js, but it isn't hosted. I
have Cloudant, CouchOne & no.de accounts, but haven't had enough free time to
finish a side project to put them to good use.

Node & couch together are a pretty nice combo though, it's just JSON &
JavaScript all the way. There is no context switching between programming
languages like what is typical using Ruby or whatever for your application
layer.

Been shoveling lots of ice & snow in my spare time instead :(

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chapel
Nodester isn't a new hosting service, it is Nodefu just rebranded. This was
submitted to HN eighteen days ago [0] and there was some confusion over the
name being similar to another node.js hosting service provider. I am glad that
there is no confusion anymore. You should check out Nodejitsu [1] who also
open sources most if not all their code and have been a vital part of the
node.js community for a long time now.

[0]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2116319>

[1]: <http://nodejitsu.com>

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gcv
Has anyone actually tried this, or something similar? A hosted node.js
combined with a hosted CouchDB? Does it work well? Is it actually easy to
program? Does it perform well?

~~~
js4all
I have used it for a web statistics/analytics site. The combo is killer. And
CouchDB's group level map-reduces make the data aggregation a snap.

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jerf
Honest question: What is the point of all these specialized hosting sites? At
least some are succeeding so I assume there is some value being delivered to
some customers, but I am curious what that is. From where I sit it seems like
Node.js, Rails, etc are just apps on an OS and while there may some tuning
opportunities it's not like the difference between a specialized
Node.js/Rails/etc optimizer is going to get ten times the performance of a
general purpose skilled optimizer out of a stack. (I assume that if you're
building a business on one of these stacks that we can safely assume that
we're not talking the totally unoptimized case.)

I explain my assumptions so you can better answer my question; as I say, I am
assuming there's a positive answer, I just don't know what it is.

~~~
rst
It's not performance --- it's reduced setup overhead. The main upside of
something like Heroku is that if you want to get something up quickly, you
don't have to bother configuring a VPS for it; run three shell commands[1],
and there's your app, running on the public internet.

The main downside of something like heroku is that if you want to do something
that would require custom config on a VPS (e.g., installing some oddball
software package), you can't. There are also restrictions on what directories
you can write to, and so forth, and some fairly common gems require
workarounds to deal with them. But enough people find it a net win that
they've had, I believe, the largest YC exit to date.

[1] Walkthrough here: <http://docs.heroku.com/quickstart>

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js4all
Nodester is a super cool project, because it is a node.js hosting platform
that is fully open source. I am preparing a similar node.js and couchdb
hosting site (<http://cloudno.de>) based on the work of Chris and Dan. I guess
there are some more coming and the long wait for a coupon/invite will be soon
over.

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vincentpants
I'd love a 'coupon' to register for this site. This would be the perfect test
bed for hosted node.js tools.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
curl -X POST -d "email=your_address@gmail.com" <http://nodester.com/coupon>

