Welcome/En

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Welcome to the TuxFamily.org FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). This place aims at answering any of your questions related to how tuxFamily works. The TuxFamily team worked hard to put all information hosted users may need into this FAQ, considering you should never have to ask a staff member for help in order to use a TuxFamily service the normal way. So, have a look at the proposed sections: they aim at matching your current situation to quickly lead you to the relevant information.

Notes:

  • This is a wiki, meaning you can edit pages as you like. Feel free to add your stone to the building (you must log in to do so).
  • The English FAQ is still not as complete as the French one. Sometimes you may land on a French web page. While automatic translation tools can help you understand their content, you may also consider translating them to English, especially if it is your native language.

You are looking for hosting services and/or you wonder what TuxFamily is

Short answer: TuxFamily is a non-profit organization which provides free hosting services (as in free beer) for projects dealing with the Free Software philosophy (free as in free speech, not as in free beer). All projects are accepted as long as they are released under a license we consider free (e.g. GPL, BSD, CC-BY-SA, Art Libre, ...).

Longer answers:

Right now, roughly 3695 users and 2816 groups are using TuxFamily.org free hosting services. So don't wait, subscribe to TuxFamily!

You want to benefit from TuxFamily services

Step 1: know your project

First, please note TuxFamily focuses on the "project" notion, i.e. what you want to create, achieve and spread by relying on TuxFamily. So, forget mere technical specs such as "I need 50MB with PHP and a MySQL database", it will serve later only. Of course, your project can be a website, but bear in mind content is more important than the underlying media. Next, you have to check you can benefit from TuxFamily services by ensuring your project fits the Moderation criterias. You may need to choose a license for your project if you haven't already. And since "free license" is rather vague, you may want to refer to the License page. Last but not least, read our policy.

Step 2: a few notions about TuxFamily

The main interface between you and TuxFamily is the panel, a nice web frontend which allows you to manage all your hosting services. Each hosting service is seen on the panel as an object parented to a project. Basically, you first need to create a user account, then ask for a project (group) and finally ask for services.

Step 3: subscribe to the TuxFamily panel

You may now create your user account on the TuxFamily panel by following instructions on the User page. Remember your account is limited (e.g. no SSH feature) until your first project is accepted.

Step 4: request your project

TuxFamily projects are also known as groups, so the page you are looking for is named Groups. Use everything you learned about moderation to write the perfect group description: short, content-oriented, with a license, targeted at a public audience.

Your project was refused by TuxFamily

The mail you received provides a short explanation about the refusal. Take it into account, browse again this FAQ if needed, then submit again your improved project request on the panel if you think it should be accepted. Note however the panel request interface was conceived to transmit short descriptions only, it is not a chat interface. Thus, if you need to talk with the moderation team, please send a mail to modo@staff.tuxFamily.org.

Your project was accepted at TuxFamily

Congratulations and welcome to TuxFamily. You may now want to consult our services list, because freshly accepted projects feature almost nothing: you must require every object/service related to your project. Most users begin with a webarea and a MySQL database to mimic what traditional hosters provide. But do not worry: the project was the most difficult to obtain. Indeed, services are quickly accepted as long as they fit usage constraints and technical recommendations. However, once you benefit from TuxFamily services, you inherit a few duties:

  • Subscribe to the RSS feed of tuxfamily.org -- this website is used to announce maintenance operations and other downtime-inducing events.
  • Security: follow our security recommendations
  • Backups: backup your data

We strongly advise you take care of these topics. Many before you did not and ended with defaced websites, compromised user accounts and data loss.

You want more disk space for your project

The default project quota is 200 MB; download repositories enable you to store up to 1 GB of static files. If by chance you end up needing more quota, simply address a mail to the moderation team (modo@staff.tuxfamily.org): provide the name of your project and why you require more space. Regarding the project quota: keep in mind your request is more likely to succeed if you moved (or at least attempted to move) static files to a download repository.

You want to contact and/or help TuxFamily

How to contact TuxFamily?

How to help TuxFamily? Well, try to give us...:

More...

On our side, we are trying to promote some nice projects that we really enjoy hosting. We also have some nice contributions of free artists.