Setting up a game shrines site (my 1st website!) Advice pls?

[rbudrick]

Hi Folks,

I've been wanting for a while to set up a website with a few game shrines on it for games that no one's really shrined yet. I've never made a website before, so I have a few questions:

1. Where is a good and reliable place to have this hosted? Pros and cons for any suggested place would be helpful. Especially pros and cons of free and non-free hosts.

2. Reccomended tools? Is Frontpage good enough, or too limited (I've heard different things). Looking for ease of use here. Like, stupidly easy, but powerful enough to make great-looking sites.

One of the games I've been dying to make a shrine to Solstice because there's only one crappy one out there right now. I thought you folks may want to know that I finally completed 100% of this game and the ending is no different. I also spent the last few days Photoshopping an incredible map for it (the only one out there right now is this dumb old asccii map on the web). You Solstice fans are going to die when you see it! Contrary to popular belief, the map does line up perfectly...the original cartography is not faulty.

Thanks for your help!

Yours,

Rob

[Flack]

1. Where is a good and reliable place to have this hosted? Pros and cons for any suggested place would be helpful. Especially pros and cons of free and non-free hosts.

2. Reccomended tools? Is Frontpage good enough, or too limited (I've heard different things). Looking for ease of use here. Like, stupidly easy, but powerful enough to make great-looking sites.

The pro of free sites is that, well, they're free. The cons are many. One is that many of them require you to either run a banner, or popups. I know my free web forwarder at home is now sending 2-3 popups per hit to people. It makes your website look cheap, and eventually people will stop going to it. Then again, it's free ... oh yeah, I already mentioned that.

For what you're going to be doing, I would say FrontPage would get you a long way. I've seen terrific sites that were done with million dollar budgets, and terrific sites done solely with Notepad. A little bit of design and good taste go a long way in the world of web development.

Flack

[Neil Koch]

You can get webspace for a few bucks a month as long as you're not going to be eating a lot of bandwidth. I think this is the way to go since dealing with the free hosts is a hassle (at least the ones I've used like AOL and Tripod) and having banners/popups that you have no control over sucks.

That being said, you might want to try www.classicgaming.com if you want to try a free web host. At least you could get your feet wet without paying anything, and their ad scheme isn't too intrusive. plus they'll list you on their site so you'll get a decent amount of traffic.

As for how to make it, I personally don't like editors like Frontpage as they make your HTML junky and I think it's easier to edit your site if you know what you're doing versus letting some program do it for you (and messing up a lot of the time). I use a free program called Notetab Light which is basically a glorifed Notepad with some nice abilities like being able to do bulk changes or formatting. Basic HTML is very simple and if you need help there are plenty of sites like www.htmlhelp.com that have some handy tips.

[sisko]

Free hosts are okay for a start up, but there are way too many cons if you are really getting serious about it.

Domain names cost around $10 a year to register, and you can pay anywhere from $2 to $20 on hosting depending on what you need.

I host my website with valcato hosting and they charge $5 for my plan. They have cheaper ones too. Basically they key to looking for any host is to buy only what you need. For example you find a host that will give you 1gb of space and unlimited bandwidth for $10 a month. Do you really need that much? Most people don't. Save the extra money, get a smaller plan that still meets your requirements.

Also, if paying make sure you find a host that will let you pay monthly. It tends to cost more per month, but if something happens, youre not screwed out of the rest of the year's "rent." You will have problems....I can almost guarantee it.

As for tools. Frontpage is okay, but honestly, I like notepad a lot better. The professional quality is what all is in your head, and thats your only limit. Neil is right, front page makes your code look like crap, and it tends to do things you don't want it to. Also, it makes sites that are IE compatable, meaning your site may look very different in Netscape.

[TRM]

That being said, you might want to try www.classicgaming.com if you want to try a free web host. At least you could get your feet wet without paying anything, and their ad scheme isn't too intrusive. plus they'll list you on their site so you'll get a decent amount of traffic.


Rob: If you want, I can set up a sub-folder on my site for your stuff and you could host it anyway you wanted. This would be basically the same as if you were hosted on Classicgaming.

By the way, Solstice is a great game.

[rbudrick]

Wow! Thanks for all the advice, guys!

TRM, I've always loved the warp zone, so that would rock! I'd be honored.

So, if we did that, what would the web address be? Or would I just register a domain name and your site hosts it? I'm still new to this, so sorry for my ignorance :-)

Thanks again, everyone!

Yours,
Rob

[Neil Koch]

You could register a domain and then have it redirect to the "real" address. Even a cheap site seems more "official" if you actually have a domain for it.

Or, depending on how you get set up, you can just use that. For instance, www.thewarpzome.com/solstice isn't too wordy, but something like www.geocities.com/username/666/solstice is and you should get a domain for that.

[rbudrick]

Hmmm, a redirect...good idea. Let's say I bought www.RobBudrick.com and had it redirect to something like www.thewarpzome.com/solstice . Wouldn't someone else still have to host robbudrick.com?

Thanks again!
Yours,
Rob

[TRM]

Well I could do this:

http://www.planetnintendo.com/thewarpzone/whateveryouwant

Gamespy's policy doesn't allow for other domain names and such, unfortunately, since they believe that their names = quality.

However, Gamespy has a service which includes free polls, promotions, messageboards, unlimited space, and so forth.

Rob, if you want me to host you, I'll gladly do so as Gamespy allows sites to host other sites. If the cons are too extreme for you however, please don't feel obligated to accept my offer.

-Dave

[sisko]

Gamespy's policy doesn't allow for other domain names and such, unfortunately, since they believe that their names = quality.


Maybe, but most web hosts will charge an additional fee if a hostee wants to use mulitple domain names.

You can still have a redirect if you really want it though.

https://www.wsmdomains.com/

They charge a bit more for a domain registration, but the control panel you get to use is much better.

*NOTE* Always buy your domain name seperate from a hosting package! You can get in huge trouble trying to claim it if something happens. It took me three months and several notarized documents to get mine back.

[TRM]

Part of Gamespy's terms and services is that you cannot use a redirector or domain name for the site. That is what I was trying to say.

Dave

[Flack]

From one Rob to another, my friendly advice would be to take Dave up on his offer. If things take off, you can always move the site or register a domain. You may not want to drop a lot of money into registering a name and hosting a site that only gets a few hits a month.

Flack

[Sylentwulf]

Last time we had a "what hosting sites do you recommend?" thread, PowWeb.com came up quite a bit, and I signed up for it. About $100 a year, and it has a ton of storage, and a ton of bandwidth, plus e-mail addresses, and a lot more. Check them out at the least.
http://www.powweb.com

edit - Oh, and BTW I use frontpage (dodge's tomatoes) and it's VERY easy for someone who sucks at html to have their own webpage between powweb and frontpage.

[rbudrick]

Thanks, Dave! I may just do that. I think I want to explore a few of my options first and weigh a few providers against each other. I've always wanted to have my own domain also, so I may just kill 2 birds with one stone and do that. Kind of have a frontpage that leads to different shrines and whatever else I want. One advantage of this is if I decide to have content entirely non-game related...that way I don't tie up the Gamespy network with unrelated stuff.

Oh, and Sylentwolf, I'll check out Powweb...never heard of em, but that may be a good thing :-)

Just checked em....they do look really good....:-)

Thanks again, everyone!

-Rob

[wcmiker]

If you ever need anything very reliable this is a great host:

http://www.tera-byte.com/

[Steven J. Lumas]

Setting up a shrine to worship a video game seems a bit foolheardy to me. You should set up a shrine to worship Louis Armstrong ! Man that guy could blow a trumpet like nobody's business.