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Geek Culture / Free hosting solution - would anybody use it?

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Bozzy
18
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Joined: 10th Sep 2006
Location: Birmingham, UK
Posted: 10th Jul 2010 19:42
Hi,

I'm considering starting a website that allows indie game developers, such as yourselves, to host a website for their games for free. The difference between this and the other free website providers is that the developers will be able to profit from the website, primarily through advertising.

If this was to take place, there would be a slight limitation in forcing you to use DotNetNuke as a framework to your website. However, you will still be able to upload all your own skins and modules, so this shouldn't be a problem to most. A plus side to using DotNetNuke is that the time taken to create a website is significantly reduced.

Included in the installation would be forums, blogs, image/video galleries, a wiki and perhaps most importantly for some the ability to charge users for content, through either an online store or subscription fees. These modules can be supplemented through ones downloaded off the Internet, or even ones created by yourself (to bring completely custom functionality to your website). An example of the latter's use may be some ability to allow players to play in the browser (although I am not entirely sure how this would be done with DBPro).

For maybe £5, we would offer custom skin creation, amongst other extras.

My real question is, would anybody use such a service?

Thanks,
Richard Bosworth

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Travis Gatlin
16
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Joined: 14th May 2009
Location: Oxford, Alabama
Posted: 12th Jul 2010 02:35
I would! though if i didnt already have a website then i would use it

The Object of war is not to die for your country but make the other guy die for his
crispex
17
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Joined: 22nd Jun 2007
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Posted: 12th Jul 2010 02:58
No offense but I hardly consider a "webs.com" site a real website, more like a template.

Anyway.

I'm sure people would use it, I myself run on a dedicated server, but people are ALWAYS looking for free hosting.

You yourself could capitalize on putting ads on the sites you host, and offer a cheap premium plane if users want to remove the ads, etc.

I don't know about you, but I'm in the business of making money. Some, like yourself, might not want to, but if I was you I'd get a good site setup, and start from there.

I just now realized I've had a typo in my signature for the past 3 years.
The Next
Web Engineer
17
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Joined: 3rd Dec 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 12th Jul 2010 17:01 Edited at: 12th Jul 2010 17:02
I also own and operate dedicated servers, i used to offer users free hosting and soon learnt that it is an expensive thing to do. At close to £200 per server a month to run, they are not exactly cheap if you get into this you better have a large amount of cash stored away to run this type of service. Profit takes a long time to start appearing and when it does you will find you use it all on making your service better.

Companies such as webs.com have been around so long they get their money from the large amount of advertising they get you cannot hope to match them with the service they can offer their users.

However if you can offer the tools to create a site fast and the site is free and low cost for you, advertising may cover your costs.

Best of luck with this and if you need any help send me an email im happy to help out.


Windows 7 Pro, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8Ghz, 4GB DDR3, Dual nvidia SLI 9800GT 1GB, 1.5TB Hard disk
Bozzy
18
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Joined: 10th Sep 2006
Location: Birmingham, UK
Posted: 12th Jul 2010 17:11
Thank you for your replies.

I expect to have an initial version up within the next few days. I would be grateful if some of you could try this out and give me some feedback about it!

@The Next:

Part of our revenue will be the add-ons store. This will allow users to purchase extra features for their websites, including Facebook integration , and, perhaps the most important thing for some, no adverts. The prices for these range from about £2-£5. In the future, we plan to allow users to use this as a marketplace for their custom modules and skins, that are specific to our website and the game development community.

Thanks,
Richard

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The Next
Web Engineer
17
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Joined: 3rd Dec 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 12th Jul 2010 17:31
Sounds good if you send me an email, i would be more than happy to test the site for you i'm sure i can give you some very useful feedback about design, functionality and general programming.

Hope to hear from you soon should be good to see what you have.


Windows 7 Pro, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8Ghz, 4GB DDR3, Dual nvidia SLI 9800GT 1GB, 1.5TB Hard disk
The Wilderbeast
19
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Joined: 14th Nov 2005
Location: UK
Posted: 14th Jul 2010 14:36
I don't think you should limit people to DotNuke. Take a look into WordPress, it's actually the best CMS I've seen, we use it for Blitzwerks (down at the mo).

Van B
Moderator
22
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Joined: 8th Oct 2002
Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 14th Jul 2010 15:36
The problem is that, I'd only ever want to do this once - I'd need to know that the service/site would stay active and be maintained for years to come - with a startup site, there's no guarantee, and therefore no good reason to spend time on it.

There should be a site where people can just upload their games, and people can comment, rate etc. There are systems like this, but they are under the control of the admins, need people to sign their life away just to download a file, expect the person to pay!

That's the main thing really - if I release a game for free, I don't expect to have to pay to upload it, there should be sites and services that are glad to take your game and host it, funded by advertising or whatever. Why should someone profit from contributers to a site that will be funded by advertising in the end anyway!.

So I don't bother, my games are scattered to the 4 winds, and I should have them all in one place, on a website. It's a catch 22 situation, I don't want the hassle of running a website, but I don't trust other people to run one for me either. I guess I'm holding out for a straightforward system where I can upload my game, and maintain it, without all the red tape and rape.


Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
Bozzy
18
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Joined: 10th Sep 2006
Location: Birmingham, UK
Posted: 15th Jul 2010 22:18 Edited at: 15th Jul 2010 22:21
Well, one possible thing that I had in mind was to have a sort of you Tube setup. This will allow game developers, who wanted to release their games for free to upload and share their creations exactly the same way that you would share videos on YouTube. Obviously, some of the features would have to be actively geared towards game developing, such as version management on releases etc ... I think that if we did use this setup, it would leave a great deal of scope for community and extensions. Hopefully, the feeling of community within the game developers and the players would appeal to a lot of developers and, as such, the number of games on the site would be large enough to sustain a good player base.

I suppose that there will also be a number of benefits for new game developers, including publicity for their games and getting a name for themselves.

In response to Van B, with this setup there would be no "red tape" whatsoever. Perhaps there would be minimal advertising to cover the hosting fees, but beyond this I think it is best if the site is kept relatively simple and clean.

What you think about this?

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Jeku
Moderator
21
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Joined: 4th Jul 2003
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Posted: 16th Jul 2010 00:31
You should show us what you have so far, instead of promising things that might never get done. It's pretty hard for anyone to say they like your site if we can't get our hands on it.


Senior Web Developer - Nokia
Phaelax
DBPro Master
22
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Joined: 16th Apr 2003
Location: Metropia
Posted: 16th Jul 2010 00:40
Quote: "There should be a site where people can just upload their games, and people can comment, rate etc. There are systems like this, but they are under the control of the admins, need people to sign their life away just to download a file, expect the person to pay!

That's the main thing really - if I release a game for free, I don't expect to have to pay to upload it, there should be sites and services that are glad to take your game and host it, funded by advertising or whatever. Why should someone profit from contributers to a site that will be funded by advertising in the end anyway!."


I hate those sites that require you to create an account or pay just to download a free application, but I think you just gave me an idea. Considering I have unlimited web space and many terabytes of bandwidth, my web server is capable of delivering such a system to the public. And I'm all about open source and freedom, so no fees to upload and some google advertising might help offset the cost of the server I'm already paying for.

Any ideas about how to design a system that is self-reliant (needing no admin intervention) but is secure enough to prevent people from uploading illegal content?


"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" ~ Arthur C. Clarke
Uncle Sam
19
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Joined: 23rd Jul 2005
Location: West Coast, USA
Posted: 16th Jul 2010 04:45
You guys shouldn't be so negative about this idea. I personally wouldn't use it as I'm going to be paying for web hosting, but I know that many users around here and other programming forums in particular would jump at a chance like this. I say go for it and I wish you the best.

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