Skin Hosting

[IBBoard]

Unfortunately I'm not allowed to host anything over 400K over at DoWFiles.com, and while I don't have a limit here, I do have to pay for bandwidth! I've been looking at places that could host skins, and so far I've found myfilehut.com:

250MB web space (one account per person)
"no set bandwidth limits"
they allow direct linking to files

only downside is a 2MB file limit - it fits a single texture OK, but it has no chance for full packs!

Anyone know of anywhere else? Or any opinions on using myfilehut.com to host skins instead of the ad-infested dowfiles.com?

[edit]Also, do people think that the following means I _have_ to upload 400K files to them? because I'm linking to hangar-8's stuff from his site, and I can't see a difference:

For all your Files / Downloads that are bigger than 400 KB, have it added to DOWFiles.com and link to the appropriate file.info page instead of hosting the file in your webspace.

[edit2] another idea is to up my hosting here at ibboard - I asked my host, and they'll do 550MB space and 15GB bandwidth for $15 per month (about £8 at the moment). That's not bad, and it won't suffer from file-size limitations. What it will suffer from, though, is bandwidth limitations and the hole in my pocket!

[edit3]I've investigated the dowfiles site and they use (from estimated calculations based on downloads, days on site and file size) about 26GB bandwidth per month. I've asked my host what they can do in a custom offer with less disk space and more bandwidth - now awaiting a reply. I think I'll also Rar everything - 13.5MB as opposed to nearly 15MB for my halved scheme. I really like the idea, but it's looking a little expensive so far for a student budget, and I don't know of any reasonable way to make the money while studying for my final year - after the results of my first two years, I don't want to sacrifice it for the sake of a website.



<!--EDIT|IBBoard|May 4 2005, 06:56 PM-->

[mel_danes]

I used to do web hosting through a resellers account, it was ok cash for a few months. The crux as you are finding is interest in a low end commercial bandwidth but a student budget. I deal with it myself now. Yippie!

The plan you were looking at for your host didn't look to bad. Have you looked into changing providers? Some of them are killing each other for customers, bandwidth and storage space. Give it a look.

[IBBoard]

Yeah, I posted on DevShed in their forums and got quite a few responses, the only problem being that I some of the offers look a little too incredible and I can't find any background or history for them via Google (even one of the companies that has apparently been going for 5 years!)

At the moment I'm thinking I might not go through with it :\ it's probably just another over-blown plan that's too big for me to handle, and that I'll give up on - dowfiles.com is hosting it, and although I'd rather not have all of my files in a central location (I want to be have more control over who accesses them really) and I don't like the adverts and popups (thank god for Firefox with popup blocker and Adblock!) it's free and it's doing most of what I want.

[mel_danes]

I use google toolbar it's popup blocker works pretty good. I really don't notice the popups over at Jamies site. What ever works is cool. Myself I like the forum attitude over here. I would really like to make this a critical feedback community. Examples given, suggestions made, theories defended, that type of thing. We need critique access before we release something, I know when I have been looking at a texture for days I can't see the flaws anymore.

My 10 cent's ( 2 cent's is for cheap arses).

[IBBoard]

A good community is always my plan I just usually end up with a plan that's too big and with no-one willing to support me (i.e. no-one as crazy as me see the FanFiction and Encyclopedia sections of the site for what I mean!)
I'll gladly give critique, although on the whole so far it has been very much a "damn they look artistic, crisp and far better than what I could do" collection of textures If you know anyone else who you think would fit in well in the community, invite them over and I'll change their user group as quick as I can

Now to go back to pondering how mad an idea it is to host some of this stuff - estimating bandwidth (probably the main contraint) is so difficult :\

[IBBoard]

Found somewhere that seems to cover more than what I'd need, and is only $20 more than what I pay at the moment ($83ish instead of $65 - so about £10 per year more) - http://www.micfo.com.

Can't seem to find anything but good reviews for them, and they rate well on all of the hosting directories I can find. I might end up moving over to them, just got to consider a few more things (like domain name for skins@hwt - I'll probably need to rebrand the site or buy a hiveworldterra domain or something :\ ) and I think I might end up making the move if I do, prepare for uber-site

[IBBoard]

OK, plan sorted an into action! I've registered hiveworldterra.co.uk (so skins@hwt can move to skins.hiveworldterra.co.uk) and signed up for hosting at a place called Micfo. Couldn't find a bad review about them (well, think I found a grand total of two, one of which was discredited for the only person agreeing having the same IP, and one that wasn't anything major - think it was someone complaining that their site wasn't instantly available like they said, but he'd ordered a domain as well!)
Best of all, 1month free, and they've offered me double diskspace and bandwidth! as soon as I work out how to set up sub domains (and get a response to my support ticket) skins@hwt will be moving to a 2GB disk space, 80GB bandwidth host with no advertising (other than one affiliate text link, or possibly a small button the same size as my current ones) And with that amount of space/bandwidth, I'll gladly host skins when people make them

[mel_danes]

Great news on this front.

That is a really good deal for the space and bandwidth, is it much more than you pay now? I'm telling you the companies are killing each other over hosting, we the customer can only benefit from it.

[IBBoard]

I pay $65 per year at the moment, all of this is a little under $85 (and I work in £, so at the moment that makes it even cheaper!)
Just having a slight fight at the moment trying to get skins.hiveworldterra.co.uk to behave like a subdomain and not like a redirect to a subfolder :\ once thats sorted, I'll begin the transfer I'll probably end up installing a separate skinning forums over there as well, although I'm not sure yet

[mel_danes]

Good deal.

I like this forum...we just need to get people to use it. <_<

By the by the dreadnought is now my most hated model in game. Frikking UV shite! Relic why, why? :blink:

Sorry lost it there. I'll get it together.

[IBBoard]

Got the site set up now - just need to transfer the downloads and some misc images across, remove the Pattern Downloads and include them as real downloads (and make a modification to my downloads module so that it'll handle external downloads correctly!) and then redirect all traffic and links to the new location

But what have Relic done to the UV Skin? I know they've patterned some things (notably the head of the Marine, the back of the Termi and the smoke launcher of the Rhino) awkwardly by re-using bits, but I haven't had any problems with dreadies.

Oh, and feel free to start up a new thread about it if it's going to go on as its own topic and invite people who are good skinners who are in the spirit of the community One idea I have with a new, separate forum is that I make it public so anyone can comment, but keep the Skinners group so that only they can post skins and upload screenies Or I could even do that with this forum!

[edit] OK, I'm bored at work (playing with queries that read millions of rows, which are then joined to other tables, and I'm trying to pattern match on a value, so its taking 10+ mins per query run!) I've been thinking about the forums, and now that I've got the hiveworldterra.co.uk domain, I think I might set up forum.hiveworldterra.co.uk (or is forums. better?) and have one central forum there Just debating whether to stick with this very old and majorly hacked Invision Board or whether to install the phpBB that comes with it and reskin that



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