We need to move
 

The server issues we had last week reminded me we still have to move to another ISP. I talked to swingue and he has no other significant sites on this server so he wants to terminate the contract and I agree with that decision.

That said that means our years of free hosting are over [cry] and we need to find another ISP to host on. I'd like to have your opinion and help with that.

First I'd like to ask you if you know any good and not to expensive ISP's. At the moment we're using up 16GB of serverspace (yes, that's quite a bit indeed) although I suspect we can prune in old uploads and reduce that with 25%-50% or so. Still I suspect we'll be pushing the 10GB limit still and should we host at my regular ISP we'd be facing a € 70,- a month (excluding VAT). I think cheaper options are available and hope you can help.

VB forum software is a second issue. We're running a rather old version atm and it seems smart to upgrade, even for security reasons only. Here we'll be facing a $195 investment as well, although I feel that's worth it for the quality of the VB software. We could look at other free alternatives (like the phpBB I installed on the temp site) but we'd face another difficult migration then and I feel VB is easier and better in terms of admin and mod control as well. But before I buy anything I'd like to hear your opinion on VB and better alternatives should you know any.

Finally I'd like to say that I really like CDZ for what it is, a small fun community where rules can be relax and I'm willing to keep paying for that. But looking at the total costs we're gonna face I would appreciate people chipping in. Just like it was in the very old days when CDZ had a donation programma it will be on a voluntarily basis only. I'll start a new paypal account for this soon and post details. For the really old crowd PLEASE DO NOT USE THE OLD PAYPAL ACCOUNT WE HAD BACK IN 2005!!! I can't access that anymore, only anarres has the log in credentials and he's disappeared from the face of the earth.


Regards PP

I'm more than happy to chip in, but 70 euros a month seems like a steep price.

I garee with Shabba.

There are perhaps 15-20 people wiilling to pay something?

BTW, the website of my TF2 clan is hosted here.

As always I am willing to chip in. And vb seems best, gareed.

+ 1. Would be nice if it has e-mail / webmail facilities as well.

I also want to chip in.

I'm getting .70 EUR per CAD right now. Although not as good as the 0.80 of last year, it's way better than the 0.60. I had in December 2008 the last time i travelled in Europe.

Maybe I can wait until Greece goes bankrupt. I may be able to play twice as mutch.

I agree 70 euros is a lot that's why I'm asking your help finding a cheaper option :)

Interestingly enough that ISP is more expensive than my ISP. Your TF2 clan host is offering 5GB server space for 70 €/month, while mine gets you 25GB for that. Also you get more traffic at my ISP.

@Beam
I really like that too, so I'll be looking into email options as well. I don't expect that to be a problem though as most hosting packages include a lot of pop accounts these days as does VPS hosting.

Dunno, we get it for free.

I am not a techy nerdish freak like all of you guys but Googling ISP vergelijken (Comparing in Dutch) got me dozens of results. Some for € 25 a year! That sounds realy cheap compared to € 840,- a year, but hey!

I'll donate what i can, the joy of being unemployed and having tonnes of bank loans= not having much/any money!

I did that as well , but the problem is that the cheaper ones are also very small/unknown ones usually. I'm hoping someone has good experiences with a cheap(er) ISP.


It's voluntarily only BCLG, please don't feel obliged to donate when you're in a pinch atm.

With our german hattrick online radio, we are using http://www.server4you.net/

They have servers which seem to be big enough for 45 Euro (or 55 if you want Windows OS)

But they also have virtualServers here:http://www.server4you.net/vserver/

Don't know about their performance. I guess, if we pay for an expensive server then we'd definitely need to play pitboss that way (or use a cheaper as I guess the forum doesn't need a fancy server, just enough space and traffic)

I heard people talking well about:
http://www.manitu.de/root-server/produkte.php
(It seems like they only have a German page)
No windows server from them, though.

Straland.com is hosted by Digitalus. I'm very happy with their service!
20GB hosting costs €10.71 per month. (300GB/month data transfer)

I would also like to contribute. :) Especially with PayPal as I can then donate with my British bank account (where the money comes in).

I do not know any Euro hosting places but I have always been very happy with HostGator It is a shared plan but it is also very inexpensive. I have used them for around 2 years now and have found their online service techs very knowledgeable (not reading off a script) and I have had no issues with servers being down.. ever.

I think their smallest plan is $4.00 a mth USD for a single domain and $7 for unlimited. I have never tried hosting a large amount of info on one but looking at the costs you guys are giving I cannot see it hurting for someone to look into it.

Plus it sounds like a crocodile, so it must be good!

more like an alligator... but I guess that is picking nits

It does have .php and email available as well

I did a quick "vBulletin hosting service" search in google and have found many results of unlimited storage/bandwith at under 10$/month
http://www.siteground.com/vbulletin-hosting.htm
http://www.tmdhosting.com/vbulletin-hosting.html



There are also a couple where you rent the vBulletin at 35$/month. (http://www.urljet.com/vbulletin-hosting.php)

Of course I don't know anyhing about them and our database will be located "somewhere on the net"

Please don't put no ads or some gaming tag or I won't be able to read and post from work. Otherwise, really cannot tell anything but if you make an account on paypal, I certainly can contribute.

See, that's the kind of requests that's useful.

Propain, apparently hosting is dependent on how much disk space and how much traffic the site needs. Could you give this information?

About the vB licence: I like vB, I think it's worth paying for. I know there are cheaper options like phpbb and wordpress. I know squat about forum software, but I know people I could force to implement it for us. It's worth considering, but as I'm not the guy that will or could to the work I'll leave that up to Propain. Besides money I see no reason to switch forum software.

Another thing that pops up every time I think about money is this. I appreciate how we have a nice bunch of people, but it seems like CDZ has turned into our private Facebook. Let me get this straight: to me, that's worth paying for :D But besides that, we should still work at getting new people here, and generate some gaming related content to do so. Like (the unfortately AWOL) Markstar wrote, the ladder was something that generated traffic. Perhaps we should reinstate that, and choose some forum software that could make that work.

I second akots! It costs all those who are willing to donate so little to keep CDZ ad-free, that it's definitely worth it IMO. Same goes for vB.

In regard to the future of CDZ: I don't know about yous, but I'm still not bored of Civilization! I have to admit though, that as of late I can't find the will anymore to update my spoilers. That has all to with the fact that I'm working now rather than studying. Spare time is more precious. But I think we should try and keep CDZ mainly about Civilization. Perhaps we should all put a link to CDZ in our signatures on that other site and post there more often. [smirk]

I forgot to mention that in my OP but CDZ will remain add free as it always has been.

I certainly can:

At this point in time traffic amount is irrelevant for us. Since we're just the happy few that are left, we don't use up that much bandwidth


I agree with this and I would like to think about how to go ahead with CDZ. For me the site isn't so much about Civ anymore, I consider it our own little nook of the internet where we, a bunch of people who love strategy games and civ especially, talk games and whatever OT comes to mind.

I've been thinking what the beauty of CDZ has been in our civ3 days and I think CDZ worked because
1) we had nice people who were active players. It was easy to find a game, fair maps were made, strat discussions where good.
2) you could get your own forum and use that for spoilers and whatever else you liked

Now I really wouldn't mind reinstating the ladder. With modern CMS's I think you could do that a lot easier than before even. But I wonder if that will work. For now I don't see many of the regulars participating very actively and I think you need some running games to attract more people. However when a few people would like this I will make the ladder a priority.

The private fora and spoilers were getting traffic as well iirc, and there's something that's even easier to start again. Also this doesn't have to be Civ exclusive, which might make it easier to pick it up again.

The problem is we're all really busy these days and even our core group has been depleted markedly. I'm the age now where most of you were first starting to play civ and it's fairly safe to say i'm by far the youngest/least amount of kids/ least married ;) and even I struggle to find time to play an online game. For instance right now i could commit to playing a game for a few hours but i've no idea if i could play it for the next month.

Does anyone even post at the other site anymore? I think CDZ is now the only forum i actively post in and even then my posting has diminished over the past year and so would it really be that useful sticking a link in a signature?

The further problem with our MP of recent games is that we've advertised it at cfc and we've generally got a few playing but there has normally been one player who has not fit in to the cdz way of doing things leaving a bad taste in everyones mouth and more often than not having the open turn thread turn in to some form of minor flame war, I don't think anyone really wants/appreciates that/would want to come back should that happen again.

We could always start our own GOTM? I don't mind designing maps for it, this isn't dependent on a group of people playing for you to play your own turn. The only drawback is that this obviously isn't MP.

edit- we also need to fix the registration, the fact that most people can't sign up and post obviously hinders the growth of the forum.

You're 12? Remember, civ1 was released in 1991 ;)

That's a good thing. We started this site because of flame wars on that other site, heh.

People can register, but verification of new accounts is done manually and for that I have to accidentally log in to the admin panel. What makes registration difficult is that you can't get verification emails or something like that. At least password reminders don't work.

The email issue is highly annoying and it seems server related, not site related. I've tried fixing it but sadly it's beyond my tech skills. HOwever a site move will very likely fix this issue as a move equals a new server and also a VB upgrade so I'd be very surprised should that bug stick.

[bump]

2 week holiday now after a hideously busy time. Will take care of it now :)

ok, found a very reasonably priced provider with good reviews. Will set up our next move after new year. Will keep you posted.

I will post what will happen when and I'll also start a back up today already, just in case somebody ended some subscription on the 31st of december.

Good stuff!

I'll prepare The Fist, just in case [punch]

Had to take down the site for maintenance yesterday. Freed up space on the server so now the front page functions again. Also started a backup to facilitate our imminent move.

I'm hoping we can get our new server space up before the weekend and aim to move during the weekend. Will keep you posted.

Woop!

Meantime I kicked some old thread on that other site. Maybe handy during the move. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=51969

I'll update in that thread when necessary, I'll also maintain a thread at the reefgaming.com (http://www.reefgaming.com/phpBB3/) forum to update you. That last one is the easiest for me as I have admin options there :)

Yesterday I heard the current server will be up untill feb the 1st for sure and very likely untill the 1st of march. That provides some leeway for the move but I'll be aiming to move next weekend anyway. I'd like to have email capabilities again :)

Keep you posted.

But you also tricked me in to going there!

OK, I got confirmation from our new ISP that our space is up. Haven't tested it yet but will do that asap.

The way things look I'll be moving us over during the weekend. Will post when I've decided on the exact timing.

PP

Won't manage to do it this weekend. Personal stuff prevailed :)

letting you all know I plan to move CDZ tomorrow. I did some research and it seems this should be rather straightforward.

The plan is as follows:

- I'll shut down CDZ somewhere around midnight tonight (about 14 and a half hours after this post) and start backups and downloading.

- tomorrow I'll bring back up the forum asap without the attachments

- I'll be uploading attachments during the day

Reason for uploading teh attachments seperately is that these consume a lot of space so it will take a while. The forum will work perfectly without them though, we'll just experience some 'broken link red X's'. They will gradually disappear as the upload progresses.

During downtime I'll be keeping an eye on the reefgaming forum and will be online on Steam.

Exciting.

Good to know. And good luck with the move! :)