Website hosting (split)

[SumDood]

Being strictly small time, and extremely cheap, I publish my stuff on the server space provided by my ISP.

I think a lot of small time creaters who have a game to publish go this route. I've noticed several of the game sites I've visited are out on free servers space, (evident by the banners). I think the banners are tolerable, but I can't stand the popups.

I can't really recommend any good free server space other than FreeYellow.com which has been fairly good for me, and has limited popups to almost nothing (using banners 99% of the time). That being said, I only use FreeYellow for my personal home page, and not for my gamesite, because there is a 1 meg file upload limitation (and my stuff tends to get large). Plus I don't want banners on my game site.

For services, I recommend Bravenet.com. Yeah, they have banners, and I have to tolerate them on my guestmap and forum, but for the most part they're easy to ignore. Bravenet also has hosting, but again, with banners and filesize limitations. They also provide e-commerce, but I'm far from ready to mess with that.

[Erick Wujcik]

Since I've now used 'em for a full six months, I'll recommend my web provider, ICDsoft.com:

http://www.icdsoft.com/

I now use ICD for Phage Press (www.phagepress.com), my personal website (www.47rpg.com), and for a few friends.

Aside from extreme reliability (my biggest complaint would be that it can sometimes take as much as two days to get a new URL up and working), I just love the price:

$60 for a full year ($5/month), which includes:

1. A free URL registration (and you can search .com, .org, etc., availability quite easily on their website).

2. 333 Meg Storage

3. 5 Gig Transfer per month (even when I had the full video of my CNN appearance available for download, I didn't even come close).

4. Unlimited webmail setup and accounts.

Of course, at this price, you don't get any hand-holding. My recommendation only applies if you've got enough technical expertise to understand basic HTML, and can put together your own webpages.

Erick

[Matt Machell]

My best advice for people looking for hosting is to beware of hidden extras. Lots of hosts will charge for additions like extra bandwidth, new databases, extra email addresses, more space, and so on.

So, know what you want, know what you might want in the future, and remember that the small print can hide things....

I'd particularly warn people with "free" webspace, if your site gets too popular you might end up with an unexpected bill for "excess" bandwidth.


-Matt

[Erick Wujcik]

My best advice for people looking for hosting is to beware of hidden extras. Lots of hosts will charge for additions like extra bandwidth, new databases, extra email addresses, more space, and so on.

So, know what you want, know what you might want in the future, and remember that the small print can hide things....

I'd particularly warn people with "free" webspace, if your site gets too popular you might end up with an unexpected bill for "excess" bandwidth.


-Matt

Very, very true!

On IDCsoft they charge an additional $5 per extra gig, over the basic 5 gig/month.

I've heard horror stories where a website takes off, and suddenly the folks are billed for as much as $10/meg (outrageous!!), and some people have gotten hit with thousands of extra bucks in unexpected bills!

Be sure to check on exactly what your excess charges might be...

Erick

[Valamir]

Holy resurrection batman.

Sumdood, did you really just post to a two and a half year old thread?

Even though its a drastic violation of Forge policy I'm tempted to award a prize for getting more responses the second time around than the first.

[Ron Edwards]

Looks like this one got past me in October. I've split the above from Website hosting.

That's two "violations," guys: one by Sumdood, one by Erick. C'mon, folks, I can't do it all by myself. Look out for the dates on what you're replying to, and start a new thread if it's more than five/six weeks old.

Best,
Ron

[Firefly Games]

I've been very happy with jatol.com as a host since switching from Cedant this summer. It's about $45 per year for the basic package, which so far has been more than sufficient for our website needs, including forums, an online store, and various free downloads..

[madelf]

I've had good luck with RTSHosting

http://www.rtshosting.com/

The very few times I've had a problem, the customer service has been excellent.
That goes a long way with me.

And I've been happy with their pricing as well.