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Geek Culture / web design stuff - making buttons and URL stuff

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Matt Rock
19
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Joined: 5th Mar 2005
Location: Binghamton NY USA
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 09:39
No big secret - I'm the worst web designer on TGC, hands-down, bar-none People go to my site and then e-mail me with complaints as if I don't fully acknowledge that my site is terrible. Anyway, that's why you shouldn't be surprised by these two questions lol.

1. How do you create animated web buttons that depress (push in) when you click them, in an html page? I see this everywhere but I can't find tutorials on the net that explain how to do it

-Bare with me as I try to phrase this next question in an understandable way-
2. I know about hosting services like godaddy and whatnot... but how do company's like that create DNS information? Like... let's say I was on the net, and my server's IP was 012.34.5678, how do they change that from an IP to a URL? Is it so incredibly impossible that no one bothers with it, hence these companies existing? It seems as though if it were possible to do without spending tons of money and/ or time on doing it, companies like Godaddy wouldn't thrive. but if they can do it, why can't I?
This question summed:
Is there a way to make a website, and have my own url (like www.matt.com or whatever) without paying someone else to host the url? Is the method involved in doing it complicated, or is it expensive, or is it both?

Sorry for the nooby questions. I tried finding the answers online and couldn't find much that was very helpful, so I'm asking here


"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
Mikey P
19
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Joined: 23rd May 2005
Location: Manchester, UK
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 09:48
1. You need to use javascript, http://www.pageresource.com/jscript/jhover.htm . That tutorial seems to do what you want, although looking at it, it could be a little long winded so you could always search for "Javascript Image Rollover" which seems to turn up a few results.

I don't know about number two but I doubt you could get it without paying someone as I think a record of your domain has to go into all the ISP's dns servers... *shrugs*.

Nicholas Thompson
20
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Joined: 6th Sep 2004
Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 11:19
Quote: "Is there a way to make a website, and have my own url (like www.matt.com or whatever) without paying someone else to host the url? Is the method involved in doing it complicated, or is it expensive, or is it both?"

Yup there is - you need your own DNS server at home - however its quite likely that yous ISP wont let you have one.

Go to 123-reg.co.uk (or .com?) and you get get domains VERY cheaply indeed.

Its very cheap to run a DNS server (I would have thought). Just a standard install of a free distro of linux and a fairly average machine will do the trick.

I did this at home - setup Bind on my linux box and used it as a DNS cache for all my machines at home. This means that when someone looked something up, my server remembered it for 2 days meaning the lookup time from that point on was about 1ms (LAN type times) compared to 20ms+ (WAN times). It was more of a "how do I do this..." type project than anything else.

To be honest - I'm guessing you dont have the knowledge to do much (if any) of the DNS stuff yourself. I'd advise paying pittance to 123reg to do it for you.

[center]
indi
22
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Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 11:42
Quote: "1. How do you create animated web buttons that depress (push in) when you click them, in an html page? I see this everywhere but I can't find tutorials on the net that explain how to do it"

The most professional way would be to manage them with a style sheet using CSS.
free scripts are everywhere but only the best script will run on the most browsers.
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/ is a good repositiry,
mouseovers can be created in many languages however CSS is a good method.
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex15/index.html
a good navigation system for 99% of browsers ( Ugg! @ IE5.2 Mac ) with standard textual link backups somewhere (usually at bottom) is always healthy for users and search engines.
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/index.html
Some CSS versions can allow you to avoid any graphics at all if your not savvy at pixel art.
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/hover.htm

When you build your Page Template test it in Firefox and IE before you add content.
IE can be a pain in the mental lobe sometimes.

If you need a primer on Servers / DNS's etc. then digest some wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_%28computing%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_server

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_system


if thats not enough then theres diktwadz on the net who try to stuff them up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_cache_poisoning


you can even use google to find specific content eg: openSUSE9.3 linux and a full howto (with pikkies) to creating your own server.

keyword
dns server using suse
result
http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_suse_9.3

Linux will appear to be hard at first, but just keep and open mind and compare it to windows later when you adopt new methods and new ways to think.

BTW Nich's advice is gold but as he says it might be a steep learning curve.

Nicholas Thompson
20
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Joined: 6th Sep 2004
Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 12:04
Quote: "(with pikkies)"

Chavs? Annoying kiddies armed with semi-abusive language? Ohhh.. hang on... you mean images...

[center]
indi
22
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Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 12:08
the one that got me is pants, is that good or bad>? does it mean ants pants which is good?
now pikkies means chavs, ouch.

BatVink
Moderator
21
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Joined: 4th Apr 2003
Location: Gods own County, UK
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 13:44
Hosting your domain name with somebody else is worth the money. Otherwise, you have to have a permanently-on machine, permanently attached to the internet. When your machine stops, so does your domain.

My guess is that hosting your domain name with somebody is cheaper than the electricity required to run a server just for one or two sites.



Tinkergirl
21
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Joined: 1st Jul 2003
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 14:15
Pants are never good imo The word, I mean - not the item of clothing. (Which remember, means underwear to us Brits).

My personal confusing word is Mince. I decided a long time ago to use the word mince as my catch-all adjective/similie as as such it can be both good or bad. Though I didn't add it to pseudodictionary, someone I knew years ago did.

Josh
21
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Joined: 7th Dec 2002
Location: Pompey, Great Britain =D
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 15:48 Edited at: 13th Sep 2006 15:49
@ Matt:

If you want I'll build a website for you; add me to IM. Or if you just want some tips add me anyway and we'll have a chat.

I'm crap at web design too but I understand what makes a good design and what makes a bad one. I'm far more technical than arty.

Crazy Ninja
19
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Joined: 27th Aug 2005
Location: Awesometon
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 15:59 Edited at: 13th Sep 2006 15:59
Quote: "I'm the worst web designer on TGC, hands-down, bar-none"


at least you can, unlike me...

____ ____ ____ ___ _ _ __ _ _ __ _ _ ____
|___ |--< |--| /__ Y | \| | | \| ___| |--|
Matt Rock
19
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Joined: 5th Mar 2005
Location: Binghamton NY USA
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 16:03 Edited at: 13th Sep 2006 16:26
Thanks for all of the advice guys. I'll read up on this stuff and figure out the best course of action. I always try to look ahead at the best and worst possible scenarios in terms of business, and the best-case scenario (however unlikely as some may see it) is that our company might grow up to be a big (or "real") company someday, and when that happens, I figured we'd end up paying some company an arm and a leg to buy back our url and put it on our own dns server, if we could even get it at all... I've never had to deal with server and/ or dns companies in the past so I'm treading into uncharted waters, for me anyway.

Again, I'm always thinking of the best/ worst scenarios well in advance, I'm not a big fan of surprises, so... if I paid for someone to host my website, how can I tell if it's a good deal or not? And assuming the best-case scenario, I mean fairy-tale fantastic, like 5,000 units in a single day (unrealistic, but if it did happen, yeesh), how much bandwidth would my site/ server need to have in order to support it? It's quite common to run into smaller companies who are having bandwidth issues (content paradise anyone?) and I need to be able to cut off such issues at the pass, rather than dealing with them *after* the fact and upsetting a bunch of potential customers in the process. Maybe it's just cheaper to host the site myself, on a dedicated computer (we have one here that we could turn into a server) and then pay someone to do the dns stuff?

Edit: Josh, do you have XFire? If so I'm maximuspt1. I'm almost never on Yahoo anymore and I've only ever used msn because someone told me to lol, but I'm on XFire constantly, so lemme know

Quote: "at least you can, unlike me... "

Not true, I cheat For Matt Rock Online, I use Geocities Page Builder, and sometimes I use NVu. Actually, I'm making the current site using NVu. It's a free, open-source (I think?) app and as easy as using MS Word... no programming HTML or Javascript, although the option is there if you want it. Pretty handy tool, I suggest it for anyone whose like me and doesn't want to learn how to do web coding Drag and drop for people like me, or code it all for more advanced peeps, but imo, NVu is cool across the board, like dreamweaver but free.


"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
Josh
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Joined: 7th Dec 2002
Location: Pompey, Great Britain =D
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 16:19 Edited at: 13th Sep 2006 16:25
If you're hosting a professional/commercial site you need it hosted in a datacenter. A home ISP will have upload speeds that are far too slow for many users to access simultaneously.

It's impossible to tell how much bandwidth you will need (and it's not bandwidth it's data transfer). As long as you have a package where you can upgrade the amount of data transfer you require at will and cheaply you'll be fine.

For example one of my websites that is still in BETA is getting between 8,000 and 12,000 hits per month but it uses between 200 and 500 MB of data transfer per month. It all depends on the amount of media content your site has on it.

I'm sure everybody can recommend a host that they've used in the past. SpidaHost which is my company specialises in quality customer care, and we are funding the development of CodersTurf.com (as I own both websites).


[EDIT]

Quote: "I figured we'd end up paying some company an arm and a leg to buy back our url and put it on our own dns server"


If you did setup your own Domain registrar you'd only have to pay a Domain transfer fee which isn't that much. Although for the amount it would cost you to develop and run a DNS server it's just not worth it for most people.

Cash Curtis II
19
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Joined: 8th Apr 2005
Location: Corpus Christi Texas
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 19:10
Matt Rock, you should just pay for the hosting. I have 20 gb of bandwidth every month, and I can easily buy more if I need. It's fast, reliable, and far cheaper than it would cost for me to get another computer and pay to keep it running all the time. And it's faster, unless you've got some type of dedicated high speed connection at your place.

Personally, I'm more interested in making games than messing around with maintaining a server for my games. It's just not worth my time.


Come see the WIP!
Matt Rock
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Joined: 5th Mar 2005
Location: Binghamton NY USA
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 22:09
Well, the next apartment we get will include electric, so that won't be an issue, and we have 768 cable here, so it's not quite T1 fast but I think it's fast enough. And as some of you may recall, I have that second Dell sitting around from my adventures on ebay when I tried to get my girlfriend a computer as a gift... so in those regards, it's all taken care of. But the thing you mention that really brings a downer to this: spending time keeping the server running. That'll be a serious headache, and possibly well worth the cost of paying for server space... I dunno, I'm still exploring the options here.


"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
Jeku
Moderator
21
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Joined: 4th Jul 2003
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 22:22
If you want to have your own DNS server, you should use Bind as it's most likely powering 90% of the DNS servers out there. It's quite complicated but I've helped set up 2 of them in the past and once you get it, it's fine.

But even if you want to host your own site, you should still go with a 3rd party DNS (free) like MyDomain or something like that.

Josh
21
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Location: Pompey, Great Britain =D
Posted: 13th Sep 2006 23:32
Quote: "768 cable here, so it's not quite T1 fast but I think it's fast enough."


Upload speeds are 1/4 of your download speeds, and thats what counts for every server.

Nicholas Thompson
20
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Joined: 6th Sep 2004
Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 14th Sep 2006 00:09
1/4!! I wish!! NTL in the UK are 1/10th! I have 4Mbps down and 400Kbps up..

Also, bear in mind that 768kbps is kiloBITS per second... Divide that by 8 to get your true MAX download speed, its gonna be about 96kb/s max down... and probably about 20kb/s up.

[center]
Matt Rock
19
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Joined: 5th Mar 2005
Location: Binghamton NY USA
Posted: 14th Sep 2006 01:08
eek. So in other words, use a hosting service until I can afford a T3... eek, that'll be a while lol.

I guess I'll just use third party stuff until I've made the millions, then I'll do the dns and have our servers and all of that fun stuff. We probably won't make millions, but hey, no one ever accomplished anything through pessimism thanks everyone for all of your help, I'll take this stuff and work with it hopefully it'll be up soon, after I work out the Nvu stuff regarding the button, and after I finish gimping a site template.


"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
spooky
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Joined: 30th Aug 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 14th Sep 2006 11:56
Even having your own DNS servers means you can't get free domain names. If you want www.whatever.com to point to your web server you still have to pay someone something. It is impossible to get it done for free.

We run our own DNS servers at work (SimpleDNS) but we still have to pay someone to register the domains at the top level. We are a proper domain tag holder and so get domains a bit cheaper but we still have to get the money from somewhere, usually the client.

Boo!
Nicholas Thompson
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Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 14th Sep 2006 12:07
123reg charge (to host a domain only) about £5 a year for a .co.uk and about £10 for a .com... Thats bugger all really. Once a domain is out of the sandbox and in google's good books then the domain often becomes more of an asset to the company than a simple annual subscription!

[center]
Matt Rock
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Location: Binghamton NY USA
Posted: 14th Sep 2006 21:24
lol it was be so cool if our company, an American company, had .co.uk But it'd probably be too confusing when we charged dollars instead of pounds How easy is it to get the site up and running with, say, 123reg or spidahost? For about $19.99/ mo Yahoo will put up my site with no banners or anything with my own domain and e-mail addresses for the company and all that... good deal or a waste of money? E-mail addresses, like matt@studionamehere.com would be pretty hot, for businessy stuff And they have that Geocities pagebuilder which is rediculously simple to use... so come on guys, sell me on 123reg/ spidahost in comparison to yahoo Personally, I'd prefer to use someone smaller, "keep it indie" so to speak, but other people on the team are like "Matt, we've gone indie on EVERYTHING, DBP is the most "corporate" thing we're using besides cool edit and they aren't even a corporation! Give us SOMETHING here!" So help me figure out how to appease my people and do what I want at the same time lol I'm losing the arguement because I don't know how to make the case!


"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
Jeku
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Joined: 4th Jul 2003
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Posted: 14th Sep 2006 21:34
Quote: "For about $19.99/ mo Yahoo will put up my site with no banners or anything with my own domain and e-mail addresses for the company and all that... good deal or a waste of money?"


Waste of money if that's all you get. Dreamhost will give you that and 10x more for about half the price.

Josh
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Location: Pompey, Great Britain =D
Posted: 14th Sep 2006 23:42 Edited at: 14th Sep 2006 23:44
With SpidaHost you can use any Domain from any Domain Registrar and you'll get a fully professional website for your money. Which means no adverts, and basically you can do what you want, so long as you abide by my Terms of Service.


Quote: "How easy is it to get the site up and running with, say, 123reg or spidahost?"


Once everything is setup all you need to do is build a website and FTP it to the server. A free online website builder is also included with my packages if you want a quick and easy way to build a website.


Something else I can offer you is my flexibility in building a package which is right for YOUR needs. If you need more space, or more data transfer on a whim I can do that for you. Also I can do monthly payments, and give you a few extra days if you need it to get the next instalment up together.

You'll be dealing directly with me, instead of going through a corporate barrier. So for example if you need something that is out of the ordinary get in contact with me and I'll see if I can use my connections to help you out.


Checkout my pricing here. It won't beat dreamhost, but with SpidaHost you're paying for quality rather than just quantity.

Phaelax
DBPro Master
21
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Joined: 16th Apr 2003
Location: Metropia
Posted: 15th Sep 2006 03:03
Spidahost was real easy for me to get started. Buy a domain ($10/yr), pass it along to Josh (unless the automated system is up now), then upload your files via ftp. And Spidahost has a ton of features you can add to your site with a click of the button, such as a phpbb forum and many others. Josh has provided great support so there's nothing to worry about.

"Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy" - Rob Pike
Matt Rock
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Location: Binghamton NY USA
Posted: 15th Sep 2006 22:08 Edited at: 15th Sep 2006 22:15
Can I see an example of the forum? Could we make it look how we want, or will it have banners and stuff on it? This is sounding like a pretty cool deal thus far.

Edit: Wait, let me get this straight... For $6.99/ mo you'll offer me 400 GB's disk space, 40 GB data transfer, unlimited e-mail addresses and sub-domains, search engine submission taken care of, and I can just contact you to have you help me set it all up? What about url's... would you guys get me www.mysite.com, or would it be www.mysite.spidahost.com? Like, is it extra to get the domain name? What other costs are associated with this? I think you just sold me lol, unlimited e-mails, that beats the crap outta yahoo I think this is more than enough firepower hehe. So, you could take a site I made in NVu and get things moving with it?


"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
Josh
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Location: Pompey, Great Britain =D
Posted: 15th Sep 2006 23:48 Edited at: 15th Sep 2006 23:51
@ Phaelax:

Cheers!

Quote: "Can I see an example of the forum? Could we make it look how we want, or will it have banners and stuff on it? This is sounding like a pretty cool deal thus far."


If that's directed at me; all SpidaHost websites are professional so you can install any forum software you want. I can provide support for and I personally recommend Simple Machines Forum. No adverts. You get total control.


Quote: "Wait, let me get this straight... For $6.99/ mo you'll offer me 400 GB's disk space, 40 GB data transfer..."


Thats 4Gb of disk space, not 400 lol.


Quote: "What about url's... would you guys get me www.mysite.com, or would it be www.mysite.spidahost.com? Like, is it extra to get the domain name?"


You can use any Domain such as www.mysite.com but you have to register it yourself first. I use GoDaddy for all my domains. If you really want I can register the Domain for you via SpidaHost but it's more expensive than GoDaddy. I register Domain's mainly for people who don't want to or can't manage the Domain's themselves. I'll even help you through the process of registering a Domain.


Quote: "What other costs are associated with this?"


The Domain and hosting package are the only costs. No hidden costs or extra fees. What you see is what you get with SpidaHost.


Quote: "So, you could take a site I made in NVu and get things moving with it?"


Yup, you'll have to FTP it to the server but that’s a simple drag and drop operation. I use Smart FTP 2 for all my FTP needs.


Anyway. Add me to an IM my addies are below.

Matt Rock
19
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Joined: 5th Mar 2005
Location: Binghamton NY USA
Posted: 16th Sep 2006 03:21
Quote: "If that's directed at me; all SpidaHost websites are professional so you can install any forum software you want. I can provide support for and I personally recommend Simple Machines Forum. No adverts. You get total control."

That would be hot. But $50/ yr for their service? That I'll need to discuss with "my peeps" first hehe

Quote: "Thats 4Gb of disk space, not 400 lol. "

Yeah, typo hehe. 400GB would basically be about two and a half of my harddrives lol.

Quote: "I'll even help you through the process of registering a Domain."

That also would be pretty cool, I'm no good at this stuff!

Here's another question: with the widgets, can I see samples of those two? We'd like our site to feature chat, forums, and most importantly, some method of payment recieval that isn't simply using Paypal.

Anyway, I'll add you and this weekend I'll discuss all of this with the team and see what they think. I'm sold, personally, but I need to talk it over with my friends Thanks!


"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
Jeku
Moderator
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Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Posted: 16th Sep 2006 04:43
Quote: "most importantly, some method of payment recieval that isn't simply using Paypal."


Ditto on that. If you want to do that yourself you have to get a merchant account through a bank, which is expensive.

Otherwise you should sell through a third-party like Share-it. There's no free alternative unfortunately.

Josh
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Location: Pompey, Great Britain =D
Posted: 16th Sep 2006 13:16 Edited at: 16th Sep 2006 13:18
Quote: "That would be hot. But $50/ yr for their service? That I'll need to discuss with "my peeps" first hehe"


Where are you getting the $50/year from?

You can host any forum on your SpidaHost website for free. (e.g. www.mysite.com/forum)


Quote: "Here's another question: with the widgets, can I see samples of those two? We'd like our site to feature chat, forums, and most importantly, some method of payment recieval that isn't simply using Paypal."


kChat [Screenshot] (PHP based chat-room, private rooms and BBCode can be used when an SMF forum is installed on your website.)

You can see the Advert widget in the top-right corner of Coders Turf. I created it for a client and then used the code myself.

As a PHP/MySQL coder I can create any other widgets you might need.

As Jeku says the only viable payment option is through PayPal, which you can automate if you want using the PayPal SDKs.

Matt Rock
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Posted: 23rd Sep 2006 10:55
Okay. I've put money aside, and using NVu I've whipped together what is imo a pretty nifty-looking website (bless texture maker and the Gimp, thank you for making me look like a better artist than I actually am).

I've been looking at a bunch of hosts to make sure I don't jump head-first into something that I don't necessarily want or need (I learned the hard way with character shop, ouch!). It seems as though a lot of hosts are offering huge amounts of bandwidth and whatnot for the same cost as you, Josh... and now I'm at ends and running out of nicotine. After discussing it with "the crew" we're willing to dish out about $10 per month for a site, including the domain (from what I see anyway, that seems like a decent amount... unless I'm wrong, again, I'm a noob about web stuff). I'd rather go through you, because you're a member of this community and that makes me more trustworthy of you as opposed to some company I've never heard of, and Phaelax's recommendation further peeks my interest... but to be honest, there's two bottlenecks for us: bandwidth and shopping alternatives. I've come across a bunch of sites offering from 400GB (lunarpages.com) to 1000GB (godaddy.com) of data transfer per month, and two that claim they offer unlimited bandwidth (pengwuinwebhosting.com and chihost.com), and most of them have built-in shopping carts and whatnot that don't use paypal (I seriously think that paypal and its ebay reputation kills indie sales, or at least gives indie sales cancer... I might be wrong, but I personally don't want to use it, especially with Jeku agreeing with me). But with you, we get personal assistance with questions and stuff, and we can trust you more than we can trust them... so dang it, I'm lost lol. So here's the deal... $10 per month, and we'll need a domain name, stat tracking (everyone tells me it's uber important), surveys (to find out what people think of our games), a shopping cart, forums that look and feel as though they're specific to our site (and no banners), and an easy-to-use chat room that computer novices can use (we want everything on our site easily-accessible)... with all of that stuff in mind, on our budget, how much additional bandwidth could you get us? If it isn't much/ none at all, it's probably no big deal, but I'll need to decide this with the whole team, and they're all shocked/ awed over penguinwebhosting.com (I'm absolutely positive there's a catch with their service, I just can't work out what it is). I need firepower!


"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
Jeku
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Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Posted: 23rd Sep 2006 20:39
Quote: "I might be wrong, but I personally don't want to use it, especially with Jeku agreeing with me"


Wait, I said what now? Paypal is not a bad choice, I use it for my father's website hawking goods. Sites like Paypal are the *only* way to go, unless you have your own merchant account.

I don't believe a host will let you use a shopping cart WITH THEIR merchant account. You must have misread it, or I'm behind the times. Free shopping carts are a dime a dozen, but they don't hook up to some magical internet bank in the sky for free.

One thing you want to make sure of when deciding on a webhost is how long they've been in business. Don't fall for those sites that have been started this year and use a template to sell amazing amounts of services for cheap.

Matt Rock
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Posted: 23rd Sep 2006 21:40
Oh, I must have misread it (that's what happens at 4am hehe). I guess we'll use paypal then until I can contact a few local banks to find out who can offer the best deal on a merchant account; also, I should learn a bit more about what a merchant account is, hehe. In June I met this guy from HSBC who I was talking to in an unrelated matter, and the topic of our game dev team popped up, and he said he can get me started with online banking and all of that, but there was no mention of a price or any other specifics, so maybe I should contact him and find out a bit more.

I hate the internet lol. With my personal website, it's easy: I don't care what it looks like, who visits it, or what anyone thinks about it who does visit it But making a website that represents several people is... ugh... complicated Everyone wants this changed or that changed, they love this service but they hate that service, I can't just get online and put the site up and everyone is happy. Makes me think I should start considering making games by myself lol (jk!).


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Megaton Cat
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Posted: 23rd Sep 2006 23:39 Edited at: 23rd Sep 2006 23:39
I have a PayPal Buisness account and I don't see what's bad about it...there's only one small fee. But I made quite a bit of selling model packs, so what the heck.

Zappo
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Posted: 23rd Sep 2006 23:53
There are alternatives to PayPal if you don't have your own merchant account. You may have to look at these as many banks want to see several years trading history before even considering opening you a merchant account, plus they can be quite pricey per month (unless things have changed in the last few years).
What you can do is use a company who offer merchant facilities (so basically use their own merchant account) and they then take a percentage of the money made. They usually provide a secure page on their server which you can customize with your own logo etc. so you don't even have to have your own SSL certificate. Its a bit like PayPal but doesn't require your customers to have an account with them, they simply enter their details and credit card number whenever they buy something. WorldPay are probably the biggest but there are lots of others.
Jeku
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Posted: 24th Sep 2006 00:44
@Matt - Unless you have thousands of dollars up-front and good credit, the bank will not give you a merchant account for business on the net. That is why most people have to go through a third-party solution.

spooky
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Posted: 24th Sep 2006 01:08
We have a merchant account for our company and then you just use a payments gateway company like secpay that does all the online authorisations. As already mentioned though, to get a proper merchant account is a bit of a nightmare and you need all sorts of trading history and comply with all sorts of regulations.

PayPal is getting quite advanced in what you can do with it and the rates it charges aren't that bad really.

Boo!
Mnemonix
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Posted: 24th Sep 2006 02:48
The IPN system paypal offers is a great way to add products to your own website .

The good thing about paypal is that there are generally no upfront fees, and you pay only out of what you earn. Think of it as income tax

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Matt Rock
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Posted: 24th Sep 2006 04:58
I guess it isn't a bad deal then. I was always just weary of using it. People need to sign up for an account and stuff, and that kinda sucks imo. I wish they'd allow people to just use a credit card and not become a member. Or is there a way to do that? That would be ideal, then I wouldn't really have a problem with using it.


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Jeku
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Posted: 24th Sep 2006 07:00
AFAIK they don't have to sign up with Paypal to pay.

dab
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Posted: 24th Sep 2006 07:22
Also, the shopping carts just deal with the items, and prices dbs. I'm not sure what they do afterwords (such as payment) but all I saw that they did was items/counting/DB based stuff.

Note: db(s) = database(s) not darkbasic lol.

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Matt Rock
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Posted: 24th Sep 2006 11:30
database stuff would be cool though, keep track of customers and stuff. I want to implement a referral system, where if someone refers five friends to buy a game they get a game of equal value for free. Also, I need to work out how to send a customer to a random registration page, with a random registration code on it, or maybe just randomly print a registration code from a list. Can that be done using HTML or java or something? Ugh, complications lol. What would be uber cool would be to have a customer page with referral points, games they've purchased, etc., but without requiring tons of maintenance every day.


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Josh
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Posted: 24th Sep 2006 17:31 Edited at: 24th Sep 2006 17:34
@ Matt:


About the numbers:

I could offer you 1 million gigs of data transfer/bandwidth right now, but I'd have to limit you to using 0.001% of my server's resources at any one time (or some other crazy number). Which makes it impossible for you to ever use up all that data transfer within a month. So big numbers are kind of pointless here.

As for the actual web space you get, you can only use as much as a hard drive can hold. E.g. 200 gigs, once you count in the other websites that will be using space on the same server as you and wham you're down to 20 gigs or less possible space for your website.


Your website features:

You're asking quite a bit here; so you want a website with a forum that has the same look and feel, stat tracking, a surveys widget, a shopping cart which links with PayPal and a chat room.

We’ll have to do this on an item by item basis.

* Diamond web hosting ($6.99 / month)
* Forum installation (Free)
* Stat tracking installation (Free)
* PHP chat room ($5 one off) Or use a free forum MOD?
* Survey widget ($5 one off)
* Forum theme (Not sure, we’ll have to chat about what you want.)

The shopping cart system will be more expensive as there is a lot of work involved. I personally don’t think you need it, at least not for the time being. You can always create a page and stick a PayPal Buy Now button on it next to the items you’re selling. This would be a hell of a lot simpler.

Just so you know I do offer a free shopping cart with my hosting packages. Any pre-made software will always be a separate entity from your website unless you get one custom built for you however.

If you want a login system on your website which works with your forum you’re going to need a PHP website constructed for you. And you’ll also need a website design created for your website and forum.

The Bottom Line:

I could create you a professional website with customer accounts, a shopping cart, a referral system and a great design but it’s going to cost you for my time. Other web designers charge upwards of $50 per hour! Personally I think that’s a crazy amount of money.

So as you can see you can either keep it simple and cheap, or complex and expensive.

Also once you have a complicated PHP website you can’t just edit it in Dreamweaver or Front Page, you have to edit it at the code level. Or you could get someone to create an online WYSIWYG interface for it but again that adds to the cost.


We Need To Chat:

Even if I don’t end up selling you a web hosting package at least I can give you some advice. I haven’t seen you online since you added me so if you do come online sometime we’ll have a chat. It’ll be a lot easier over IM than it will be reading a huge chunk of information like this.


Your Team Mates:

If you’re trying to convince your team mates tell them this;

Its not the size that counts its how you use it! (And I’m talking about web hosting here, nothing else lol.)

20,000 Mb of space may seem impressive, but its not a good quality experience.



Anyway we really can’t chat effectively on a forum like this…


One last note…
A website isn’t for dumping gigs of stuff on, you purchase a dedicated server for that. A website is about communicating your existence to the public and providing a platform for product sales and customer care.

Matt Rock
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Posted: 29th Sep 2006 22:27
Okay... I have a few more questions for you guys, sorry

aplus.net came with a built-in forum service. It's a PHPBB forum that's directly hosted from my site, so that's cool, but there's a problem: at the top of the forum there's an image that says "website forum." Is anyone familiar with PHPBB forum? How can I change that image to something I actually want?

Another question, possibly the noobiest question I've ever asked lol: How do I declare a main page? do I just need to name it index.html?


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Matt Rock
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Posted: 30th Sep 2006 00:30
Sorry for the double-post, but I just got the site up, and it's finally ready for some input. I figured a double-post was better than making a whole new thread about the site

www.misoftstudios.com

As I've stated repeatedly, I'm a terrible web designer, so please take that into consideration prior to starting your flamethrowers I did my absolute best and it took me a long time to make it look even this good (it could be worse!). I'm happy with it, and the people who've seen it so far liked it, but they might be being nice lol. I'm not happy with the menu system... simple text links are corny imo, but I don't know how to do anything cooler than that. The entire site is pretty simple and straight-forward, but it works, and I'm not willing to pay someone to make it prettier.

In case you're wondering, I did the template background using texture maker and I edited the images/ added the text using the gimp. Yeah, I'm shadowdropping-crazy, sorry Let me know what you think of it, technically and aesthetically anyway since the only game that's up is cheney hunter. The forums work but don't look quite right, the chat room doesn't work, and you'll notice a bunch of stuff, like New Releases, aren't linked (maybe because we don't have any new releases to talk about, since Cheney Hunter is how old? 7 or 8 months?). I hope you guys dig it


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spooky
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Posted: 30th Sep 2006 01:45
Having a background image that is a BMP file over 3 megabytes is a VERY bad idea.

Boo!
dab
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Posted: 30th Sep 2006 02:00
If you want I can code a template for you. Just draw out what you want, and I'll create a template (free of course). . If you really would like me to, just inlcude images that I "have" to use. Then I'll get going.

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Megaton Cat
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Posted: 30th Sep 2006 02:40 Edited at: 30th Sep 2006 02:53
Sorry Matt....you pulled a Stage 3 BMP. There's no excuse for that.

So um...I see your 14-man team has been busy afterall.



I'd say the site's layout does it's job. Everything's beleveled and dropshadowed to hell ofcourse, but what're ye gonna do. The text and logo is a wierd slew of colours and sizes...I'd say make one size for text, one larger size for links, same font for everything, and 2 unified colours.

Also, though probably just down to personal taste, I'm not really liking the name. Sounds like one of those quick n' dirty sound-alikes like MikeRoweSoft or iSoft or some other name trying to be witty. Cmon, you're the Matt Rock, you can come up with something cooler.

(Not to mention it has two of the most overused suffixes - "Soft and Studios". Seriously, you're indi, stray away from the mold just abit. )

I guess since I went ahead and moaned at you like a 3rd-world whore, it's only fair I offer some help. I don't really have much time to do free work, but if you want a logo or some clean site design made, just let me know. It probably won't be portfolio worthy (as I still gotta do Cash's design) but it'll fit better then um...the current one.

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Matt Rock
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Posted: 30th Sep 2006 04:44
I tried to get the team to help with the website, they all complained and said "it's your responsibility," so that's the result lol. Unless you mean making games, in which they have been, we have two games coming out relatively soon and they're divided up amongst them (unevenly, capital punishment is a bigger endeavor than we thought it would be). I didn't think about the bitmap thing, I'll fix that... jpg or gif, whichever looks better. I like my template that's the one thing I was genuinely happy with lol.

As far as fonts go, the MISoft logo is the same on each page (it's a template hehe). The "Games" image I did in a different font because it looked boring with the normal font and flippin' insane with the MISoft Studios font (a real eyesore with Brian's font being smaller than that imo). Then each game has it's own font because they're different games, and those fonts represent the games well I think... Cheney Hunter with the Predator font, Capital Punishment with the flag font, and Eternal Equinox with it's "treasure map-ish" font, all of which are used in their respective games in some form or another. I think the Cheney Hunter page is probably the only one where the colors go flying out of the site's color scheme, mostly because of the blue "download cheney hunter" words and the pinkish "cheneyhunter.zip" download thing. When I find a decent "download" button I'm going to replace that.

I didn't realize how off the sizes were until my girlfriend loaded the site on her computer. My screen resolution is 1280x960, and hers is 1024x768, and the font size, especially on the index/ menu page, is outrageously tiny, so that will need to be fixed too eek, I hate websites.

Thanks for the offer dabip, but I really like my template... it just needs to be smaller size-wise lol. Tomorrow I'm going to convert the extension, ditch the "games" logo for a cleaner one that matches the MISoft banner font better (but not exactly) and without the shadowdrop... then I think it would be okay. The menu I want to work out on my own, learn how to make it cooler as I work on the site, and harass you guys for coding help whenever possible

About the name: We've had it since 1999... we can't change it. It's grown on us. It would be like having a kid and changing his name when he's seven because you get sick of yelling at him lol. "Charlie, drop it! CHARLIE! CHARLIE, stop playing with that! Charlie, I SAID DROP IT! F*** it, your name is Stan!" Besides, it's not entirely my decision... if it were, we'd be "Rock Paper Scissors," which I'm using now as sort of a sub-label on games where I'm doing way more work than everyone else, like on EE... that'll be a "MISoft Studios production of a Rock Paper Scissors Game" I love the sound of that lol. I dunno, I like our name... a lot actually. Of all the things we've changed, that's the one thing that always stays the same. Makes me all warm and fuzzy when I write it hehe. We didn't intend to sound like anyone else... it stands for "Make Infinity Software," ("Infinity Software" being something that I couldn't possibly explain in less than three threads). At first we were "MISoft Guys" because there were two of us, but then we got a female so it became "Team MISoft," but then that sounded way too NASCAR, so after a few nights of arguing we settled on MISoft Studios, and not because we're a "game studio" as the name would imply, but because we were working on our game in three different locations: in an art studio, a music recording studio, and a studio apartment... so it was an inside joke that inevitably became a name that no one understood. Until now And no, we didn't pick up our stuff and move it from location to location lol, there were different people in each location doing different things Anyway, that's way more information than anyone needed to know about where our name comes from hehe.


"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
Megaton Cat
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Posted: 30th Sep 2006 05:02 Edited at: 30th Sep 2006 05:07
I can totaly understand your attachment to the name. Look to the left of your screen. Notice the name "Megaton Cat" isn't there anymore? Now why did it take me nearly 4 years of foruming to remove the dumb, immature name you ask? Because it just grew on as it was the name my best friend came up with for our 3 man team back when we were spunky 12 year olds making games in Game Maker.

I think RPS Games sounds very cool...cool enough to make a logo for! (Gets ideas)

The situation in your team sounds pretty shaky though. You're actually making your own "sub studio" within your own already small studio? Sounds like trouble in paradise to me.

Anyway, good luck with yer stuff.
Send me a beta or whatever, and I'll stop making fun of Radiohead.





(For a week)

EDIT: Just checked out RPS on google. The competition's weak man!



Benjamin
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Posted: 30th Sep 2006 05:09
Quote: "Now why did it take me nearly 4 years of foruming to remove the dumb, immature name you ask?"

How long's it gonna take you to remove this one?

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