I'm sorry for the misplaced post... I couldn't figure out where to best ask this question. I've finally reached critical mass- I need a website to host and distribute my half a zillion game projects... and I figure having my own site to justify will be an additional bit of fire under my ass.

For the purposes of supporting and distributing my RPG creations, what do those of you with your own sites recommend? I'm willing to spend some money- just not a crazy amount. I'm no HTML whiz, but can do the bulk of the grunt work myself... if the site proves popular, I'll upgrade.

Again, sorry if this post belongs in a different forum.

Thanks

-Ben

I think this should go in Publishing rather than Indie Game Design, dunno if I'm right or not.. Ron?

As for the website: Would a free one with banners be ok? If so then you got tripod, angelfire, geocities and a bunch of others, smaller ones. You might have to put in popups or banners, which may be acceptable or maybe not depending on how professional you want to look.

In addition, Clinton recently announced that The Forge now offers web hosting for $6/month, which would free you from the banner problem. Read more about it here.

It's all about how much control you want over your page. The more you are willing to pay, the more you can decide yourself. Roughly anyway. If you're lucky you might find one of the smaller free web site providers where ads aren't as annoyingly obvious as say Geocities and the like. Shop around.

I've had several free sites for quite a few years; they've just taken a turn for the worse. In the Internet Advertising crunch, everyone is seeking new sources of revenue. Lycos (which owns Tripod and Angelfire, at least) and Yahoo (which owns GeoCities) have both put very tight bandwidth limits on unpaid hosting, in an effort to push users into moving to the paid version.

I have been contemplating moving everything to a paid domain. I can get a good deal (500 meg, unmetered transfer, e-mail, and just about anything else, $80/yr, plus $50 first year set-up), but I'm a bit strapped at the moment and don't want to make the move just yet.

I would recommend paying for something. It is no longer that expensive, and the free sites just aren't what they were.

--M. J. Young

Ben,

This probably speaks more to Connections than anything else, but either Clinton or I can set you up. I have tools which make site maintenance quite easy. Clinton and Ron have both used them, and can speak to their desirability. They do require a slightly more expensive host, but you'll be able to add new products and content will very little effort.

You can check out the raw materials and a live demo at my site: http://www.lazarusid.com/ebusiness.shtml. The demo looks pretty spartan (in fact it looks exactly the way the components look out of the box), but modifying the design is pretty simple. Check out http://www.anvilwerks.com for an example of what a proper mad genius can do with the components.

Do check out: http://www.freewebspace.net/ they offer reviews and links to free web hosting services. I got my current host (ad free!) from them. I can't tell much about the quality of my particular web host yet though. Anyway, it's worth checking out the link if you think you could build the site on your own.
Check out my link in my sig for my site I put together in a day or so.

I should remind you that I will host pages for free, no banners, and so on.

http://www.actionroll.com/

Currently, I host Runebearer and the Universalis sites. Quite a few people have contacted me, but plans changed or they never sent me the goods or what not. Still, supporting the Forge is a great idea too. :)

Email me if you want more info.

Thanks,
Nathan Hill
nathan@actionroll.com