Adult site on Windows Servers?

I am mcse qualified and have been running windows networks as my day job for years, but I would not run a porn site on one.

Slow, dumb, beasts and IIS is unreliable and has more holes in it than a colonder.

Unix/linux is not perfect, but much better with apache set up correctly.

for any kind of website: FreeBSD + Apache.

It's important to note that MS Streaming Server is an incredible tool. Regardless of what anyone says, if you're distributing content in WMV format, this is your bread and butter.

You can implement access control, multiple streaming formats, live broadcasts, and archived broadcasts, just to name a few items.

If you're in the business of streaming any media and doing so in a secure manner so people are not able to leech it, this is gold.

As far as pure hosting goes, if you're not interested in this stuff, a basic FreeBSD or Linux machine would be your best bet. I have not yet found a way to host a site on a Linux/BSD machine, and stream content from a MSS machine yet, but I'm working on it.

Hope that helps
-dant

Here are some of my .NET sites and they are running just perfect on ms 2003 server and MS SQL server 2000. the .net framework is great for developing website and there are a new version cumming out soon. jubiiiiii

http://www.cool-content.com
http://www.hardcoredanes.com
http://www.cool-xxxresources.com

MS Rules

Please elaborate...I have done the above, I just redirect the links to the streams to be on the ms server.

Thanks for the reply.

I'm talking about access control. Protecting content served with the streaming server using the same client-supplied credentials that the user used while entering the main site. This is what I'm not so sure on.

Thanks
-dant

Look into DRM with predelivery code. You need a provider that sets up an encoding profile used with the windows media encoder itself.

And what about the billers???

Tnxs

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Thanks
-dant

you'r damn right

Well, ASP.NET is way more powerful than PHP. I mean, ultimately there's not really much you can do with one that you can't do with the other (as far as what the end user sees), but you can do more complicated stuff way easier with ASP.NET. That is, if you know how to properly write ASP.NET code. I've used both quite a bit and I'd hate to have to use PHP for another large-scale project. Another reason being that it's just not nearly as maintainable as ASP.NET. Of course, these are just my opinions... don't want to get into any religious arguments

Having said all that, can anybody cite any concrete examples why Linux seems to dominate the adult market? Is it because of cost? Security? Speed? All of the above? Are there any times when Windows hosting would be justified? I'm about to build a site and I'd love to write it in ASP.NET... but at the same time I'm not going to host on the wrong platform just to satisfy my inner developer. So, Windows or Linux for me? I could write much better code in ASP.NET (and yes, there will be a lot of server-side code involved with this site) but on the other hand, I've heard a lot of arguments for Linux in this world. Thoughts?

I think in a future there will be more asp.net adult sites , but now the market is all about *n*x, and php. The billers are prepared to support that, if you have Windows/ASP.NET you have to purchase additional products (with the applying costs).
If you want to host your site, almost all companies charges the license fee for install Windows Server.
All the existing scripts that would help running your site are written for *n*x plattaforms.

I would love to write my site in ASP.NET too, but can't ignore that would be too expensive, and difficult adapt to current market.

So, I think that go for PHP 5 , is not so bad (developer perspective).

I hear ya...

Well, last time I used PHP, I believe it was version 3. Hopefully there's been some cool stuff added that'll make development a little more enjoyable for me I do love that ASP.NET codebehind though. Oh well.

thanks for the reply...

When you say "adult site", lets assume that, like most people, you mean the standard membership model web site with a protected area, etc. There are two very good reasons why at least 95%, if not more, of these adult sites use the Linux/Apache combo. The first involves authenticating members and preventing password sharing and hacking. As mentioned earlier in this thread, doing this on a Windows server involves paying large sums of money for third party software, and from experience, its a very inferior solution as compared to the .htaccess method. Literally, almost every time CCBill would access the script to add or delete a member, the entire password file for the protected folder would be deleted. Even if the password file is working, protecting it from password sharing/hacking is a nightmare. You can easily spend a thousand bucks just on securing a folder on a Windows server and be far less secure than what is free in the Linux environment.

The second reason involves the billing companies themselves. The third party adult billers basically want nothing to do with sites on Windows servers. Paycom, for example, will not even offer support for a site on a Windows server; you have to use a third party script to even bill through them. CCBill will offer Windows support, but to say they are less than enthusiastic about doing it is an understatement. The reason is pretty simple - they know you are going to lose a lot of sales when you host your site on a Windows server.

However, there is a second type of adult site - the PPV video site that uses Microsoft's DRM technology. Since there is no members area to protect, and the DRM takes care of the security issues, there is no good reason to purely host such a site on a Linux server, where the files could only be downloaded. Indeed, from adult sites like AEBN.com and HotMovies.com to mainstream ones like Cinemanow.com and Movielink.com, PPV sites are all hosted on Windows servers. This allows the videos to be streamed or downloaded in a secure format. It is also possible to stream live video from these servers, and comparing the quality available with these streams to the typical webcam is a joke.

The bottom line is that it depends on what type of site you wish to run. Unless you are a serious ASP or ASP.NET programmer, and can write your own authentication and security programs, I wouldn't even consider hosting a members site on a Windows server - period. Why Microsoft does not offer some way to fix these issues is beyond me, but they don't - and it would be wise to avoid them completely.

Great reply. First time I've read such a thorough review of this subject. Thanks for taking the time to explain this.

What about a hypothetical situation where you want to offer both membership-based and PPV? Can you do PPV easily enough on Linux or would you split it between two servers? Just wondering.