Hi, I am new here, and am very impressed with the featureset of Expression Engine. Am looking at starting a moblogging site. But before i can buy i need clarifications about 2 things:

Is there any way we can limit the quota of space and bandwidth for each blog?

If i am out of space on one server can i scale out to a second server? Buying the license for another server is not an issue but i need to use the same domain and the same system across multiple servers. The application i am looking at will easily exceed the limitations on a server.

I need help on these things as i need to make the purchase for my company ASAP.

Thanks in advance

> Is there any way we can limit the quota of space and bandwidth for each blog?

Not really.  At least, EE doesn’t have that ability built-in.  If you’re Hosted with someone else then I suppose it’s possible that they may have a site control panel with the ability to set limits like that to specific directories or something.

One thing to keep in mind here is that EE stores almost everything in the database.  The only things not in the database are the actual program files as well as any images/files you upload for the site.  All entries, preferences, Template data, etc. is stored in the database.

> If i am out of space on one server can i scale out to a second server?

EE is certainly not designed with the idea of spanning multiple servers.  If you have some sort of cluster, shared storage, or load balancing scheme in place so that the fact that there are multiple servers is transparent to the user/program then it shouldn’t be an issue.

Why not simply start with a server that will have sufficient room and resources, though?

well, i am lookin at starting something similar to blogging service…. commercial in nature. Also shall be giving free accounts. space becomes the biggest problem in that case. Paid users get 250 MB of space. Thus one server is never going to be enuff. Wil fillup eventually. The servers that i have are all arround a 100 GB in disk space. I am not worried about size of the DB as it will have only textual data and text compresses well. I am interested in limiting the files and pictures storage sizes. When i mean spanningacross servers i would e more than happy if i could place the files on different servers. For example the first 1000 blogs have their files on server X and the next 1000 on server Y and so on and so forth.

Also i am guessing that there is no “sign up” module or page in the system where visitors to the site could come in and sign up for a blog and the blog is automatically created. Is there a possibilty of automating that?

If all of these features are not there would pmachine services be able to develop them for me? if yes how do i take this conversation further?

Perhaps Chris or someone else at pmachine can clarify this but from the commercial license it says in the restrictions that you man NOT:
Sell, rent, lease, assign, or sublet the software, portions thereof, or add-on modules.

Now I may be wrong about this but to me that sounds like you can’t use EE if your setting up a weblog hosting company.

There is a “User Blog”/“Community Blogging” type Module planned.  Basically, the idea behind it would be to provide the ability to allow you to have a blogging service: where people can sign up and automatically have their own weblog.

The Module is not available yet and I don’t know the ETA for it.

Chris, what about the commercial implications of the stuff that DexterAtDaLab is talking about? can i start a commecial service based out of EE?

also have you started work on the module? any approx on the eta?

I quote from above: “The Module is not available yet and I don’t know the ETA for it”.

As for legal issues, I don’t think I should comment on those since I don’t have anything to do with them.  I’d suggest examining the license agreement carefully and then contacting Sales if you have legal questions.

Hello Chris
I am looking for something similar to what apurva is looking.
Since its almost a month to this post can u put some more light on that “Module”. I mean the progress of that module.

No, no additional information.