This is a coupla questions about getting a website. Yes sorry this is the wrong thread I know, but there doesn''t appear to be a site about web stuff hint GD.NET staff! So anyway: 1) I need a website to post demos/screenshots of my project. So for that I just need a free site with a reasonable amount of storage space like 10s of Megs. I''d also prefer one without adverts if that''s possible. 2)The thing is, I will be selling my game online when finished, and I have no idea about what kind of site I''d need. I''ll want people to be able to download maybe 10MB for the game, and I''ll either be using billpoint, paypal or some 3rd party creditcard processing company. What I need to know about this is - what knid of things influence how much your site costs - MB downloaded, hits, money being made etc... and how much that costs for someone likely to sell maybe a few copies a day. Can anyone tell me how much they pay for their site and how much it costs and how they get payment? oh I am UK based. cheers

Well, I am no expert on these matters, but I am from the UK...

Many factors influence the cost of hosting services, but probably the most important are bandwidth requirement, services required (CGI, SQL, ecommerce, etc), space required and, quite critically, how fast/reliable the provider is.

I think we pay GTS Netcom about £80 a year for one 50MB site. There is no bandwith limit on that and the connection is pretty fast, but you are not able to run any scripting on it (to any meaningful degree), so that limits its use.

I recently started with another host, Netweaver, which costs £35 per year for 25MB of space and has a 5GB/month bandwidth limit. However, you also get full CGI/Perl/PHP/SQL/Etc access. You can pay more for more greater webspace/bandwidth.

Again, I''m no expert, but I would imagine that you don''t get free hosting for free, so to speak. Lousy speed, poor bandwith allocation, or advertising would be there somewhere I should think. In my view, if you are trying to advertise and sell a product, you should be using a decent paid-for hosting service with a www.dexter.com type name, not www.geocities/dexter.

When you come to deciding on a host, try getting a copy of one of the internet mags, such as .net or Internet. Most have a listing of the top 100 or so web hosting services together with their recent performance. The top 20 are usually more expensive, aimed at large businesses, but then you get the less expensive ones such as Netweaver. Check out their sites and see what they offer. All the packages have their pluses and minuses.
Alternatively, see www.webperf.net for UK hosting performance statistics, and hence the names of many web hosts.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the info, coupla queries:
1)isn''t 5GB/month massive? I presume that''s all traffic not just downloads.
2)I don''t know what services I require. If I want the site to hold a list of all online games at any particular moment, what would that use? Or to check passwords to let users download games/maps or whatever?
3)If i use a 3rd party credit card company, do I have the stuff on my site or theirs?



John 3:16

quote: Original post by d000hg
Thanks for the info, coupla queries:
1)isn''t 5GB/month massive? I presume that''s all traffic not just downloads.

Not really. Think about it... 5GB/month ~= 160MB/day. If your game is 10MB then only 16 people can download per day before your site gets shutdown (or you get charged big $$$ for any overage)

quote: Original post by d000hg
2)I don''t know what services I require. If I want the site to hold a list of all online games at any particular moment, what would that use? Or to check passwords to let users download games/maps or whatever?

You''ll definitely need something like ASP/PHP/PERL/SQL/etc to do that.

quote: Original post by d000hg
3)If i use a 3rd party credit card company, do I have the stuff on my site or theirs?

Things like paypal are hosted on their own site, you have an merchant number that you use when linking, ie. http://www.paypal.com/purchase.asp?merchant=12345&product=678 (Thats not exactly how paypal works, but you get the idea).

quote: Original post by Jester101
250 GB a month

That a lot of bandwidth. Have you looked into FilePlanet, I don''t think they charge you for the file hosting (they get revenue from ads and premium memberships).

quote: Original post by cliffski
This is all yet another reason to keep your downloadable games small. Is there any way to make your 10MB game a 5MB game instead? Its well worth putting time in to get the game as small as possible, not just to save bandwidth but also to encourage a casual download.

Not really - if this was a simple game then that''s a good argument, but this is a 3d racing game and a major factor is the quality and number of maps. And unfortuaneately maps are relatively big, like at least 500K a piece. Even with only 10 maps, plus textures + models + .exe file then you''re looking at ~10Mb, maybe a 6MB .zip at very least, but I want to include lots of maps. Though I may make the maps downloadable one by one so you can download them whenever you get bored of what you have.

quote: You''ll definitely need something like ASP/PHP/PERL/SQL/etc to do that.

Well I know SQL. That could manage the game list, but how would you actually communicate with the website? Do you store an exe file then run it somehow? I''ve no idea how you instruct a website to do anything - all I know is HTML and ow to read a file!



John 3:16