Web Hosting for VFDC

I have no experience with web hosting but the donations sound like a good idea, i'm guessing you're still aiming to spend about $50 a month so you'd need $60 per month in donations or $100 if you was going for the dedicated server?

I'd be willing to contribute each month, I have no clue how many other users here would be willing to contribute each month but it'd end up costing very little per user if we could get enough people.

 

For hosting try Dreamhost. This is a private employee owned company, built into a giant webhost by a group of programmers. Check out the about us page. Pricing tends to be on the low-middle range of comparable hosts.

http://www.dreamhost.com/aboutus.html

They offer scalable VPS and charges are based on exactly the amount of memory that you need to use. You can use between 1000-2,000MB and pay less than the $110/month for 2GB.

http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting-vps.html

Slide the scale to see how much you would pay per month.

These guys also seem to have a good deal going on for a dedicated server that actually costs less than the VPS option. It seems to be a good price, but you would have to inquire if the choice meets your needs for VFDC.

http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting-dedicated.html

Also this host gets a high mark for customer service, which is IMO one very important consideration. The tech support in particular is fantastic as they are very savvy and often go out of their way to implement new technologies asap.

 

Now that I have a job, I'm happy to pay a little to help out each month.

 

Do people really think that the server outages are unacceptable?
They only seem to happen maybe 3 times a day...? Maybe 5? And only seem to last for 1-2 minutes.

I don't see it as a big deal, and in my opinion it's definitely not worth an additional 60$ cost per month.

But maybe the situation is worse than what I've noticed.

 

Host Gator have some VPS plans that look ok...

http://www.hostgator.com/vps-hosting/

I use their cheapo non vps shared service for a couple of sites (11,000 visitors / 40-80gb bandwidth per month) and have never had any issues with them. So i expect their VPS options could be equally as reliable.

 

I don't think donations are the way to go. Sure some people may donate some money for some time, but that's difficult to depend o n in the long haul. Unless you could get people to donate up front for the year. You would end up getting stuck with the bill.

You either gotta get more for the same money your spending now, ,try to get some corporate sponsor to pay (hint: sega), or get somebody to just host it for free.

 

Money is everything, and I think donation is the only way out~

Myke, you can just list the details about how much costs per year and we can donate by ourslves. At least you won't be worry about hosting VFDC for the next 12 months.

$100x12 = $1200
Each person donates $20 so we need around 60 people to keep VFDC runing one year. Is that a big deal for people spend less than $2 per month?

 

I'd rather donate as well and have a more reliable server. I gave a lot of money to SRK after SFIV came out because the servers were crashing several times a day and accessing the site was a chore because of the flood of new users. If VF5:FS ever comes out on consoles then you can expect another surge in new users to VFDC. Meaning a reliable server would be essential to handle the increasing use of the site.

 

I recommended Arvixe to two of my clients and they really like the service.

I called Arvixe today and got the following info for you...

Amazingly enough, their new VPS plan gets published on their site tomorrow (4/21/10 in the US). It's not there right now.

VPS machine is Dual 5520 Intel Xeon (4 physical cores, 8 virtual)
36 GB RAM installed.

Plan is as follows…

2 GB RAM allotted
80 GB disk space
1000 GB monthly transfer

$70 US a month if purchased in a 12 month block (otherwise $75/mo for six month plan or $80 monthly).

60 day 100% money back guarantee of satisfaction. Pro-rated afterwards.

99.9% uptime guaranteed or that month is free.

 

I would have no problem chipping in 20 bucks

 

http://www.linode.com/

A friend of mine recommended these guys!.

I hope you sort out the problem

 

I also think this is the way to go, but donations should be gathered in bigger chunks to avoid problems related to people stopping their donations on a short notice.

If we pay for a whole year in advance then we have time to plan the next course of action should some donators stop donating.

Personally I want to donate, but Im not sure what is the best way. Im wary of paypal. Id maybe rather do direct bank transfers with IBAN number.

I could most certainly donate something like 200-300 dollars a year. I dont require others to be this charitable btw .

 

What about ads Myke?

 

Damn Manji, that's awfully generous

Anyway if donations are the solution we should hold on to see how many people can chip in. Once we get an idea of how many users can donate it'll be easier to work out how much it'll cost each.

 

Good god no...

 

I don't like ads at all but it might be something to consider.

Damdai mentioned to me last year that his old site, 2dfighter.com collected enough revenue to sustain itself once he placed ads on it. I don't know if this still applies to his upgraded site supercade.net