DF-21 Forums

[Fenwar]

OK people:

The time has come to seek out a new source of funding for DF-21.net. For the last few years I have been paying for the site to be hosted by UnitedHosting ( www.unitedhosting.co.uk ). However my situation has changed quite a bit. I got married, we bought a house and now have a mortgage, and a few weeks ago we learned that my wife is pregnant... (which is both and ).

Anyway I need to sort out our finances and this is one of the things that needs to go. At the moment I'm paying £8 per month (about $16 at today's rates) for the site.

At the moment I'm happy to carry on with the practical side of things where it's needed (e.g. security upgrades to phpBB (which reminds me... I'd better add the latest patch)). But if someone else wants to have a go then they're welcome (I'll be right behind you if you need me.)

(Also, the df-21.net domain is registered until September 2009 (at which point DF-21 will be 10 years old!) So I won't bring that into the equation at the moment.)

If you are willing to take over the funding then please reply here or contact me directly (fenwar dot dark dot forces at gmail dot com) and we can make the arrangements.

Here are a few options:

1. The easiest way would be for me to give you access to our account at UnitedHosting, so you can enter your credit card details and provide the monthly payment without having to worry about hosting arrangements etc. which I will continue to take care of.
   
   
2. Alternatively if you know what you're doing and want to take over & move the site to a host closer to your location/timezone (better if you ever needed to call the support line!) we are currently using over 300 MB of disk space and just over 2 GB of bandwidth every month; we need PHP and MySQL (2 databases), and ideally Perl and FTP access. (Unitedhosting have been excellent 24/7 whenever I've had to contact them, though.)
   
   
3. If more than one person is interested then that would be great - we can arrange to share the costs, and figure out a way to organise it (e.g. setting up a Paypal account to which anyone can contribute?)
   
   
4. If no-one comes forward then the only option remaining is to (reluctantly) move DF-21.net to a free (probably ad-supported) webhost in the near future. I will make sure I have a full backup so nothing gets lost in the event of such a host suddenly vanishing.

Thanks for reading, please reply or email me if you are willing to help out.

Paul Fenney / Fenwar

[Barry Brien]

Congratulations Paul!
Kyle if he's a boy, Jan if she's a girl
I'd love to help out but unfortunately I have to leave my job in 4 weeks to back to do my final year of college, and I have no money at all

[Patrick Haslow]

Congratulations Paul. The kid's Dad played DF, not a bad start in life if you ask me. I wish I could help out as well, but sadly I can't either.

[Lionel Fouillen]

I'LL BE HAPPY TO HELP BUT...

I'm having my professional website for several years here http://www.fouillen.net

It costs me annually 50 EUR for hosting + 12.50 EUR for the domain name. All that goes into my professional expenses so it is sort of *transparent* for me. The hosting solution features MySQL and PHP, is ad-free, popup-free and quite stable.


I accept to host DF-21 which I could put in a folder on my site like, for example, http://www.fouillen.net/df-21 but the person who owns and pays for the df-21.net domain name will still have to pay for it and will have to redirect the name to my folder.

I said there was a *but*

There will be some limitation regarding the bandwith (2Gb per month)and hosting space (50Mb). Practically, DF-21 would then be limited to the discussion board and uploading/downloading utilities to create levels and components. Level authors, please find your own space on the web to host your levels and project presentations. For legal reasons, the forum should also be limited to discussions related to game playing and level creation because I won't have time to moderate it.

What do you think ?

[Fenwar]

Hi Lionel, thanks for the offer!

This sounds like a good idea, having the static content and forums hosted with you would ensure df-21.net stays online - a lot less risky than moving it to a free webhost that could vanish without warning...

And I could move the levels themselves to a free webhost and just link to the files. Then if any authors do wish to host their own files I can update the links accordingly. (I might write a php script that allows multiple download locations, allowing me to mirror the files across more than one free webhost (or maybe file hosts like FilePlanet), which would be a bit safer.)

I just have three questions:

1. Does your hosting plan allow for an extra domain to be "parked" on your existing webspace? Ideally I would like to keep existing URLs, e.g. http://df-21.net/articles/install.html would still work and just point to the same content as http://www.fouillen.net/df-21/articles/install.html .

2. Is Perl/CGI available? (At the moment the front page news is managed by a CGI script.)

3. How many MySQL databases would we be able to create? Obviously if we removed the project pages, we would only need 1, for the forums. (However if there is no CGI, I would need to come up with some other replacement for the news, and also if we have extra databases then I would use one to manage the download locations, as I mentioned).

Anyway, thanks again, I think this could definitely be what we need.

If anyone else is still interested in helping out then please do get in touch. Of course it would be nicer to keep everything together, but whether we can do that for free is open to question.

[Lionel Fouillen]

Fenwar, I sent you a private message.

[Tom Manning]

Fenwar, I just wanted to add a huge THANK YOU for all the years you've been paying for this and keeping this running. You are awesome, and congradulations on having a life!

_________________
Tom Manning
For all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you, Stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn: Return of the King

[Emon]

A guy by the name of Cool Matty at Massassi.net has a little hosting service that he runs. He has a server from ServerBeach, so bandwidth and space aren't really an issue. I can ask him about hosting. It would be a lot cheaper than dedicated.

Perl/PHP etc are not a problem either.

[The MAZZTer]

CoolMatty runs my server. D: If DF-21 moved there that would be weird.

_________________
http://www.mzzt.net/ | I am a respectable admin with a respectable sig.

[Emon]

Well it's a good thing the future of DF-21 is not dependent upon how weird you feel.

[Kir Kanos]

I would like to see a Paypal link that would go towards the upkeep and costs of this site and this site alone. I would *GLADLY* donate.

_________________
"Curse you, Kanos!!! Why don't you just DIE?!"

[The MAZZTer]

I don't use Paypal. Too many horror stories. My Discover cards works just fine on the Internets.

_________________
http://www.mzzt.net/ | I am a respectable admin with a respectable sig.

[Kir Kanos]

Um. I wasn't talking 'bout you. I was saying out of the initial theories being thrown around, rather than MOVE THIS SITE somewhere else to a potentially unreliable and troublesome server, why don't we just keep things the way they are and just cover the cost for the guy running it?

In any case, PLEASE don't let DF-21 die. I'd be willing to support this place. I'll say that again. You have at least one solid supporter who would actually willingly devote financial aide.

_________________
"Curse you, Kanos!!! Why don't you just DIE?!"

[Darth Oosha]

I think his point was that finding a more secure system might (1) encourage more people to donate and (2) allow more of those donations to reach DF-21?

[Kir Kanos]

And my point was in any case, can we honestly sort it out instead of sitting here going "we should do this" and then eventually nobody does anything?

_________________
"Curse you, Kanos!!! Why don't you just DIE?!"

[Fenwar]

Thanks for all the responses so far. Lionel is changing hosts so is unable to host DF-21 in the end.

If I did go with free hosting, I would mirror the site on 2 or 3 free accounts, so that if one did vanish, it would simply be a matter of pointing the domain name at the next, (and restoring the forum database from the latest regular snapshot ) and so on.

However I think it's more likely that I will do the following:

(1) move the site to a cheaper host (I can get the same package or better for about half the cost elsewhere)
(2) set up a paypal account to which people can donate whatever amount they want.

It turns out that plenty of hosts accept paypal, so I can simply create a dedicated account for DF-21 and have the hosting payment go directly out of that.

I have never personally had a "horror story" with Paypal, and it is easily the most widely used online payment system. If anyone has any other suggestions please post them (I could accept bank transfers but obviously I can't take credit card payments to myself!) Whatever happens, I will keep the site's accounts completely transparent so you know where your donation has been spent.

I'm also toying with the idea of a small amount of text-only advertising (e.g. with Google Adwords); it's pay per click, so if you didn't want to donate directly you could still support the site by clicking through after you've finished reading the forums.

Any thoughts on this?

[Kir Kanos]

I completely agree with that concept in every single way. I really don't want to see this site die.

_________________
"Curse you, Kanos!!! Why don't you just DIE?!"

[Jackson]

Although I haven't dealt with Paypal before, I do like that option. It'd be a shame seeing DF-21 all ad-ified or, worse, gone.

[Darth Oosha]

Would there be any benefit in making a torrent of the Downloads section as an alternative to the ftp version?

Also, if you do get new hosting, is there a certainty of all the posts on the forum being transferred over? If not, I'll consider trying to download the entire forum using iCab just so I'll have an archive.

(On a related note, are the posts from the various iterations of the UBB still saved anywhere?)

[Fenwar]

OK, I'm going to set something up. I'm on holiday later this month so it might not happen immediately.

Oosha - phpBB has a facility to export / restore the database so everything would be kept intact.

I still have a large archive of a LOT of the old UBB posts, from when we had them available on df-21.org. I'm not 100% sure how exhaustive it is but I know there's (for example) stuff from the DF2000 forum * in there. I can zip them up for you if you want to keep a copy.

A torrent is an idea I'd toyed with before but I wasn't sure if it would be popular enough to be practical. We'd need enough people to be willing to seed it initially (although I guess we could also have a sticky thread where people can request bursts of seeding if there aren't enough online). Bandwidth is cheap enough these days that the occasional visitor who downloads every .zip on the site in a single sitting isn't a problem, even on a budget hosting package. (If we did move to free hosting then it would be worth considering, just to ensure we weren't killing the server which we'd probably be sharing with about 100 other sites ) The other issue with the torrent would be updating it with new releases - Can you do this without having to create a new torrent every time? Or is that just how it goes?

(* That forum did not get archived. You heard the torpedo hit the hull, and I was never here...)

[Patrick Haslow]

I think torrents would finish off DF-21 once and for all, especially because good torrents thrive on popularity. I really like the idea of a Paypal account. I would contribute something- especially since we are on the cusp of seeing Archangel 3 and the last of The Dark Tide (Barry tells me it is done). Thing is I doubt enough would contribute to keep it floating for a year. I could do a few months. I guess a freebie host it is.

[Kir Kanos]

I mean, the monthly cost proposed above is the price of a large pizza for crying out loud.

_________________
"Curse you, Kanos!!! Why don't you just DIE?!"

[Fenwar]

The monthly cost will definitely come down. I'm just checking the reputability of certain cheaper hosts but it will be closer to £3 ($6?) per month.

[Sheldon]

I havn't been to this board in some time.. I play my games on my big TV with XBOX, PS2, and GC now.

But I would hate to see this site go down. Did you say you need about $150 a year? Let me know.

[ZoSo729]

Speaking of funding, I am also saddened to see this site go down. How much would it cost to keep the Dark Tide team going and keep making levels? How about the Jedi Crystal series? or that volcano level? or CAKEWALK? I would pay big money to see THAT get finished?

[Kir Kanos]

The thought of compensation for me being silly is absurd.

Still, I'm curious if our illustrious head cheese has checked into anything else.

_________________
"Curse you, Kanos!!! Why don't you just DIE?!"

[Fenwar]

I'm back from my holiday and will be moving the site to a new host as soon as I have a free afternoon (might be this Friday), and I'm going to set up a Paypal account for those wonderful people amongst you who are willing to donate.

[The MAZZTer]

You appear to have "moved" the Moldy Crow to a dancing banana. Purely by accident, I imagine.

_________________
http://www.mzzt.net/ | I am a respectable admin with a respectable sig.

[Taton]

There was a quantum time shift. It explains the jaggies on the gyrating banana.

_________________
"A fight should be clean and elegant, without waste"
-Asuka Langley Sohryu, Evangelion

[Fenwar]

Talk about old skool...