[HH#370592] Free hosting

[HelioHost]

Username: N/A, Server: N/A, Main Domain: N/A

HI,I am currently setting up a small site for a local community centre.I see you host asp.net pages, but can you confirm that you can also host classic asp as that is what i am conversant with.Regards,AndySent from my Galaxy

[KazVee]

Hello Andy, We can indeed host Classic ASP pages on our Lily server. You can read more about Lily here: https://wiki.helionet.org/Lily

To get a Lily account, you would first need to sign up for an account on one of our other hosting servers (Johnny is our free server, Tommy is the donor server, and Morty is our scaling hosting server). Once you have an account on one of those, just contact us to ask for a Lily account and this will be manually set up for you by our admin who manages that server. 

I hope this helps but please let us know if you have any further questions.

[HelioHost]

Hi,



Thanks for the fast reply.



Is hosting on "Lily" still free ?



I'd like to use a Microsoft access database with the Classic ASP on this
site. Would that pose any problems ?



Regards,



Andy

[Krydos]

I just spoke to our Windows server admin, and he said we don't currently have anyone else using Microsoft access database on Lily right now. Unfortunately he broke his elbow recently and isn't able to test it out for you for at least a couple weeks. We could email you in a couple weeks when we have an answer for you. Lily has a bunch of users already using MySQL if it's possible for you to convert your database.

[HelioHost]

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your server admin's injury. Hope it was while attempting
something from the Karma Sutra !!!!



I could try uploading a page and database and see if it works.



I've attached a small bit of script to let him see what I normally do.



Regards,



Andy

[HelioHost]

Hi,



I have now an account on Tommy server and would like to change to Lily
server.



The domain is "andyburnton.helioho.st"



Regards,



Andy

[Ookma-Kyi]

Hi,

Unfortunately@wolstech will have to create the account for you manually on Lily once he gets better, as there is no automatic way to do so at the moment, and there are no other Windows admins either to fill in for him. Just a few things to note:

1) There is no panel software on Lily so you will have to use your main account for your website, emails, etc. As such, you will still retain your Tommy account, and a Lily account will be created for you for your site/app.

2) You will have to upload your published software via FTP

3) Create a file named stopapp.txt in the root folder and wait 10 minutes for your application to shut down gracefully before uploading new versions.

4) Delete stopapp.txt and create a file called startapp.txt in the root folder, and wait 10 minutes for your application to restart.

Sample web.config:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false">
    <system.webServer>
      <handlers>
        <add name="aspNetCore" path="*" verb="*" modules="AspNetCoreModuleV2" resourceType="Unspecified" />
      </handlers>
      <aspNetCore processPath="dotnet" arguments=".\<your-app-here.dll>" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout" hostingModel="inprocess" />
    </system.webServer>
  </location>
</configuration>

Edited February 25, 2025 by Ookma-Kyi

[HelioHost]

Hi,



I'm sorry, but I don't understand most of the email.



Who is @wolstech ? Is that the admin for the Lily server ?



How will I know when the "Lily" account is created for me ?



Will the "Lily" account have different credentials to allow me to FTP my
site on to the "Lily" server ?



What is the purpose of the "stopapp.txt" and the "startapp.txt" files ?



I understand that a windows server is a whole different ballgame from a Unix
one so hope these questions are not stupid.



Regards,



Andy

[wolstech]

Wolstech is me, the Windows server admin. You'll receive a PM through the forums with information for your Lily account once it is created. Support for Lily is provided through the forum, usually by private messaging me (Lily is notable for this, in that it's the only server where private support is available, mainly because I have to help you set a lot of things up initially due to the lack of a user interface).

Lily is FTP access only. It has no control panel or anything, and the few settings you can change are controlled by editing the web.config file in the application folder.

It will have a different set of credentials and a different domain than your existing account. These will be in the message you receive through the forum once I create the account.

For the startapp/stopapp files, on Windows, ASP applications are binary and as such are kept running and locked by IIS (the web server) once the application starts. Because of this, once your app starts (usually due to receiving web traffic), it's impossible to update the files. These files are basically flags you can create to tell IIS to stop the application and release the files so you can upload new versions. 

 

Please check your forum PMs for information regarding your Lily account.

If you need assistance getting your app running, let me know once the files are uploaded and I can take a look at it for you.