Webcomic Hosting
I'm looking for a good webcomic host, one that is either free or relatively cheap. I'm willing to pay about $20 a month maximum at the moment. Does anybody know of any? My major criteria is one that allows for enough bandwith and space to upload a decent comic, and the secondary criteria is one with a decent enough reputation to not make the webcomic immediately disregarded as a total joke.
If you're willing to pay 20 bucks a month, which would add up to 240 a year, you may as well get your own domain. You could get 40+ gigabytes of transfer a month and plenty of space for 100-120 a year.
I'd considered getting my own site but I'm not sure if my friend and I (it's a joint venture) would be able to get the site into a webcomic format. However, it is certainly something to consider, but unfortunately I'm woefully inept at such a things. Can you make any recommendations as far as procuring a domain?
I have a ProLogic plan with Startlogic. To be honest, I don't know exaclty how good a host they are, as I've never had another one. However, there's very little down time, and you get tons of space and bandwidth for only $7.50 a month (on the Prologic plan; others vary in price.) It has a fairly easy-to-use and effective management system called vDeck which would allow you to upload pages, view statistics, manage your database, etc. What, exactly, are you thinking you'd need for a "webcomic format?" It's probably pretty easy to design with HTML, but I have no knowledge in that area.
My friend might be able to handle the HTML but I know that I can't. Basically, the webcomic needs to be able to be uploaded, I need to be able to have an archive (preferably with some sort of page number system), and something that allows people to advance the pages, both one forward, one backwards, to the beginning, and to the end.
Aside from that the major requirement is the afforementioned bandwith and space. I'll have to check those ones out though, they may have what I need.
When you've got the overall layout figured out, there are a number of auto-update comic scripts out there. Check out <a href="http://cusp.sourceforge.net/">CUSP</a>, which is a comic site PHP backend that Nuklear Power uses.
I haven't ever had a comic site so I've never used it, but it seems to be pretty functional.
Also, if you're interested in using php to program your site, which is what CUSP seems to be based on, I have a eBook copy of "PHP for Dummies" I could send to you. I'm assuming you (or your friend) don't have much experience in coding, and neither do I, so it could very well prove helpful.
Have you tried Keenspace?
Best site for web sites. Period.
http://www.servage.net/
And they must be down 50% of the time because for that money you're probably getting a server hooked up to a DSL modem.
I don't know exactly what you need, but I have loads of space I don't use. I could set you up with 500MB space and 10GB of bandwidth to start with and have your own CP, email, mySQL databases, etc.
Uh....no?Originally Posted by Yamaneko
Their IP is located in Germany...
They may provide reasonable hosting services, but I wouldn't personally use them since transatlantic data transit picks up a bit of latency. (I live in CA, and the ping looks to be about 200ms which is slow compared to 75ms for EoFF and other sites)
If you lived in Europe and wanted to host a site primarily for a European audience however, servage.net would remain a possibility.
Anyone who can't be bothered to wait 200ms for a webpage as opposed to 75ms is an absolute fool.
I have tried Keenspace, or Comic Genesis, more precisely. The submission I made does not appear to have gone through, I may try it again before giving up on them.
As I live in the United States I will probably not be using servage.net, but there are some other sites I am considering as well. It's looking more likely that I'm going to need to use a paid site and set it up for the comic specifications.
As far as space, I still need to check with my artist and my techie on that. I think we were able to get the comic file down to 99 KB when we played around with it some, but I'm not sure how much more it can be shrunk. I'll ask around and get back to you on that one.
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