Clan Survey

[Guest]

Hi MTAers,

I'd be greatful if you could toddle on over to VCES's site (http://www.vces.net) and answer a few questions I've posted regarding web hosting. I'm aware that many clans out there are struggling with hosting, and I'm trying to make a difference. I can't do that without your help.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[ThugMakaveli]

Yes to all that say Free, no to all that say $!

[Mike]

I've had no trouble with hosting (except initially searching on the web for a host), the one I currently have for DK is great - Free, no ads, cPanel, ftp, php, cgi, mysql etc. so I can do exactly what I want with it

• If you ran a clan, what kind of hosting would you seek in your early days? Free, no-ads

• If a clan system such as Clan-World was available, would you be interested in using it? Not sure what this is...

• If you were happy with paying for extra services, how would you pay? Would you allow clan members to directly contribute money to a “savings account” type system, where you pay money into a kitty, and a total is deducted each month for the site (you could make deposits for many months at once) It's easiest to keep hosting free - much simpler.

• Would you be happy with your site having advertisement banners on it to make up for the service being free? No

[Guest]

Thanks to both of you for your feedback. I guess you may have seen this coming, but I guess the next question ought to be:

• Why would you not pay for a hosting service? Is it because you have better things to spend your money on, because you wouldn't have enough money in the first place, or because you're a tight wad?

Cheers

[Mike]

Well, I don't have that much money anyway, but why pay for it when you can get a really good host for free if you just search around a bit

[ThugMakaveli]

Thanks to both of you for your feedback. I guess you may have seen this coming, but I guess the next question ought to be:

• Why would you not pay for a hosting service? Is it because you have better things to spend your money on, because you wouldn't have enough money in the first place, or because you're a tight wad?

Cheers

[MAD_BOY]

• If you ran a clan, what kind of hosting would you seek in your early days? free, no ads, much bw, much space

• If a clan system such as Clan-World was available, would you be interested in using it? what the hell is that?

• If such a system was an option for you, would you be put off by a limit to the features you could get for free? refer to question 2

• Would you rather that all the features were free, but you only got a limited number of members for free, and paid a small amount of money to add more members? i don't wanna pay

• Would you pay extra to get features such as email, and disk space to store files on? no, cause without discspace you wouldn't even have hosting

• Would you pay extra to upgrade to a fully featured hosting package (including FTP and a control panel) but sacrifice the prebuilt CMS (the source would not be made available to users) i said i don't wanna pay

• What kind of skinning support would you want? The ability to change the header image, change colours, or even make a whole template? i code my own stuff

• If you were happy with paying for extra services, how would you pay? Would you allow clan members to directly contribute money to a “savings account” type system, where you pay money into a kitty, and a total is deducted each month for the site (you could make deposits for many months at once) I WOULDN'T PAY DAMNIT

• Would you be happy with your site having advertisement banners on it to make up for the service being free? nope

• Would you be interested in a cut down service which offered only a few features, with smaller banners (perhaps just sponsored links)? NO

• Would you be interested in paying a small amount to have parts of the system available on a fully-fledged site, such as an unbranded server status script? which part of "i don't wanna pay" can't you understand?

• Why would you not pay for a hosting service? Is it because you have better things to spend your money on, because you wouldn't have enough money in the first place, or because you're a tight wad? cause you can get it for free anyway

[Guest]

MAD_BOY - With all due respect, if you'd read my whole post, you'd see what Clan-World was, and that you need not answer all the questions.

Others - thanks for your feedback.

[Slothman]

I run my own clan site off a dedicated linux box. i do this because i need php, perl cgi, no ads, large amount of space, and secure shell access.

if a service would provide all this, along with a system where clan members can dumpa bit of cash here and there into a pot, I would think It would be pretty popular.

Of course, shell access is usually a problem for most hosts.

[Guest]

Out of interest, and in the name of research, for what reason would you require shell access?

[Slothman]

basically I use shell access to restart servers after reconfiguring them, activating and deactivating servers (such as teamspeak) and generally the control is really nice.

[Guest]

basically I use shell access to restart servers after reconfiguring them, activating and deactivating servers (such as teamspeak) and generally the control is really nice.

I suppose such a feature is really limited to dedicated servers because most hosts don't even allow you to run your own services - I don't.

[Gareth]

Daniel I would actually consider paying for your services if they were made into a clan package that also hosted gaming servers and Teamspeak into one large package. (perhaps you could team up with various gaming hosting companies) (noog from fr4g, or Stealth from clanplanet.co.uk) And use of CPanel for adding PHP scripting systems and ClanPanel for controlling game servers. *BTW it would be nice if you could package a domain ready set up into the package like co.uk, com e.t.c

This is only my opinion but if you are offering clan server packages you might as well offer Teamspeak and Game Servers Bundled in. Perhaps you could do a wizard where it asks you what you would like in your hosting package. To base the whole clan gaming site thing you need to offer all in one, and thats basically what I would be looking for.

thanks for offering to take our opinions and good luck with the company daniel m8

I also forgot you could also offer shoutcast or another broadcasting system to this hosting

[Guest]

Jakkass - some interesting ideas there, including one we are already about to implement.

The main problem with offering game servers is the sheer amount of data transfer required even for games with a low player count. The servers I use are generally those with huge bandwidth (100Mbps), but limits on transfer. Speed-wise, these machines would have no problem with running game servers, but the company get charged extra for bandwidth over use. Many companies that offer solutions such as those you proposed often cannot afford to maintain those solutions after a year or so, and end up going broke which neither I or the other co-founder want (we've been running for 2 years, and are making a tidy profit, why sarifice it all now?).

Your ideas with the site hosting are already being implemented, and we plan to release a paid-hosting package tailor made for clans in the not too distant future. This plan will feature hosting on either a Windows or Linux server (your choice). The Windows machine runs Plesk which includes ASP.NET, ASP, PHP, Perl, MySQL, MSSQL and a web based control panel. The Linux machine inclues PHP, Perl and MySQL and of course cPanel. If you want more information including our propsed pricing give me a shout via PM.

Else - it looks like you guys aren't interested in Clan-World, but thanks for your feedback. I guess I'll have to devote my time to some other project - suggestions welcome

[Gareth]

would clanworld be like the same system as the VCES dynamic script with the shoutbox and the message post coz that wud be wicked

[MAD_BOY]

MAD_BOY - With all due respect, if you'd read my whole post, you'd see what Clan-World was, and that you need not answer all the questions.

Others - thanks for your feedback.

1st i read your whole post, said nothing about clan-world, only saying you were taking a survey and a link to the page where the questions were at

2nd if we don't need to answer all questions, then 1. say it in your post and 2. don't create all of the questions (the ones that don't need an answer)

[Gareth]

It did mention what clanworld was at the very top of the post

[MAD_BOY]

It did mention what clanworld was at the very top of the post

don't tell me he means the post on the site of vces itself, who reads that post anyway?

[Guest]

would clanworld be like the same system as the VCES dynamic script with the shoutbox and the message post coz that wud be wicked

It would be several more times powerful than VCES's system, but out of the box. Instead of having a full blown hosting account, you simply sign up to Clan-World and use a system which is shared by other clans, but seperate in that you have your own pages, news etc... Same codebase, but many sites.

don't tell me he means the post on the site of vces itself, who reads that post anyway?

You did to get the questions It's not my fault you didn't read the whole thing

[Gareth]

ok so let me get this straight... You set the domain (configure the co.uk and all) and run this clanworld system. the whole site controlled by a admin panel. like a clan php nuke for a good reasonable price. I like the idea.

[Guest]

ok so let me get this straight... You set the domain (configure the co.uk and all) and run this clanworld system. the whole site controlled by a admin panel. like a clan php nuke for a good reasonable price. I like the idea.

Spot on. The only thing you'd have to take care of would actually be the domain configuration. The system would be on a shared codebase, and automatically detect what clan you're from based on the URL your visitors put in. As far as your visitors would be concernerd, the site would be (almost) seperate. As far as you're concerned, you have your own site. As far as I'm concerned, there's only one copy of the code to update with new features.

[Gareth]

what i meant by gameservers was that you team up with a already established gameserver company like fr4g and sell their servers alongside your package to make it more convenient to gather together a clan package into one bill! and is there a sample of clanworld that I can look at plz!

[Guest]

what i meant by gameservers was that you team up with a already established gameserver company like fr4g and sell their servers alongside your package to make it more convenient to gather together a clan package into one bill! and is there a sample of clanworld that I can look at plz!

Hi, sorry for the slow reply.

You can't see the CMS as such because it's still under development. It's going to be several months before completion, this survey was done early to check that there was a demand for such a service. Other sites have yielded better results, so the project is going ahead.