What are the cost implications?

Use of the LifeGuide server for live interventions

We are happy to host interventions on our live server by prior agreement, provided that they will not exceed our capacity. Hosting an intervention can be free or cost a few hundred pounds for small interventions, but server costs can increase significantly for large interventions (depending on no. pages and no. of end-users). Other factors that may impact on server costs include whether end-users will be accessing the website simultaneously or if users will require substantial bandwidth (e.g. for watching videos).

The more of these features your intervention has, the greater demands there will be on the server and it may be necessary to agree with you arrangements for purchasing additional server space to ensure interventions run as smoothly as possible. For the same reason, initially we hope to be able to provide server space free, but if take-up becomes large we may need to make a small charge towards providing additional server space.

Please contact us well in advance to discuss these issues if you wish us to host your intervention.

Note that to comply with university regulations we can only host any interventions that users can access free of charge, and reserve the right to refuse to host an intervention (e.g. for ethical reasons).

Please see below the nature of the support we can provide if we host your intervention on our server:

1. Protection against data loss Interventions on our server and their respective data are backed up weekly. The server uses a UPS (uninterruptable power supply) so in the event of an electrical fault it will be able to remain running for a time before shutting itself down cleanly, thus minimising the chances of data corruption. Even so, it is possible that data stored on our server will not be retrievable.

2. Server uptime The server will be down for maintenance for a minimum of 1 hour per week, at scheduled times (currently Wednesday mornings 9.00-10.00 am). It will also be down briefly from time to time during scheduled repairs or updates to University of Southampton systems.

Response to server problems During core hours (10am-4pm, Mon-Fri) the LifeGuide server will be fixed as quickly as it is possible to do so, but this will depend on availability of one or two key personnel, who may at times be absent or otherwise occupied. Outside of core hours there will be little or no response to server problems.

Please see our LifeGuide Community Website FAQs for information about uploading development and test interventions as well as details about sharing interventions with other researchers.