Get your own website for a few bucks a year

[DieHard SCWS]

I thought i am gonna post this here and on the Unreal and UT forums from Beyond Unreal. And i am not trying to sell anything here, nor do i receive any commision, so its only to point people to a relative cheap hostingplans.




Too often i see people make mods, maps etc. and they have to go through great length to get their stuff uploaded to FilePlanet, Rapidshare and a zillion other vague hosts. But in reality there are very reliable host that offer small sites for an affordable price.




Basically you can have a website with 5 gigabyte of space and 50 gigabyte of bandwidth for only 45 dollars a year, which is 3.75 dollars a month.

The package i am talking about is Starter Hosting Plan from www.LunarPages.com which is also hosting UnrealTexture.com And dont get me wrong, the package cannot be used for a super large site like UnrealTexture, but it certainly is enough to built you a super large site with tons of pages, and more than enough webspace to host your very own files you made.



The Starter Hosting Plan comes with:
Price $ 35.4 a year.
5 Gigabyte of space.
50 gigabyte of bandwidth.
Online Cpanel(Control panel so you can manage your site).
1 MySQL Database (means you can run 1 forum).
1 FTP account(so you can upload your files).
5 POP3 and/or SMTP mailaccounts included(means 5 email accounts).

More info can be found here: http://www.lunarpages.com/starter-hosting


Of course you also need a domain name and you can get that for 19.95 per year at LunarPages, but i think that is pretty expensive and you can do that alot cheaper by www.GoDaddy.com


I always register my domains at GoDaddy because they are cheap and have a top notch service. You can change all the settings for you domainname yourself so you have full control over it.


I always wait till they have a 30% discount on the .com domains and than i claim my domains for 5 years. Normally a .com costs $ 10.69 but almost every month they offer.com's for 30% less. So with a bit of patience, simply claim a name when the price is low.


Of course you can also try find coupons to get your hosting or domain cheaper like on these links:

LunarPages Coupon

GoDaddy Coupon


As said, i am not trying to sell here anything, but i am simply trying to tip people how to get your own site. And i do run sites for almost a decade now, and i couldnt do it anymore without them. Above all, it gives you zillion tons of freedom on the net, because you can upload and offer files, share files in a blink of an eye. And the hosts i present here, have proven to be very reliable hosts, otherwise i would not mention them.



And in case you are younger than 18, you simply could ask your mom or dad to have it registered in your name.
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[Leo T_C_K]

That's pretty lame actually for 5 GB. I mean esnips give the same to me, although it has gone down the drain and you need to login or use downloader to get files....so it became just something like fileplanet.
But still...5 GB is too small I think.

[DieHard SCWS]

Well, i went from a certain principle.

The people i am aiming at, is someone like you. Always when you want to host a file, you use this, or that host, and if you want the file, you have to register, or run trough a zillion of buttons to reach the download.


If you simply would have an actual site, the only thing you have to do is upload it and post the link. And though 5 gigabyte doesnt sound like much. To give a comparising, www.CelticWarriors.net has 9 gigabyte of downloads, and those 9 gig covers ALL files there are for Unreal. Aside that CelticWarriors.net has over 5000 thousend pages.


So even though 5 gig is almost half the size, you can almost offer half Unreal with it. It sounds little, but its actually alot of space. And the people i am aiming to, do not have that much files, well, not even remotelly. I am pretty much convinced that this type of hostingplan is sufficiant enough for 100% of the people i am aiming to.


And as said, no commercials, no logins, no registrations needed for the clients, just simply pass the link, or the link to the page. And as said, the hosts are very reliable, so far, Godaddy never failed on me, and only once Unreal Texture went down because the server went unstable, and they were not anle to get it stable again due to the sheer size. But such thing can only happen to a site as large as Unreal Texture. And it simply will never occur with a 5 gig site.
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[unregistered]

ex member

[Leo T_C_K]

Exactly, it may be cheap for you, but it isn't cheap for us. And just for 5 gb? I appreciate what you are doing, but it is certainly not for me, I rather ask friends to host it or anything.

[Hellkeeper]

Why, 5GB is enough for most. hellkeeper.net is on a 1GB basis and I never had a problem.

[DieHard SCWS]

The problem is: most mappers don't have a credit card or don't have a job, or the parents don't give money. Or they live in some country with no cheap hosts, or no hosts at all.

For the record, the hosts i am talking about are all located in the US. I live in The Netherlands(Europe) And the hosts work country independant, which means it doesnt matter you live in the US or not. You can sign up regardless.


I also dont have a creditcard, and i do all my payments through PayPal. And the same there, anyone can get a PayPal acount and it costs zero. You simply sign up through www.PayPal.com So same story there, you can sign up regardless.

Exactly, it may be cheap for you, but it isn't cheap for us. And just for 5 gb? I appreciate what you are doing, but it is certainly not for me, I rather ask friends to host it or anything.

True it still might be too expensive for people. I dont have alot of money myself as i got permanent disability and i do have the lowest possible income in my country. Aside rent, gas, electra, water, phone, internet bills i pretty much have to live from 150 Dollars to buy me food, cloth, shoes, go out, etc. and do other stuff like running my sites. And though its not alot of money i am very aware that other people might not even have a quarter i have.


And of course i cannot help people if the costs for such a site is way over their heads. But i only tried to point out(for people that at least have a little money to spare) still can have a good and solid website.


And about the size, like HellKeeper says, you guys really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really are underestimating the amount of files you can host with a lousy 5 gig.


With 5 gig you could host follow:

- All patches ever released for Unreal including patch 227 A, B, C, D, E, F.
- You still would have space to host all mods ever released for Unreal.
- You still would have space to host all skins ever released for Unreal.
- You still would have space to host 2500 Unreal maps.
- You still would have space to host a Forum.
- And than your sill left with more than half a gig to host whatever other things you would like to host.


Thats what a louzy 5 gig can do.............
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[Hyper]

DieHard, should I remind you to the crap you've had with the hosting of your UnrealTexture project? I hope that was not with these hosts.

Didn't you have an unlimited account which was quite suddenly limited because they decided you took too much of their service?

[Skw]

I know one cheap way to get a website (only electric- and internet-bills):

Make ur own web-server (Apache http-server and no-ip domain).

One free way is to get web-space and domain from 000webhost.

[DieHard SCWS]

DieHard, should I remind you to the crap you've had with the hosting of your UnrealTexture project? I hope that was not with these hosts.

Didn't you have an unlimited account which was quite suddenly limited because they decided you took too much of their service?

No, that was the previous host being HostPapa.ca But true, i had a similar thing happen with LunarPages, and i had to cut the site in half. And that ment i had to let go of the UT2004 and UT3 section.


But that needs a bit of explanation. HostPapa i ran out of space after uloading 20 gig, than at 35 gig and i had to ask them to make more space, than it also happened with 65 gig and they decided to break the contract.


With this host (LunarPages) after running the site for over a year the server became unstable, due to a script i had running that took too many recources. They couldnt get the server stable as the site was too large(135+ gig) to move to another server.


I decided myself to step down and took off the script and cut the site to its core function, being Unreal and Unreal Tournament, as i make textures for both games.


The thing almost any host does in the world, is to offer plans that have limitless bandwidth and limitless space. That stuff is total noncense. And before HostPapa i never realised that, but after that i knew from other people and what i read on the net, this happens with all the hosts, weather they are good or bad.


But what you need to understand is, that Unreal Texture really is huge, and it consumes over 250000 inodes where all other hosts allow a maximum of 50000 inodes. So at this moment the site is 5 times larger than any other host allowes. And Unreal Texture is that large and consumes that many space and bandwidth it should run from a VPS server(where it has its own box(server) and not on a shared server where theres more sites on the same box.


So basically the limitless stuff is total bullshit, but as said, LunarPages is not doing bad in that respect.


And to get back to the story, the plan i presented here DOES have a limit on the size and bandwidth, which means those numbers ARE guaranteed. And i do know a fair amount of other admins that run sites similar in size like Unreal Texture and they are runing for years now. So all together i am convinced its safe to do, otherwise i would never ever propose such a think, as i am a realist. Firts i wanna see, than i believe....
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[unregistered]

ex member

[GreatEmerald]

The best hosting plan is your own server.

[[§Ŕ] ŤhěxĐâŕkśîđěŕ]

The best hosting plan is your own server.

Exactly. I don't have a PC that I could use as a server, so I'm using 000webhost and it's served me well. But soon when I get a PC, I'm gonna host my website myself, and maybe offer some web space to others as well (to my good friends, maybe 1 gig for free). My upload speed is shít though, some lousy 1 Mbps, so don't expect much from me guys...

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

Buy a rack with HDD/RAM/CPU

give to server hosting company

pay for bandwidth used



fuck yeah!

[Oblivion[CW]]

I run a web design business and we use Verio hosting for our sites.

It's not cheap, but your site never goes down, no ads, no crappy people hosting it, etc.

http://www.verio.com/products/web-hosti ... ing-plans/

Unlimited disk space. 5TB transfer, 100 email accounts, etc.
Over kill for a little clan site, but meh.

[[§Ŕ] ŤhěxĐâŕkśîđěŕ]

Disregard my last post in this thread, I have a home server for well over a month now. It only has about 50% uptime and I don't have a domain but if anyone needs some space, I guess I could rent some out. Maybe. If you're nice to me.