I'm still playing with OwnCloud.

My big idea was running it on http://devio.us, since this excellent OpenBSD shell/webspace provider supports PHP and offers SSL connections (the latter of which will make me much more comfortable using OwnCloud).

However, it turns out that OwnCloud requires the PHP Zip extension (or is it Zip PHP extension?), and Devio.us doesn't offer it.

So I'm back to running OwnCloud on the same shared-hosting space I started out with. I haven't yet tried it on http://NearlyFreeSpeech.net, the pay-by-the-byte hosting provider on which I also have an account. NearlyFreeSpeech.net doesn't offer SSL, so the only "benefit" from running it there would be giving OwnCloud a try in NFS' FreeBSD environment and monitoring just how much bandwidth would be used running OwnCloud.

I thought I could "fake" an https:// connection with the shared-hosting provider I'm currently using, but it turns out that the ability to draw on a "shared" SSL capability is more limited than I need it to be.

Hence whenever I'm connecting to OwnCloud, either via the web interface or WebDAV, I'm sending logins and passwords in the clear. Maintaining a unique login/pw combination for this particular service shrinks the potential damage to the rest of my shared-hosting environment, but not as much as https:// would.

As I've discussed with Rob Reed before, we're already sending way too many logins and passwords out in the clear.

It makes me want to shell out the $$$ for a static IP and the proper certificate to make SSL work.

P.S.: I composed this post entirely with Markdown. It really speeds up the process of writing for the blog. Thanks again to Rob for encouraging me to make the leap.