I am getting involved in the creation of an Internet version of a PBM game that I play and we obviously need to get ourselves a reliable server set up. The bloke who runs the game started an Amazon Cloud account, as he was told it was very good quality, support & value. However, unless he did something drastically wrong, that’s not the case as he was being charged a fortune for it (over $400 for about 3 weeks) and we weren’t even using it !!! This is obviously way out of our price range & excessive in the extreme as far as I can see !!! What we are looking for is a server that will host the game for the end user. They will do their input and at certain times of the day & night, batch processes will run to complete their "turns". However, at the same time, myself, the boss & other people (programmers, testers, etc.) need to be able to access the same server to create the system, the database, the web pages (obviously !) and the game in general, as if we are just on a shared PC ... this obviously needs to be very secure and safe from access to anybody except us developers. Can anybody suggest a decent priced company that can & will handle this kind of thing ? I am a mainframe programmer by trade and know my way around PCs as well, but where my knowledge & expertise falls down is in Networking !!! Any help appreciated, as ever ...
sounds like you need a host which runs php5 and mysql .. that's about it really.. no suggestions as good hosts change all the time and I only ever look for hostings depending on what I know the service requires.. set up a LAMP server at home and install your software to the public parts, then see what that server needs to run to achieve the mission.. (bonus with this method.. if you run a stock setup server locally to setup and test you don't need to totally reconfigure your game for the remote server .. just dump the lot into your space and it should work out of the box with perhaps a little tweaking for the database locations.. paths will be different, but the hosts will tell you what they are.. you can set your test server up to mirror their setup with that info) after that just google for a reliable fair priced host with the features you require.. doesn't matter where or who really, just make sure they allow you to link your domain to your directory locations and don't run a "provided domain with access" scam. Watch out for bandwidth limits.. run your test setup live online over say a weekend to get an idea of the amount of bandwidth and directory space you will need.. both have a huge impact on the price of hosting.. you don't want to buy 1 gig bandwidth a month if you are only using 100mb's.. and you don't want the same amount if you are shifting 20 gigs either.. the host will either kill your connection at the limit or charge a horrid amount per mb over the limit.. neither are very good.. grab those testers.. you should be able to run a live test from home/work/whatever before paying anything to anybody.. at least enough to see it all works and is viable(my site was on my home cable internet for 9 months till my isp started getting hot and bothered) What you do need is an open access server with ftp and webmin configs dependent on yourselves.. watch out for the hosts who force you to use their own custom interface unless it's very open and allows permissions to certain places to be restricted.. You also need to be able to define ports perhaps? .. again something you really need to work out with a live test on your own hardware. You can use a free domain too.. I have a .co.nr one which I have used for something like 4 years.. juliaskitchen.co.nr .. you will notice it redirects to another host entirely.. or afterdawnchat.atspace.com .. another one of my freebies.. running a java applet .. neither host is any good for your purpose, (I do know that.. one is specific forums hosting, the other is a very basic LA (linux-apache) server hosting) and without knowing precisely what systems you need provided on the server I couldn't even start to make any suggestions. better people to ask would be over at ozzu.com .. nice guys and webmasters. they will know what you want and who provides it better than I do (being pretty much the only real live site..with members and remote hosted forums... owner in the membership here I field these questions)
Paula_X ... I have just come home from a talent competition where my little 9 year old son has been (ridiculously, IMHO of course !!!) eliminated in the 1/4 final ... it's close to midnight (as MJ would say !) and I've had a fair few beers, I thought I'd just check my E:Mail and disappear ... BUT ... I saw your reply ... I think a lot of it is over my head, but it looks like a fantastically worded and relevant reply and I will read it again in the morning when I am sober, when hopefully it will make a lot more sense !!! I have been asking for answers to questions like this for weeks, probably months, and this is, without doubt, the most comprehensive reply I have had ... thank you !!!
