[OT] Need help with Web Terms

[jgbrowning]

I'm trying to set up a web page for us, expeditious retreat press, and i'm realizing how far behind the curve i've gotten...

Whats the term for "How much space (traffic?) do i get?" How many megs can people download from my site? Is that the right way to phrase the question?

Just trying to see how things will react when i put up our first preview for you guys.

thanks for the help,


joe b.

 

[Sixchan]

I'm not the best with the lingo, but I think you may be talking about Bandwidth. Or Something.

 

[jgbrowning]

heh, yep. duh. Bandwidth is it. thanks!

sometimes i wonder, how much other stuff im forgetting while i'm remembering the stuff i forgot. *sigh*


joe b.

 

[Dragongirl]

Careful if you are using php. A lot of services are not prepared for it. I know with a site I have worked on we had to contact the server providers and get more access for it. I believe Morrus went through the same thing the last time he changed server.

 

[DDK]

Welcome to the Wild and Wonderful World Wide Web!

If you're setting up a business website and expect a fair amount of traffic and don't know what you're doing... err... I'd suggest you either buy a dummies book or hire someone to do it for you.

That said, there are a lot of great deals around these days if you hunt for them that give you huge amounts of bandwidth and HDD space for very litte money. Like this one www.parcom.net which gives you 'unmetered' bandwidth and decent storage for a piddly $5 a month.

With that kind of deal, you can afford to mess around a little and make mistakes. Go with some of the bigger guns, however, and you could quickly find yourself in deep debt for exceeding bandwidth limits.

That's one of the reasons RPGNow is so good. If you have a PDF product, go with someone like them as then all you have to worry about is a basic company information page which won't see nearly as much use as a download site.

 

[jgbrowning]

well, first thanks for all the advice. you guys rock.

the place i'm looking at allows a 50 meg upload storage. this would be used to store the pdf's samples that i'd want potential customers to view. teasers, i think people call them, so there wouldn't be a huge amount of transference, most of them would be around 200-300k size and there would be at most 3 or 4.

the way the site is running bandwidth is by page hits. they say i'll get 20,000 page hits +1000 more page hits for 1$. This i am utterly uncertain about.

Too little? I have no real way of judging it. I'm planing on having message boards so i think there could be some page hitting. i wouldn't mind paying another 20-40$ a month to support more hits, but again as its becoming obvious, i have no idea. As with everyone else, i'd like to spend only what is necessary.

thanks again for ya'lls help. Hopefully by the end of next week you can download a teaser from my site!

joe b.
expeditious retreat press
*Will sell RPG supplements for food*

 

[Dragongirl]

Well we use http://www.itmom.com/ and have a fairly active messegeboard. We have not run into any bandwitdth problems yet, and get about 250 MB storage. All for about $15 a month IIRK.

 

[jgbrowning]

Well we use http://www.itmom.com/ and have a fairly active messegeboard. We have not run into any bandwitdth problems yet, and get about 250 MB storage. All for about $15 a month IIRK.

Do you have any info on page hits? I simply have utterly no idea what kind of page hitting to expect.

joe b.

 

[haiiro]

OOC, what hosting service are you planning on going with? How much are you looking to pay per month?

I'd be somewhat wary of a host that charges based on page hits, as page hits aren't a very good measure of how much bandwidth you're using.

For example: you have a page that consists of one 100kb image. Someone visits this page, downloading 100kb + whatever the size of the page itself happens to be. This also generates one page hit.

Paying by page hits means the host doesn't care whether or not that page is 100kb or 500kb -- which doesn't make much sense, as it takes more of their resources to support the 500kb download. At that level (one visitor), it doesn't matter -- but if hundreds/thousands/all d20 fans visit that page, it adds up quickly.

I might be way off base with my level of caution, but there are a lot of crappy web hosts out there.

Back when I had a website, I went with <a href="http://www.dreamhost.com/" target="blank">Dreamhost</a> after doing a healthy amount of research. They were excellent in all respects, their rates are reasonable ($10/mo for 150mb storage, 20 GB/mo bandwidth, tons of support and very good uptime), and I'd recommend them to anyone.

 

[jgbrowning]

i've been looking at this site: http://www.citymax.com/

So far, i'm trying the free tryout, their claims are proving true. I don't need a lot of flexibility. I dont need anything really more than a simple commerce/communication site and its turning out well.

I also wondered at the page hit idea, that's why i though i'd ask a round a bit. I haven't found anything negative about them on the net (not that i looked for ages mind you) but a quick search of "hate citymax" "complaint citymax" etc didn't turn up anything.

I'm trying to visciously avoid learning any real programming skill.
I like being a "Clicky Monkey."

joe b.