TechShell

TechShell offers several services, most notably SSH hosting, web hosting & Gopherspace hosting. By default, every member who registers for either free, or paid services will automatically receive SSH hosting, while web & Gopherspace hosting are optional. Service pricing depends on the amount of storage space a member may require; all service options can be selected upon registration, changed after registration & cancelled upon request for no additional fees.

In return for these services, users are expected to respect the terms of service to help prevent server misuse, abuse & vandalism.

All of these services require a terminal emulator program or FTP client software, in order to execute commands & manipulate files on the server, as well as to transmit files between the server & client. Further details concerning each services, as well as any client-sided requirements, are available below.

TechShell also provides site design & maintenance; site design is available for an hourly rate, while site maintenance is provided for a per-update fee.

As mentioned earlier, service costs depend on the amount of space needed for a user to store their files. Billing can be done on either a monthly or yearly basis & is proportional to the amount of storage space desired. The amount of storage space needed & billing schedule can be selected upon registration. Below is a list of the default storage space sizes, with annual & monthly prices:

• 2 GB storage (default minimum storage space): Free
• 5 GB storage: $5 a month, or $60 a year
• 10 GB storage: $10 a month, or $120 a year
• 15 GB storage: $15 a month, or $180 a year
• 20 GB storage: $20 a month, or $240 a year

The above payments go towards paying the electrical bill, monthly ISP bill, the upgrade/maintenance of server hardware components & towards the system operator's technical support.

Circumstances may arise, where one may need to change billing schedules, storage requirements or even cancel their service accounts; as there's no contract other than to respect the terms of service, changes & cancellations can be completed upon request, at no additional charge & refunds issued based on the date of the change/cancellation request.

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Apart from providing hosting services, website & Gopherspace design/maintenance services are also provided by TechShell's system operator. This service is provided not only to TechShell users, but to any individual or business in need of website design & maintenance. All planning for design projects & maintenance services will be disgussed between the client & the system operator, as well as regular communication being maintained in order to assure quality results in a timely manner, for rapid deployment.

Below is a price list for each service:

• Website building from scratch: $50 per hour, time-constrained to customer deadline
• Existing website redesign: $50 per hour, time-constrained to customer deadline
• Website maintenancee service: to be discussed with customer, on a per-update basis
• Gopherspace building: $35 per hour, time-constrained to customer deadline
• Gopherspace maintenance: to be discussed with customer, on a per-update basis

For further inquiries, feel free to contact the system operator.

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This is the most basic service offered by TechShell; SSH (Secure Shell) is typically used to access the server remotely (with the help of a terminal emulator program). This allows users to execute command-line programs & utilities for programming purposes (as is the case with compiling C programs using GCC, creating web pages with vim, etc.,) or for leisure (as is the case of playing the game Angband, using an account to download files with wget for later retrieval, etc.). Each account comes with access to the following:

• 2/5/10/15/20 GB file storage limit (click here for pricing details)
• File system access via SSH, SCP & SFTP
• Bash, sh, csh, tcsh, zsh, ksh & fish UNIX shells
• OpenSSH Server
• PHP 7.2, Perl & Python script interpreters
• tmux & screen terminal multiplexers, with Byobu enhancement
• htop system monitor
• df & pydf disk space analysers
• Midnight Commander & nnn file managers
• GCC, G++ & Tiny C Compiler toolchains
• DOSEMU MS-DOS emulator
• LaTeX typesetting using TeX Live
• WordGrinder word processor & Pandoc document format converter
• sc, scim & Teapot spreadsheet programs
• SageMath & Maxima computer algebra systems
• vim, vis, Joe's Own Editor, GNU Emacs & GNU nano text editors
• GNU wget download manager
• Lynx, Links, eLinks & w3m web browsers
• gopher, Lynx & eLinks Gopher browsers
• WeeChat & IRSSI IRC chat clients
• Finch & CenterIM multi-protocol chat clients
• BSD games & other command-line games, including:
  • Rogue, Moria, Angband, Zangband, NetHack, Crawl Omega-RPG, adventure, arithmetic, atc, backgammon, battlestar, bcd, boggle, caesar, canfield, countmail, cribbage, dab, go-fish, gomoku, hack, hangman, hunt, mille, monop, morse, number, pig, phantasia, pom, ppt, primes, quiz, random, rain, robots, rot13, sail, snake, tetris, trek, wargames, worm, worms, wump, wtf, Pacman4Console, Bastet, Moon Buggy & nInvaders

GNU/Linux & Mac OS X users have their own terminal emulator programs built into their operating systems (in the form of command line programs,) while Windows users who use Windows XP & older are fortunate enough to have HyperTerminal included with their operating systems. However, the recommended client-side software listing has some third-party alternatives available to everyone.

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This service is an optional add-on that operates alongside SSH accounts, as well as Gopher-enabled accounts; it allows users to broadcast their own web pages & files over the internet. It's entirely up to users, however, if they wish to use their accounts for web hosting & it's up to them to supply their own domain names; domain names can be assigned upon request (either at registration or at a later date).

This server supports the following:

• Apache2 HTTP Server
• MySQL database system
• PHP, Perl & Python scripting
• File system access via SSH, SCP & SFTP
• cron jobs (i.e.: scheduled, server-related tasks)

This server does NOT support the following:

• SQLite, PostgreSQL or other database implementations
• In-house implementation of phpMyAdmin, cPanel or other web host control panels
In-house implementation of WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or other content management systems
In-house implementation of phpBB, SMF, PunBB or other forum software packages

Even though TechShell does not implement them, anyone can implement their own content management system or forum software on their own website. There are also content management & forum software packages that use flat file databases, instead of SQL; they, along with conventional forum & content management packages, are available in the recommended scripts & web packages listing.

Aside from being able to take advantage of this using a terminal emulator, users can also take advantage of TechShell's web hosting feature with the help of FTP client software that can support either SFTP (or SSH File Transfer Protocol). GNU/Linux, Windows & Mac OS X users all have SFTP client functionality built into their operating systems in some manner (all UNIX-like operating systems have command-line SFTP clients & most graphical file managers like Windows Explorer, Nautilus, Konqueror, etc. can be used for this). This said, the recommended client-side software listing also has some third-party alternatives to do the same job.

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This service is an optional add-on that operates alongside SSH accounts, as well as web-enabled accounts; it allows users to broadcast text documents, media & binary files over the internet, using the Gopher protocol. It's entirely up to users, however, if they wish to use their accounts for Gopherspace hosting & it's up to them to supply their own domain names; domain names can be assigned upon request (either at registration or at a later date).

This server currently supports the Gopher protocol through a server program called Gophernicus. All that a user needs is knowledge of their SSH/FTP client software, the file structure of their server space & how to create Gophermaps (the Gopher equivalent of websites).

The Gopher protocol is a deprecated internet protocol, created in 1991. Designed along the lines of a library catalogue system, it was meant to be a gateway between users & various other online services of the time, including information access, file transfer services & the now-deprecated Telnet (which this server does not support). Due to its simplicity, very little coding knowledge is necessary to create Gophermaps & Gopherspaces (the Gopher equivalent of websites) could be deployed quickly, largely for the same purposes as modern blogs, informational, personal & project sites. However, as Gopher is unable to serve rich media & function well for commercial purposes, Web 1.0 technology took over the spotlight in 1996 & superseded Gopher as the primary technology for information exchange. largely relegated to the world of computer hobbyists.

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