Torchmodders

TorchModders => News & Announcements => Topic started by: Wolven on May 22, 2016, 12:56:20 pm


Title: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Wolven on May 22, 2016, 12:56:20 pm
Torchmodders. Your attention please!

UPDATE: I've changed our hosting plan and we're down to €95.40 for 12 more months of hosting.

Our hosting plan is about to expire (Jun 19.) and we need to renew it, or find another host. At our current host (Siteground) it will cost €139.80 to continue the current hosting plan (GrowBig) for 12 more months. The torchmodders.com domain won't need renewal before Aug 7. Which will cost an additional €11.95.

If I had the money to burn I would just pay it and not fuss about it at all, but being unemployed, (since December last year) makes it a bit harder for me to fork out the cash right now. So I need some help from you guys to either help me pay for the current hosting or find a cheaper solution for hosting the site.

I would prefer to get the hosting price down, as I think our current plan is way too expensive. Even if this requires some work compared to just clicking a "renew" button.  So, does anyone of you know about a good quality and cheap host we could transfer the domain and our web services to? (We're running on Joomla, SMF and DokuWiki)
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: gytfunke on May 22, 2016, 04:19:37 pm
Hey Wolven!

Yeah, that seems overpriced for a forum and wiki, but I don't really know much of anything about hosting.

I can, however, cover the cost of the site.  Can anyone find a cheaper plan?
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Khazad on May 22, 2016, 04:28:16 pm
Hosting isn't something I know much about either, sorry can't be much of help there :(

Though I wonder what other sites like RGF and ClockworkCore use (if that's even relevant)?

Edit: Can also chip in to help if necessary.
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Kva3imoda on May 22, 2016, 04:56:09 pm
In Russia we have a cheap web hosting, but legal concerns are possible. In any case, I am ready to support financially.
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Phanjam on May 22, 2016, 05:10:56 pm
Hi Wolven. First of all I'm concerned to hear about your employment situation; I was there in the mid-2000s and it lasted a few years. Very very very not fun, so I commiserate with you Wolven.

But I made it through. Things aren't all milk-and-honey but we're okay. And you will be too ;)

Now about the hosting - I've only ever used free stuff so I can't really recommend a host and I'm not sure what our space requirements are. But I think, given the way we use this site, we could move over to a lot smaller package and be just fine. If we can get it down to under USD100 range I can chip-in with like 3 other guys.

Of course there's also free/ad-supported sites, but I guess those could pose (big?) problems for content migration.
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: gytfunke on May 22, 2016, 05:15:15 pm
In Russia we have a cheap web hosting, but legal concerns are possible. In any case, I am ready to support financially.

Hmm.  What legal concerns, Kva3i?  And how cheap?  This sounds intriguing to me.  And, good that it sounds like we have 4 who can chip in!
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Wolven on May 22, 2016, 05:24:30 pm
Alright, cool. If you guys help chip in that would be great. I'll also pay my share, of course.

I've been looking around a bit for alternative hosting which compare to the service we have now, but the alternatives I've found are not really any cheaper. Like our current host it's cheap when you sign up, as you get a discount the first year, but after that you have to pay full price.

As it is now we're on the second cheapest plan that Siteground has to offer. (https://www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm) As I upgraded from the cheapest plan to be able to have more than one domain, back when I registered torchmodders.com. I also have the torchlightarena.com domain tied to this plan, but I'm not using it, as my TLA mod is on ice and will probably be so for the foreseeable future. So I'll look into the possibility of dropping that domain and downgrading the hosting plan.

Let me investigate a bit more and see what I can do about reducing the cost, before we organize this "fundraiser". We still have a few weeks before the bill is due.

Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Kva3imoda on May 22, 2016, 06:01:51 pm
Hmm.  What legal concerns, Kva3i?  And how cheap?  This sounds intriguing to me.  And, good that it sounds like we have 4 who can chip in!
I do not remember exactly, but Abramoff now pay about 10-20$ per year.

Well, it's hard to explain why. The cheapness associated with the economy and the national currency. The last 2 years ruble (Russian currency) became cheaper by 2 times. And if you pay before 1500r=$50, but now you pay 1500r=$25.  :)
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Wolven on May 22, 2016, 06:22:12 pm
OK. So I got our host to downgrade our plan. They did this faster than I expected, which broke some stuff, as they had to move some files around. I'll try to fix all the file paths to get us back to normal.

EDIT: I think I've fixed the broken attachments now. Let me know if you find other issues.

BTW. We're down to €95.40 for 12 more months of hosting now.
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Chthon on May 23, 2016, 07:49:41 am
Hosting isn't something I know much about either, sorry can't be much of help there :(

Though I wonder what other sites like RGF and ClockworkCore use (if that's even relevant)?

Edit: Can also chip in to help if necessary.

Clockworkcore uses Hostgator's cheapest plan, which has climbed to (US)$107/year. (It was much lower when I started the site.) I don't know if they offer all the features TorchModders needs.

An idea to reduce costs that I've been considering is upgrading my home to a business-grade internet connection with a static IP and hosting the site locally on a Raspberry Pi. It doesn't look like that will work out with my ISP (they want a multi-year contract, they're cagey about whether you can actually get a static IP, the difference between residential and business-grade pricing is big enough that I wouldn't save much over the cost of hosting), but your ISP may offer a better deal.
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Wolven on May 23, 2016, 09:26:16 am
Hostgator was one of the hosting providers I was looking at, but I concluded that moving over would not reduce the cost by much. (If anything) They're priced about the same as SiteGround and other hosting providers like DreamHost, etc.

Some years back when I developed my own Linux distribution, I hosted myself on a SHDSL connection and some old hardware. I had a static IP for a while, but the ISP dropped the service at some point. So used the Dynamic DNS service from no-ip.com  It worked great, but it was a bit tiresome to be both a developer and server admin at the same time. Was fun though, but I think the cost of the connection, electric power and labor made the ordeal much more expensive than to use a hosting company.

It was fun though and running a web server on a Raspberry Pi sounds like a nice project.You don't need a static IP to do it. Use a Dynamic DNS service like I did. I didn't notice any difference from having a static IP. Most major Linux distributions support the  Dynamic Update Client from no-ip and other DynDNS providers.
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Phanjam on May 24, 2016, 04:14:55 pm
Hey Wolven! By when should we be ready to chip-in? If 4 or 5 of us (including me) are splitting it I can handle that (but more is better of course :D )
And what's the final cost gonna be (gotta convert it to my local currency)? ;)
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Wolven on May 24, 2016, 06:56:19 pm
I dunno. I will pay the renewal next week when I get my check. Then you guys can reimburse me at your convenience. I'll give you my banking details. The total cost will be 95.40 EUR
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Phanjam on May 24, 2016, 10:08:24 pm
Okidoke thanks. Guys, let's just coordinate here for the chip-in ;)
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Kva3imoda on May 25, 2016, 05:09:06 am
Wolven, do you have Visa or Mastercard?
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: TwinkleToes on May 25, 2016, 05:20:29 am
my currency conversion sucks for euros lol, (aud)
so i cant really give that much

i can hook ya up with 20 aud(13 euros) through paypal or something
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Wolven on May 25, 2016, 06:19:13 am
I've re-activated my old PayPal account. It might be easier (and cheaper?) to use that over my bank account, I don't know... Anyway here's the link: https://www.paypal.me/wolven

All contributions are welcome, big and small. So if you have millions of $$$ to burn, feel free.  ;) Kidding of course.  Any contribution to help pay the hosting bill is appreciated.  :)
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: TwinkleToes on May 25, 2016, 08:59:02 am
sent :D
the fee was only $1.30(aud) no biggie lol.
thanks for keeping the site up
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Wolven on May 25, 2016, 12:24:54 pm
Thanks for chipping in guys. Much appreciated.  :)
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Kva3imoda on May 25, 2016, 04:27:18 pm
You need to place a permanent link for donations.
And something like a "for next year hosting is necessary: X euro"

You need to add a bit of monetization.  :)
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Wolven on May 25, 2016, 04:35:06 pm
Yeah, I was thinking about that. But perhaps we should set up a separate PayPal account for that purpose, one dedicated to us all. Who's got the torchmodders gmail account. Is that you @Phanjam?
Title: Re: Hosting about to expire
Post by: Phanjam on May 25, 2016, 09:10:03 pm
Yup its me! Sent u a pm just now with the creds ;)