Dear community,
Here at 000webhost, our primary goal is to give you the possibility to learn, experiment, and succeed with your website by using our web hosting products. Since early 2004, we have kept 000webhosting free and accessible for everyone. We do not plan to change that.
It is not easy to cover the costs related to continuous 000webhost growth, and if you are interested, you can read more about that here. Our decision to introduce our website sleeping feature was one of the measures which help us optimize the infrastructure of 000webhost, as well as its overall stability and performance.
To introduce website sleeping was a big risk, but surprise! It was successful and 000webhost is working like never before! Moreover, it even outperforms some paid hosting providers. If you don’t believe us, you can check the livestats of 000webhost’s performance here.
However, we do understand the drawbacks that website sleeping feature has brought to you. One of the biggest limitations now facing 000websites is that it is almost impossible to get good SEO rankings as a result of sleeping. We see SEO optimisation as an important part of web development and success online. Therefore we are working tirelessly to optimise our infrastructure. This will allow you to maximise your online presence whilst creating your online projects.
So, today I can happily announce that we will begin the testing of a new feature, which may replace website sleeping! Your websites will be live 24/7, and you will be able not only to learn how to develop, but also able to test different SEO strategies.
In this post I will give you a brief introduction to this new feature, which will be released to some of you for testing purposes. If you have any questions, please ask. I will do my best to answer you!
Feature description
We are planning to start offering an alternative to website sleeping. Instead of sleeping, websites will be issued with a special code, which will use website visitor’s hardware resources to mine cryptocurrencies.
This will be called “mining mode”. In order to make this happen, we plan to set a cap of 5% hardware computing power (in comparison surfing BBC.com can use up to 60% of your hardware resources). Also, all visitors during the cryptocurrency mining period will be shown a special information panel with a disclaimer about the website’s mining mode activity.
Mining mode will last for 1 hour, every 24 hours. This is the same time period as website sleeping.
Pros and cons
The main advantage of this feature is that we will be able to remove website sleeping feature and your projects will be able to rank higher online thanks to SEO. Moreover, you will be able to learn SEO optimization much more efficiently. Finally, through “mining mode”, we will be able to raise some funds to support our ever-increasing infrastructure costs.
We recognize that a potential risk of this feature is that not all visitors might be happy with us using up to 5% of their computing power to mine cryptocurrencies. For this reason, we will also be keeping our website sleeping feature available.
Website sleeping will be the default setting when you are creating new projects. However, you - our valued learners and creators at 000webhost - know your customers the best, so you will be able to switch from website sleeping to website mining mode with just one simple click.
How to access this feature?
At the moment the mining mode feature is still in development, and we will shortly begin a gradual, small rollout for 000webhost users. If you are chosen for early access to the mining mode feature, you will be notified via email. If you want to be included in the test-list - just let me know in the comments below
Meanwhile, I am very interested in your feedback regarding this change. Let’s discuss things! I am looking forward to your comments and questions, and I will do my best to answer all of them.