TrainWeb Hosted Websites
(http://www.trainweb.org/info/hosted.html)

TrainWeb will soon be making a major change to the promotion that we provide for websites hosted at TrainWeb.org and the requirements for being hosted at TrainWeb.org . If you qualified to be hosted at TrainWeb.org before, then you will continue to qualify to be hosted free at TrainWeb.org unless you object to our new requirements.

Our staff does a pretty good job of providing content for the Rail Travel section of TrainWeb. But, we must rely on the websites hosted on TrainWeb.org to provide the content for the Railfan and Model Railroading major sections, as well as for many subsections of the TrainWeb Travel section. We will soon do a major redesign of all the major and minor sections of TrainWeb. In that redesign, the websites hosted on the TrainWeb.org server will be the main focus of our attention. We will be greatly increasing the visibility of those websites. If a visitor to TrainWeb is looking for any rail information that is covered by your website, they are going to be easily able to find your website!

No matter what rail topic your website covers, your TrainWeb.org website will benefit from this added promotion. Even if your website covers Rail Travel, a section that our own staff contributes to extensively, your website will still be the focus of our redesign. These redesign efforts will probably not begin until after August 1, 2002.

All the advantages, disadvantages, restrictions and requirements that apply to new websites to be hosted at TrainWeb.org also apply to all existing websites hosted at TrainWeb.org. Please click on each link below to familiarize yourself with these topics.

• Advantages
• Disadvantages
• Restrictions
• Requirements
• Alternatives

Make sure you especially read the "requirements" section as that probably described the greatest change that is likely to affect your website. Please read the entire requirements section before forming an opinion about the changes. We have tried our best to explain our reasons for the changes and hope that you will react positively to these changes once you have read our reasoning.

If you use any web design features beyond plain HTML pages along with .gif and .jpg graphic and photo files, then you will definitely want to read the "disadvantages" section. In order to enhance network security, boost system performance and reduce technical support, we are eliminating some of the advanced web server features that we used to support. From examining many of the websites hosted on our servers, we have found that very few of you use these advanced web design features. Thus, not too many of you should be effected by these changes.

A few of you have your websites hosted free at TrainWeb.org under your own domain name rather than as a subdomain of www.trainweb.org . For example, you might be hosted on our server as www.myrail.com instead of www.trainweb.org/myrail . TrainWeb no longer provides this option to new sites and will discontinue this option for websites currently hosted on our servers in the near future. But don't despair! There is a way that any site can remain hosted free on our servers but still appear to the rest of the world as if that entire site was hosted at its own URL. Please click here for further details.

If for any reason you decide that you no longer wish to have your website hosted at TrainWeb, we have suggested some alternatives for your web hosting needs. Click here if you wish to view those suggestions.