I have several questions owning a rpg site

[fruity20 19]

• did any of you had to pay anything to own a site?
• in your experience, what's the best hosting site you've used.
• did you do all of this by yourself? things like coding, moderating, etc.
• was it expensive?

i've thought about owning a site but i don't have a constant income. anything that askes for preiumium features and the like tend to be a turn off.  a shame as jcink and proboards looked promising. 

[gist 11]

I bought $50 lifetime business-sized hosting (10 GB Storage Space/1 TB Bandwidth/4 Hosted Domains -- way more than I actually need) from Arch Hosting last year via a well-timed Groupon.  It came packaged with one domain, which I do have to renew annually.  I was iffy about it at first, having never heard of them, but it's actually been a dream so far: all the features I want, regular server updates/upgrades, excellent responsiveness, included Cloud Flare support, minimal downtime.  The only real issue I've had was when I missed an email they sent me about an IP change, and I got through to tech support immediately about it. 

 

I had hosting through A Small Orange prior to that, and while it wasn't bad, it was definitely more expensive, like $80+/year,  I consistently found their tech people wanting -- although I did tend to ask them about weird things like Node.js support ...

 

And I do all the tech/coding stuff myself.  Part of the fun, imo. 🙂 

Edited September 19, 2018 by gist

[Morrigan 1,826]

So there is a such thing as free hosting:

https://rpginitiative.com/store/category/1-hosting/

Just in case you were curious.

 

But to answer your questions:

• did any of you had to pay anything to own a site? I pay for the Initiative and all of it's host-y people every month. I also own a ton of domains. So costs vary. Hosting, web design etc is a pretty big hobby for me. However it doesn't have to cost anything. If costs are tight we recommend the Initiative hosting honestly. We're donation-ware hosting.
• in your experience, what's the best hosting site you've used. - Invision Power Services, the same as what the Initiative here is run on. MyBB, SMF and phpBB aren't bad though.
• did you do all of this by yourself? things like coding, moderating, etc. Yes. I now have staff but there is a lot of work that goes into a site.
• was it expensive? There is plenty of free resources, just like here on the Initiative and others. We also have awesome people that help you out with other questions and things.

[StormWolfe 557]

I have a site hosted here at the Initiative. I have to say that the support I received - even prior to joining the staff - was beyond awesome. So it gets a 5 star rating from me - *whispers: not saying that just 'cuz I have a site hosted here, I do use other hosts too.

[Elena 546]

did any of you had to pay anything to own a site?

 

I am on jcink and it is free as long as it isn't 18+ (3-3-3). At a certain moment, my co-administrator wanted to pay a c-box premium. Her choice. There are c-boxes which are free too.

 

in your experience, what's the best hosting site you've used.

 

I used invisionfree, I was a member on various other-hosted boards, I still love Jcink. Free and easier to use.

 

did you do all of this by yourself? things like coding, moderating, etc.

 

I can't code and do graphics, I have always needed a co-administrator or graphics and coding moderator. My site is 8 years old.

[Jaxx 317]

did any of you had to pay anything to own a site?

I don't pay anything because I use the free version of jcink. So no. Free version has everything that I need since I have no interest in 18+ sites. The Initiative also has free hosting that I think is pretty good, though I don't use it. 

 

in your experience, what's the best hosting site you've used.

Jcink, by far. I've screwed around with a few others, more as a player than an admin, but I just don't like them. For a lot, it was a lack of resources or features. Plus, getting an answer on the jcink forums is pretty easy, and there's millions of resources, especially for coding and templates. 

 

did you do all of this by yourself? things like coding, moderating, etc.

I do everything besides the coding. While I can edit some things, I absolutely do not have the toolbox to create anything from scratch. But I do the graphics and staff work all on my own, though to be fair, neither of my sites have enough members that I need a second staff member. 

 

was it expensive?

I only use free software, so no. But I do think that jcink premium is fairly priced. I got premium cbox once and it was such a waste of money in the end. I prefer a Discord embed for a bunch of reasons, cost among them. 

[Kit the Human 758]

With the Initiative, you can have space to host your roleplay site for free without needing to pay extras for something like writing porn or endless blood and gore.

 

To continue to keep it free, you would use one of the subdomains, no need to buy a domain of your own.

 

To keep on keeping it free, you would then pick a free forum software. Examples mybb and smf.

 

We have some themes available here on the Initiative for both of the aforementioned forum software.

 

So this can be entirely free.

 

However, jcink's premium features (I don't know about proboards) is not necessary to run a successful rp site. 'Anything goes' rating have just become the norm, they're still not necessary unless you're running a site where it's the entire point of your roleplay. For example, erotic rp. In short, if I were you, I would interrogate whether or not you really really need 333 rating.

 

To your questions though, I've paid a lot of money for my site. I didn't need to, I chose to because I love IPS. I use the Initiative's hosting, which has been fantastic. It's also nice knowing that it's Morr who gets me unstuck when things happen, someone who has the same hobby as I. I moderate and code my own stuff. When it comes to coding though, my knowledge seriously isn't exhaustive, so I ask for help here when needed.

[fruity20 19]

5 hours ago, Kit the Human said:

With the Initiative, you can have space to host your roleplay site for free without needing to pay extras for something like writing porn or endless blood and gore.

 

To continue to keep it free, you would use one of the subdomains, no need to buy a domain of your own.

 

To keep on keeping it free, you would then pick a free forum software. Examples mybb and smf.

 

We have some themes available here on the Initiative for both of the aforementioned forum software.

 

So this can be entirely free.

 

However, jcink's premium features (I don't know about proboards) is not necessary to run a successful rp site. 'Anything goes' rating have just become the norm, they're still not necessary unless you're running a site where it's the entire point of your roleplay. For example, erotic rp. In short, if I were you, I would interrogate whether or not you really really need 333 rating.

 

To your questions though, I've paid a lot of money for my site. I didn't need to, I chose to because I love IPS. I use the Initiative's hosting, which has been fantastic. It's also nice knowing that it's Morr who gets me unstuck when things happen, someone who has the same hobby as I. I moderate and code my own stuff. When it comes to coding though, my knowledge seriously isn't exhaustive, so I ask for help here when needed.

 

 

 

I wanted to make 2 rp sites for my two ideas and jcink didn't support that option. 

[Kit the Human 758]

37 minutes ago, fruity20 said:

I wanted to make 2 rp sites for my two ideas and jcink didn't support that option. 

 

You can register two seperate jcink forums? What exactly are you envisioning?

[fruity20 19]

4 hours ago, Kit the Human said:

 

You can register two seperate jcink forums? What exactly are you envisioning?

 

 

i guess so. well i might use it. 

[MAD 40]

I currently am using Jcink, though I've used proboards as well. I like Jcink a bit more because it's not as restricting with code and the support team is always on it. The good thing I could say about proboards though, they have more resources and plugins for the forum. I guess it depends on your skill level with code and what you would like to do exactly. All the things I know code wise I learned through online guides (I still use them). Everything I've ever done has been free. I don't think you need to pay anything to run a rp forum.

[Prophetess 137]

• did any of you had to pay anything to own a site?

I've had free boards and now pay for Jcink. It's basically $10 a month. No biggie for me. I know there's free hosting here, but for now I'm happy where I'm at. I've also paid for the big names and they are pricey. They offer a bit more, but not really needed. I also get 6 (in total) usable forums for that $10 which I share with one of my other forums that's mostly storage and for me, and a friend. Jcink free isn't much difference.

• in your experience, what's the best hosting site you've used.

For me, I love Jcink and the ability to link up all the accts to one main one. I'm not very good at coding so it's been good to me. I don't have to code that in myself. So far, it's my favorite choice.

• did you do all of this by yourself? things like coding, moderating, etc.

I didn't do the coding by myself (there are free skins and so forth here and in other resources) but I did have to put it in myself. It was easy where I'm at and I can do small tweaks to it. The rest I've done on my own until my co-admin joined me. I do the technical stuff and they do help with other things. For the most part with small forums, things run themselves if you have a decent group of folks.

• was it expensive?

Aside from what I pay for Jcink, I do pay $6 every three months for premium cbox. I like that it's a quarterly fee and not too pricey. With Discord becoming more popular, I have that as well for the forum and it's also free. Skins and bells and whistles are offered by some for free through resources (here and a few others). So expense is what you're willing to work with. There are ways for it to not be so expensive. Just look over things and do your homework. Hope you find what works for you.