Title says it all. I have become interested in the Free Hosting Model for a variety of reasons, thinking of something like http://free.hostingchoice.net for plans, and offering free subdomain hosting with forced ads.

Now, how should I go about doing this? Should I keep a seperate server for free clients, or can free and paid clients both go on the same servers?

How would I get my apache server to add advertisements (banners and whatnot) of my choice to specific accounts?

I am new to the concept, so some (technical and theory) specifics would really help me out.

Thanks!
-Sam

EDIT: I guess my main question is this: Can you force ads on pages on an account basis? For example, if someone signed up for a free account, I would enable ad-forcing, and if they had a paid account, I just wouldnt do anything?

I'd recommend that you lookinto using iPanel from iHostDev.com - it has forced ads!

Seems nice ... However, I don't mind getting my hands dirty and coding a bit, following tutorials, etc. I can integrate this with my ClientExec and cPanel as it is, so I have no need for something like this at this point in time.

I might look into it in the future though, so thanks for showing that to me.

There is a forum for Free Hosting, freewebhostingtalk.com

They will have no doubt addressed this question more than once. I believe the most popular method is mod_layout. Rather than forcing this on the few people I host for Free (friends, but not close enough friends to get a free ride) I just ask that they include an ad or a link to my sites. My approach would be hard to manage on any large scale to say the least.

Also, the site you linked doesn't seem to be loading.

There is an open-source script that can do this called Multihoster, which I can make available to you if you'd like. Unfortunately, hackers attacked its Website (multihoster.com) several months ago, and it was never put back up. It seems that I'm the only person storing a copy of it now. If you're interested, pm me with your email address, and I'll send you a copy.

I have sent you a PM, thanks for letting me know. This might be good :)

Installing an Apache module, called Mod_Layout will require both headers and footers for each website hosted on the server.

Hm, then the problem would be differentiating which clients to force headers and which not to.

It may be better to use two servers, then. Free clients don't tend to obey TOS rules, so it may be better to keep them separate so that your paid clients aren't affected. It's more expensive, but then I guess you wouldn't have the problem of who gets the ads on their sites.

It may be better to use two servers, then. Free clients don't tend to obey TOS rules, so it may be better to keep them separate so that your paid clients aren't affected. It's more expensive, but then I guess you wouldn't have the problem of who gets the ads on their sites.

Yeah, put them on a cheap server, or start off with a cheap VPS.:)