Reps/SOPs/Digital resources

Web Hosting

To have a website, you have to find a space on a machine called a server to store the website there. You can buy such service from one of many hosting companies.

Mozilla can help Mozilla Reps by hosting your website on Mozilla servers.

Hosting is server space that your community will need when it starts to become more prominent in its locale. When you are ready to launch a site, your team will need to secure a web URL from a URL provider and then you will need to that URL at a server that will host your community content. Unfortunately, Mozilla does not have the resources or the legal clearance to host all Mozilla community websites. But, Mozilla have been able to help locales in the past with hosting. Therefore, you will need to find a local partner and get hosting service set up for your community

Here are some great examples of community-driven sites hosted by third-party services.

• Mozilla Taiwan
• Mozilla Hispano
• Mozilla Poland
• Mozilla Russia
• Mozilla Italia

In some cases, Mozilla has been able to support our communities by subsidizing (or even fully covering) the cost of the hosting. In every case, Mozilla looks for the highest leveraged opportunity to support its community. With limited funds and a need to scale, Mozilla will always look for that opportunity where impact will be amplified to help the greatest amount of people. We very much use this idea when looking at each request for hosting support.

You may request support with hosting by emailing William Quiviger. In preparation, you should be able to answer questions like:

• How many people are (or will be) accessing your site?
• What is the internet usage population in your country?
• What bandwidth requirements will you need to be provided by your hosting partner?
• What is the cost for monthly, semi-annual, or annual service?
• How do you intend to increase users to your site?

These questions are meant only to show the level of impact you hope to have and answer the question of leverage that Mozilla will ask.

Domain Name

Setting up a website requires you to select a domain name for your website. Domain name is an address to your website like johnsmith@domain.net or www.domain.net. It's strictly related to selecting a name for your project, and in result may require time. Because domains costs, we offer you a temporary solution at the beginning to set up a domain inside our domain like 'yourdomain.communities.mozilla.org. You can use it for some time until you find out the name for your community/project and setting up a domain on your own.

If the domain is related to Mozilla project, Mozilla may help you by financing domain buyout and yearly payment. You should also be aware of several rules regarding using mozilla word in your project/domain name.

• Use free domain from your provider (like polish *.art.pl or *.fsf.hu)
• Buy a domain (we can buy it for you!)
• Request for a subdomain in *.communities.mozilla.org / *.mozilla-communites.net

Web Apps

Every website you see on the Internet is either a plain HTML document or an application that created HTML pages dynamically and presents them to the read (webapps).

These days we tend to use web apps everywhere. Examples of webapps are: forum, web mail system (Gmail), blog, site with news etc.

MCS project provides you with a set of tools that you can use to build your websites. We intend to make it easy to install them on your own, and we will try to build an automated installer that will let you avoid the pain of learning web application development if you cannot afford it. (Although we do recommend using this opportunity to learn new, practical skill in a comfortable and helpful atmosphere of Mozilla project)

There are many kinds of web applications, but for the basic community website we identified 4 kinds of tools: CMS, Forum, Wiki and Planet of blogs. You may choose to use any of them or all of them for your website. You can use other tools, but then you have to rely on your knowledge or external resources.

Currently you can find documentation of the project at https://wiki.mozilla.org/MCS.