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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Web space for hosting your games

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Hilmi2k
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Posted: 5th Jan 2003 21:59
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I am thinking of starting up my own website for darkbasic, but to promote traffic, I would like to give free hosting to anybody with a non comercial project that needs hosting. You could probably even put your site. All I ask in exchagne is donations from those who can afford to donate.

I would also make web sites for those of you who cant or cant be bothered for small amounts I would use to pay for the hosting.

What do you guys think of the idea? has it already been done? if it has, where? Tell me what you think.
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Kangaroo2
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Posted: 6th Jan 2003 00:47
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Thats a good idea Personally I don't need it but I'm sure once people finish a project they trawl through miles of free servers only to find no zip files/no large files/low bandwidth. Good luck

* If the apocalypse comes, email me *
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Soyuz
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Posted: 6th Jan 2003 01:16
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What's your experience?

I'd like to make a shareware game and have space for people to download it from but how the hell do you deal with issues of bandwidth and methods of payment over the internet. I imagine the best option in my case is to offer the full game for download (using zdnet or whatever) and then when it's purchased I email a code to unlock it.

I'd be happy to pay someone if they could do the donkey work setting up a online purchase thing and bandwidth. Maybe split the cost between upfront payment and a share of income? Dunno, just sounding out.

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Epidemicz
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Posted: 6th Jan 2003 04:11
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That would be sweet~~~~~

I would sign up.

I am the very disease you pretend to be.
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Hilmi2k
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Posted: 6th Jan 2003 08:53
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I have reasonable experience designing sites. I've had a few small government contracts, and I have made many sites for the various local associations. But I'm no java programer. I just make functional pages with pleasing design.

I'm sure we can work out something.

I would have other stuff on my site, but if I have more content, then I get more traffic, thats the idea I have in mind. As for the bandwidth bit, we will have to see how much is used first.

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Hilmi2k
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Posted: 7th Jan 2003 23:32
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Not realy the amount of response I expected, I guess the project could be considered a failiure in advance
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Kangaroo2
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Posted: 8th Jan 2003 10:12
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Not neccessarily - The problem is often that people round here have lots of great ideas and start up projects, but rarely finish them (sad but true) When someone has a finished product, its most likely they would contact you THEN and ask for space

* If the apocalypse comes, email me *
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Hilmi2k
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Posted: 8th Jan 2003 12:54
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Anyway, pour your ideas here about what you want in the site.

I know most of you would love to have a forum that allows you to edit posts and a sear facility, that i am working on. I am thinking of getting a coldfusion based forum. Something realy powerful.

Those of you with comercial products, I would host your banners, for a small fee
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stormtrooper
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Posted: 8th Jan 2003 17:30
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I would not consider this a failiure in advance, I considered doing the same thing just never got around to putting it out there. There is alot of free space out there. You need to find space that will allow zip files then you may have to link from your site to many different free space sites if you have alot of programs. You or the individual game owners can take payments through paypal. There is alot of different ways to go with this. The idea of donations is good, or a small fee to post a program, you may spend alot of time keeping this site up and you need to get a little somthing for the time you spend on it. I think there are alot of DB programmers out there that are not on the forums that probably have finished products. I think it should be open to any language, C++ VB ETC... and maybe everyone can learn from each other, Forums for the different languages would be nice. This could turn into a very large site and you would have to figure out a way to support it because you would have to get bandwidth which aint cheap. The Ideas keep comming to me for this but I see it becomming quite large especially if there is more than just the DB community involved. You could get sponsers or make some cash from advertising you would need this to support the site!

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Kangaroo2
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Posted: 8th Jan 2003 20:28
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that would be cool

* If the apocalypse comes, email me *
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Hilmi2k
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Posted: 8th Jan 2003 22:17
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I am planing on spending upto $300 to set it up and around $25 a month for maintanance and bandwidth. I would need constant flow of "donations" to keep it running. Otherwise, it wont be worth it.

I havent tried pay pal yet, most companies dont deal with people in arab countries considering we are all terrorists hell bent on world domination and all that. I could not even order truespace through their site and had to call on the phone for extra security checks because I was going to use it to design a nuclear bomb in my back yard funded by the oil well in my bedroom.
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Hilmi2k
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Posted: 8th Jan 2003 22:21
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sorry for the political rant, will keep it strictly programing from now on
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stormtrooper
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Posted: 9th Jan 2003 00:00
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I don't Really see how it will cost you 300 to set it up unless you need frontpage or dreamweaver and they will not cost that much. You don't need to pay for hosting. There is alot of free hosting and web space out there(Netfirms is great)every site i have made has gone there free all they do is put a banner on your homepage. Check out rpggamers site. I had a website up for a year and it cost me absolutly nothing exept the cost to register my domain. My folks run a video business and I used thier frontpage to make my site while I was making thier sites. I have my own programs now. I think I could run this site for little or no money exept for what I would want for my time, maybe donations through paypal or a very small fee to put a program on the site. My point is it should cost you hardly anything to get it up and running, a large amount of bandwidth may be a different story. There are ways around that but it would take a lot of linking from the main site!

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Hilmi2k
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Posted: 9th Jan 2003 11:22
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Paypal doesnt deal with people from where I live, any other way to recieve payments out there?
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Hilmi2k
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Posted: 9th Jan 2003 11:27
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And the idea was, to avoid using free sites so that I can choose who advertises.

This project is semi comercial because I am planning in the future to release some comercial services on it. Nothing comercial looks good on free hosting, bad for the image.

I already own dreamweaver on my PowerPC and I have sucky frontpage on my Windows PC. I was talking $300 for proffessional level discussion forum and other services.

A proper discussion forum should have proper features. Administration functions, editing, search facilities, the ability to email users who opt in for recieving emails. Email notification of replies to topics.

All these things mater.

Then there is the issue of bandwidth. you get what you pay for.
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Soyuz
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Posted: 9th Jan 2003 12:53
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I agree free sites suck through past experience, as do "unlimited bandwidth" sites. I would not touch either in the future.

Hilmi2K, if you can look in to how to setup online purchasing , even if that were done by an external company linked from your site, then I'd be interested for sure.

Then of course there are issues of customer feedback and support. Would that go through your site too? You'd need to store info on each customer purchasing a game through your site in case they have problems.

My suggestion would be to put together an example package covering all the aspects of selling a game online and what you'd expect from me in terms of cash or percentage cut.

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Hilmi2k
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Posted: 9th Jan 2003 13:57
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Payments is the problem. I cant find a website that handles payments online yet deals with people in the arab world. Recieving payments is the only problem. Otherwise adding features is not much of a problem.

I will put the business version of ez boards, that pretty much covers having a deacent discussion forum. online shopping cart solutions are available. I think there is a british company that sells software online for people that I caught a glimps of the other day. So selling solutions are not much of a problem.

Exclusive memebers only section is technicaly possible. But in reality, getting good content to fill it with is a bit difficult, so it wont be fair to charge for such a membership.
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Hilmi2k
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Posted: 11th Jan 2003 10:12
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I have decided to go ahead with this project and will donate 5 to 10 dollars per article submited depending on quality. I will only pay for the articles I actualy put up. I might run out of money along the way, so I might end up asking the people who bring in articles late to wait a while till I recieve enough donations from the site so that I can pay them. Even worse, I might ask for your permission to put them up free :S

I want physics articles, mathes articles and general programing articles. Pseudo code would be great when used in the tutorials, this is to expand the audience, but you can add darkbasic code along with it.

Spell checking is a must, get somebody else to review it for you too, english isnt my first language, so I would make a crap editor for your articles.

my email adress is hilmi_al_kindy@hotmail.com
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