Survey: Game-developer web hosting solution...

[curtis934]

I'm preparing a proposal for a hosting company to offer a game-developer hosting solution. This solution would include both dedicated and shared hosting. The hosting company would like to know what features you are interested in, and what monthly amount you'd be prepared to pay for these features.

Features could include:

Standard hosting features:
-Apache, PHP, MySQL, CPanel, IMAP email, webmail, DNS, FTP, SSH, etc. etc.

Special features:
- Subversion revision control, WebSVN, Web_dav_svn,
- custom Subversion admin CPanel Plugin
- Bugzilla, for developer bug tracking, ( http://www.bugzilla.org/ )
- Trac, for issue tracking and project management, ( http://trac.edgewall.org/ )
- 2 or 3 Joomla, XOOPS or PHP-Nuke based game-site web templates
- poMMo, web based mailing list software, ( http://pommo.org/Main_Page )
- phpBB, web forum, ( http://www.phpbb.com/ )

Support features:
- A special support forum for all game-developer hosting subscribers
- Priority 24 hour email, and telephone support by a staff member specifically trained to help game-developer hosting subscribers.
- A maximum of 20 clients per shared hosting server.


If enough people are interested the hosting company will consider offering this hosting solution.

So if you have any other feature suggestions please post them. Include the monthly price (above and beyond the standard hosting prices) that you think these features are worth.

e.g.
$30/month above the standard $70 budget server dedicated hosting price.
$5/month above the standard $8 budget shared hosting price.

Thanks,
-Curtis.

[woo]

No offense, but if I'm running a dedicated server, why wouldn't I have most if not all of those features easily available to me (if not built in and pre-configured). Granted, for a "budget shared host", it'd be great, but I'm not sure what the advantage is for dedicated that would make it worth any extra money.

Anyway, suggestions:

1. E-commerce solution and/or SSL certificate(s)
2. competitive pricing for download traffic. It seems like a lot of people end up having to get a 3rd party due to the high $/gb cost that their hosting providers charge.
3. Jabber

I'd be interested, but I'd really need to see what the value add was. It would also be helpful to know who we were dealing with because trust is one of the biggest factors in deciding on a host. Thanks!

-Andrew Douglas
http://theoreticalgames.com

[Tom Cain]

Hi Curtis,

I agree with Andrew, I think many of us will want to see your suggested bandwidth and disk space tiers. These are the main things that separate independent developer sites from standard web sites - we have to serve big software demos. This is where you might stand out.

Your target audience is tech savvy so you may need to describe your data center and your commitment level to managing the dedicated servers. We are closed for business when servers go down.

Also, I suggest for your shared hosting that you either remove the web-based mailing list feature or guarantee that people opting to include that feature would be kept on separate servers. That kind of software can get a mail server blacklisted quickly even if it isn't misused, which is a problem I've encountered several times with shared hosting.

Hosting is very competitive now. I think it could be a good niche to target, I've wondered before why someone isn't trying this. Good luck. :)

[curtis934]

No offense taken, I encourage all responses.

The advantage I see for dedicated (and shared) hosting is:

- Although most game developers are excellent programmers, they are not necessarily system administrators.
- Even if you are a good sys. admin. it can take a lot of time to setup these application.
- To my knowledge some of the stuff I mentioned does not exist. e.g.:
- cPanel Subversion Plugin
- game site templates for Joomla, XOOPS or PHP-Nuke
- custom Subversion admin CPanel Plugin
(all these would require the host to invest in some development work)
- Its cheaper for the community to share the cost of developing this solution than it is for each individual to learn and configure these applications.
- In some cases a hosting company can develop a better solution as they have more resources than individual developers. Examples of what the hosting company my provide that the individual may not take the time to develop on their own:
- Host could make script for nightly incremental backups of the subversion repository.
- Host could automate critical software updates for subversion. etc.
- If you need to setup a quick game related site this solution is the fastest.


-Curtis.

[curtis934]

An example of the configuration problem:

We recently moved our dedicated server from "The Planet" to liquidweb. During the move we decided to host our subversion source repositories from the new server. Our previous repository was hosted at CVSDude.com . CVSDudes was $22 per month, while hosting from our server is free!

I spent a lot of time learning subversion administration so I could set it up on the new server. Now configuring subversion for someone else should be quick. That learning curve was a waste of time since I rarely configure subversion. That time would have been better spent developing games.

After this experience I got interested in making a hosting solution that is tailored to the needs of game developers and would eliminate problems like this.

-Curtis.

[Philippe]

The one thing that would draw me away from my (somewhat unreliable) dreamhost account would be reliable shared hosting with generous and/or flexible traffic allowance:

My plan is to put up a site with my own Flash games and downloadable commercial versions. I've had a Flash game online for about a year which usually takes about 20GB of bandwidth per month but has had spikes well over 500GB twice. I imagine that with more games on a site, the average bandwidth consumption would rise somewhat but remain predictable, however every time a new game is released it would be well possible to reach a TB's worth of traffic. Paying off average overage fees on average hosting plans would not be financially feasible, at least not from where I am now.

I don't need a whole lot of goodies. I can set up my own CMS, newsletters or stats scripts and preinstalled stuff is not a selling point for me. What would be a strong selling point would be a flexible, good traffic volume and great uptime.

[tolworthy]

An important issue for me is the Digg effect (or similar). If I choose a budget hosting choice, can it cope with demand spikes? I expect my site to have very low traffic for a long time, so I dont want to pay top rates. But if I finally get a mention in a high profile magazine or portal then it must be able to cope with the sudden demand without slowing down or going offline.

[zoombapup]

I've been using dreamhost, but the damn server seems so oversubscribed that the response times for simple page returns are terrible.

So basically, having a speedy response time is high on my list.

Of course, the other top priority is the business side of the host. Will they be in business for long enough? Are they reliable enough to base my company's internet presense on?

Money isnt the only factor.