This week I password protected the PHP cross-references at PHPCrossRef.
For the last 10 years I’ve been providing an easy way for any budding PHP developer to have a look inside the code behind hundreds of Open Source projects. This has been on my dime, my way of saying thank you to all the developers that give of their free time to create web based software.
The PHPCrossRef library is huge, consuming over 40 gigs of disk space. Moving from a roll my own Xen based VPS at the start, to self hosting the library on my local Debian server, to a managed VPS today.
Thankfully, I’ve been fortunate to have found web hosting to store the millions of generated pages. Disk space requirements makes it difficult to find inexpensive VPS offerings, and a VPS is needed, shared hosting accounts frown upon the amount of script kiddie traffic.
DreamHost has been a real trooper for the last 7 years. I gave them fits on an unlimited shared hosting account, their security bots worked overtime. In April of this year I was able to move to a managed VPS, thanks to the generosity of DreamHost who is helping subsidize the cost.
There’s enough work involved generating updated cross-references and uploading them to the VPS. I don’t need the added aggravation of ill-behaved web spiders and website scrapers eating up resources, and I’m not about to play whack-a-mole. Some of these enterprising individuals have scraped the entire cross-reference library, and are serving it out as their own branded content, with ads thrown into the mix.
So it’s sad to report that the cross-references are now password protected. Just send me an email with a request, and I’ll send you back a password.
A strange game.
The only winning move is not to play.