About Our Service
What Is Saturn Flyer Offering?
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A Radiant instance, ready to go
For a lot of people, wanting to use Radiant means getting an account from a hosting company that’s Rails friendly. Then, following the instructions to configure a database. Then they need to configure Rails or Radiant to start automatically, etc, etc. What we’re offering is a solution that’s ready to go. You sign up with us and we e-mail you a username and password and you’re using Radiant.
There is no Unix login, no installing Radiant, then unpacking the Gem, copying it up to the server, etc. We will not provide SSH logins into the box or even a web based ‘console’ (except what we’ll provide through Radiant). If you want more control, or would rather have the ability to log in to a Unix account and ‘take charge,’ there are plenty of other hosts out there. Our goal is to make the process for non-technical people, like designers, simple and convenient.
Do I get to load my own extensions?
Yes and no. We’re working on a way to dynamically add and remove extensions from your Radiant instance. You will have control over which extensions are deployed. However, because a bad extension can break your Radiant installation, you will only be able to install from the extensions we test and provide. If you need to install custom extensions, or would like to develop your own extensions, let us know. If the request is reasonable, we’ll add it to the list of available extensions. However, if you want complete control over your Radiant instance, I’d recommend hosting your own Radiant instance on a hosting provider.
Are There Default Extensions?
Yes, there will be a set of core extensions available to every account. For people new to Radiant, these extensions will be enabled by default. Given that some of these are really bread and butter stuff (like uploading images), we may make them standard and not put them under the extension manager. Currently, these extensions are “Sytles ‘n Scripts,” Vapor, Page Attachments, Help, Dashboard, and Featured Pages.
Which extensions will I get?
We’re still working on our list but you’ll get an interface to install extensions with the click of a button. It’s early, so we haven’t determined the final list but you’ll have these available:
- Help (which provides documentation about how to use Radiant)
- Dashboard (which provides information about recent activity in your account)
- Page Attachments (which allows you to upload images/files)
- SnS (which allows you to manage stylesheets and javascripts)
- Vapor (which allows you create URLs that will redirect visitors to another location)
- Featured Pages (gives you the ability create a group of pages without regard to the structure of your site)
What version of Radiant?
We will try to keep to the latest and greatest, upgrading your accounts on an automated basis. We may not deploy every release (for example, we may wait for the 0.X1 release as opposed to just deploying the 0.X0 release). The same with extensions. We will automatically upgrade extensions to try to keep you up to date.
Which database or OS are you using?
It shouldn’t matter and for most users it should be totally irrelevant. However if you must know, we’re deploying on Solaris Zones and we’re using a PostgreSQL backend. For now we’re using an Apache reverse proxy, but that can change depending on how well it scales. Despite all that fancy jargon, it shouldn’t matter to end users as long as it’s reliable and performs well.
What about file uploads?
For a small collection of icons, banners, and images, they will go into your directory. We’ll monitor usage on a periodic basis and determine if we need a more concrete policy. What happens when a user has a lot of very large assets, such as video clips or images? We don’t have a definitive answer yet, however, we’re leaning toward Amazon S3 storage. The real question is how much disk space can I have? The real answer is we haven’t decided on a limit yet, if there is a limit, or how ‘hard’ that limit is.
What will the post-beta price be?
We’re not 100% certain. We think it will be between $25 and $35 per mongrel per month. We may also charge for certain custom extensions, in order to keep the price low for the average user. We want something that the is approachable in terms of ease of use and price, and complete enough for 90% of the users out there. The Beta period will determine the final outcome.
How many mongrels do I need?
That depends on two things. The first is the total traffic coming to your site. The good news is that for cached pages Radiant is very efficient, so one mongrel can go a long way. The second is how much of the content is non-cached and how much are you doing in the admin interface. Generally, it is safe to start with one mongrel. Unless you get Slashdotted or you elect to use every possible extension we make available, it will probably be adequate for most users.
Why don’t you guarantee RAM or CPU shares?
Because this isn’t a slice host or a virtual machine host. On average, a Radiant process will take about 50 megs of RAM and for much of its life do little, if any work. Most of a Radiant process’s time is spent waiting (for user input, for the database, for the next cache refresh, etc.) Does that mean we’ll pack ‘em 100 to a CPU core? No, we want everyone to enjoy good performance. But, at the price range we’re looking at, it does not make economic sense to reserve 1 CPU core per Radiant mongrel, for example.
If, however, you would like a guaranteed minimum or dedicated resources for Radiant or other applications, get in touch with us and we can partition a Solaris Zone for your deployment.
If you don’t see your question here, please send us a message.