Greetings All,
I am @coinz. I was a witness back in the summer of 2016 and am now going to get back in the witness game.
Why am I restarting witnessing now? For two simple reasons, it is dead simple and the cost is reasonable.
I'm would classify myself as a coin hobbyist with decent skills when it comes to compiling a coin from source, mining, etc. Way back when I even created my own coin for fun. So last summer when I did the STEEM witness/mining/node I found it more challenging and costly than I preferred. There wasn't a definitive guide on how to do either, so there was a lot of trial and error and the cost of running traditional multiple VPS was high. It was definitely fun to finally get it right but the cost did not justify the end results.
Fast forward to today. The STEEM ecosystem has matured a lot since then and there are more options to provide advance services such as Witnessing. Tutorials have become better and internal STEEM users are providing really good services. I have chosen one of those services that make Witnessing dead simple.
I have bought a server from Privex, Inc. @privex a company owned by @someguy123. I paid for the server in STEEM so I'm supporting the STEEM community which is a good thing. Please visit https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@privex/we-are-privex-inc-we-accept-steem-protecting-your-privacy-in-the-cloud if you want to purchase a VPS/server for your own witness. The cost of 1 Privex VPS is less expensive then the costs of all the VPS I used back in the summer of 2016.
My setup is a 16GB RAM, 4 Core, 200GB HDD with 1 gbit/s. A nice setup for witnessing.
So there you have it. I'm now a witness again with a good VPS and I'm supporting the STEEM community by paying for my setup in STEEM rather than using Amazon AWS, etc.
Please vote for me at https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Edit - As added value I am publishing a constantly updated price feed as well.
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@someguy123/steemfeed-js-a-nodejs-price-feed-for-witneses
Edit 2 - Per Request (Tutorials Credit @someguy123)
PM @privex on Steemit Chat for Steem Witness Server - https://steemit.chat/direct/privex
This post if you follow it step-by-step 100% works -
https://steemit.com/steem/@someguy123/your-guide-to-setting-up-a-witness-server-steem-in-a-box-hf19