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I kind of see a game having a website as something similar to a game having a soundtrack.

Will a game not having a soundtrack prevent me from playing it? No. But given that I have a limited amount of time to actually play games, it does factor into my decision. If a game has a soundtrack, that's a point in its favor.

If a game has a website, that might be several points in its favor. It shows me that the creator was willing to spend some time on polishing things outside of the game - and I'd expect that to be reflected inside the game, which makes me want to play it more. It also lets me more easily figure out how the creator is trying to position the game, which helps me decide if I want to play it or not.

Game websites don't have to be all that complex. There's two I did:

http://www.bishoujo.us/
http://9-11game.com/

Neither is more than a page or so, plus images, downloads, and the license file.

It would be nice if someone could throw together a simple single-page website template. Name goes here, description goes here, license goes here, background goes here, four screenshots go here, here, here, and here, and so on. These websites don't have to be paragons of complexity - a single static page can go a long way towards making a game website.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming" - Theodore Roosevelt

@ScottySeng: I think you raised some interesting points. I think the problem might be that people *think* they need designing or maybe even programming skills.

As PyTom has pointed out - simple design works best. But there is even simpler way that coding by hand - free CMS platforms like Wordpress.

Wordpress is not just a blog. It it a full featured CMS (content management system). You can use it as a static website as well as many other types of sites, including a forum, photo album or a webshop (specialized frameworks will work better in this cases).

Wordpress is the most simple and practical solution. I have a lot of expirience in programming and designing websites, but I use Wordpress for my websites. Its far more powerful, than any of my own CMS system.
It's set up in 5 minutes. I rather spend hours, that I could on design, on writing and promotion of my new site.

With wordpress, I can change the design at a click of a button and test if the visitor behavior changes. Maybe my custum design will cause the visitors to stay less time on the site or take my desired action (buy, download, read, ...) less.

Some wordpress themes are also highly customizable, without the need to learn CSS and HTML and replacing a header image, is as easy as uploading a new image trough FTP (or even easier if the theme supports changing the header in administration).

If you do know CSS and HTML, you can also edit the themes, directly from Wordpress administration. If you know PHP, you can even change the coding, right from adnimistration.



Yes it is. And you need to consider how you will be updating content, changing layout and so on. You can do it by hand every time or create a backend part - a CMS, which requires programming and even more time.

But, If you want to focus on website content and getting the traffic to your site, design should be the last of your concerns. Just keep the design simple (one way or the other) and focus on what's important. Leave designing to those that enjoy in it.



Yes, I agree. And as ScottySeng pointed out these kind of sites often have more traffic than your website.
I wasn't trying to say you should abandon Tumblr. In fact go get it, if you haven't yet.
But all these free blogging, micro-blogging and other social type of sites are also great for driving traffic to your site. I use Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and a lot more platforms. When a site is brand new, that's one of the best ways to get the first visitors and the links from quality articles will send visitors to your site for a long time.

The biggest benefit of having your own domain, as opposed to a subdomain on a free blogging site is that you own it. What if Wordpress.com suspends your account without explanation? What if Tumblr shuts down? What if people switch from Facebook to Google+? There are no guarantees of any kind what will happen to your hard work, if you don't own the property that it's on.


I'm on it.

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Free hosting or website for your VN

@leon

First all, thank you for your though answer.
I'm sure you have much more experience than me in website designing (It sounds like it's your career to me).
I understand your preference for Wordpress as I've used it as well.
Wordpress also generates more presence on search engines.

However, you must consider bandwidth as well.
Wordpress is large to load. It places load on the server as well (Not a problem if you have a hosting service, unless you really overload the server. I don't know about GoDaddy, but my hosting service will take the site offline if it starts to overload the entire server rack.). Adding plug-ins makes it even larger.

Oh, thanks for making a single page template for other users. I'm sure they'll appreciate it. (I love designing, so I'll stick to hardcoding HTML and CSS.)

Because it fits my needs right now. I'm still in early stages of development, so I don't see a need for a full-blown website right now (plus, I don't even know how to design one). When I come close to finishing the game, yeah, I'll get a website. But right now, I'm perfectly okay with Tumblr.

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http://a-flower-remains.tumblr.com/

@ScottySeng:
Designing is more of a hobby actually... I used to be a programmer and when I started programing websites, designing kind of came with it. However, I'm into internet marketing now. Ironically, my feeble attempts to promote some free stuff, got me into it in the first place.

Yes, SEO optimization in wordpress is one of the biggest factors for me. I think alternatives can work just as well, but Wordpress comes SEO friendly out of the box. I used to use doezens of SEO pugins, but with recent versions, there is no need for them.

Yes, slow speed is one the biggest downsides of Wordpress. There are several alternatives that run faster, both as a blog or CMS, but there are always compromises, with ease of use, extendibility...

Some plugins can have a big influence on speed; it's a good idea to disable/delete enything you don't really need. There are also plugins for cache-ing, which speed up the loading time a little bit. Poorly coded themes can also be an issue.
The biggest slowdown are various social widgets, that connect to Facobook, Twitter an similar services. This is a big compromise, because neither the speed loss or the traffic gain are neglectable.
The content itself can be problematic too - most blogs list a lot of full-text posts on the frontpage. Optimizing the images (by saving them for the web, to minize filesize) can often go a long way.

I think all "unlimited everything" packages with major hosting companies, should handle quite a load of users on wordpress. If I'll ever have so many fans, that they'll constantly keep crashing my site, I will gladly optimize the site for them or upgrade to a better hosting package.

@WatchJessieGo:
I think the only reason you don't have a website yet, is because you don't know easy it all is (yet).

1. You don't need a full-blown website. Start with one post or page, just like you did on Tublr. If you publish slowly, you will get a lot more visitors, than if you publish a lot of content all at once. People are busy. If you post every day,

2. You don't need designing skills! Why does everyone thinks you need designing to have your own website? You didn't design the template on Tublr and you don't need any designing, programming or any tecnical skills whatsoever to run a similar framework on your own website. It's easy.

There is several 1000s free designs available from within Wordpres, with a click of a button and you can find a lot more on the web. You don't need to worry about SEO optimization and a lot of them offer plenty of customizability.

You can do a custom design, *if* that's something you enjoy or if you want to learn it.

But people are not looking for good designs, they are looking for content. Google doesn't care if your site is pretty at all. It only cares what content you have, so it can show it to potential viewers.

Design does effect your traffic a little and behaviour of your visitors a lot (like where they'll click). But unless you have plenty of designing experience, you'll probably make things worse, doing it yourself from scratch. Only designers need unique designs for their sites.

3. If you are planning to get a website, now is better than later. If you put a link to your website in the sidebar on your Tummblr and maybe some other places, that link will start working now. It will bring visitors and tell your Google your site is trustworthy. The longer the links stay, the more traffic they bring. And links gain power with age - one month old link on Tublr is worth much more to Google, because if it was a link to some spammy site, it would get reported and removed sonner or later.

If you get a website one month from now, it will start getting followers one month from now. It will also start raising its position in the search engines one month from now.

Of course you'll get a lot more followers once you complete the game, but is there a reason to wait?

Would you rather publish the game on a website that is yet to get the first visitors or one where traffic have been growing for the last month?

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying stop using Tumblr - at this point it has more traffic than your website will, while it's still new. But you don't own what you are building there. Every link that you create yourself or someone else, will point to Tumblr, instead of your website.

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Free hosting or website for your VN

Hmm the thing is that people read the thread about free hosting, but they are in total haze about what they have to do so they give up.
I mean, like a link to click and a explained step-by-step way forward. People don't have the time to go deeper in a thing they aren't sure about.
Well, and maybe for the ones that would want a website, they are thinking of their own site like a big serious project but don't have the time currently.

For instance, I have a project in hand, but not the time to make a good and ergonomic website. I could build one with Joomla, that's easy, but that'd be maybe no optimal (Joomla isn't bad and has a good community behind, but that's never as good as making your site from sratch.

About the rest, indeed, having a website and even more a place to upload your files and follow the stats is really important. A thing, even a demo, uploaded on a random host, it's often so many interesting stats lost. Like, from where your downloaders are coming, etc.

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Seeking creativity, mostly on the music side of things.
http://soundcloud.com/ziassan

@Ziassan:
Yes, I think these are the biggest issues.

Redeyesblackpanda's thread is now more clear I think (and now includes a website) - viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14350

I wrote a short tutorial for getting domain, hosting and a website yourself - viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14720 More to come soon, I hope.

Doing everything from scratch is better only sometimes. Such as, if speed is very important and you do not require complicated administration. I think Joomla, Wordpress and similar platforms are a better choice in most cases, than doing everything from scratch. A decent CMS takes months of developement and it will still be very basic compared to existing platforms. To a programmer, most of these platforms are expandable without limitations. If they are open-source, you can even change them.
In Wordpress, with a plugin, you can run PHP from a post or a page. And you can use external files, running different parts of code independently from the rest of the framework.

Indeed, the stats are extremely important and you should act according to what the data is telling you. If your traffic if coming from LSF - spend more time here. If it's coming from Tumblr, work on that.
The data will also tell you exactly which keywords (phrases), that are being used in the search engines, are bringing you traffic.

You have hard, reliable, accurate data available. You can rely on the data or you can rely on your opinion. But in most cases your opinion is wrong or in the best case - less accurate. In the best case you will still spend more time and effort (and money?) to achieve the same results.

You can also set up Googla Analytics on many free hosted blogs, such as Blogger, Wordpress.com and Posterous. If tracking of any kind is available and you are spending some time on some platform - you should set up the tracking now.

And don't worry about analyzing the data - just set up the tracking now, so it will start fetching the data, for when you need it. Even if you think you'll never use this data, its better to have it ready, in case you ever need it.

For downloads, monitoring can be a bit of an issue, since you will probably want your download in as many places as possible. Better to have more downloads and not know about them.

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Free hosting or website for your VN

I have a website domain for my doujin circle (Black Lilium.) However, I have no idea how to code it.

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https://twitter.com/Lishy93

@Lishy:
You don't need coding, to build a website. There is easy to install and easy to use framework for just about anything you can think of.

What about hosting? You also need a hosting computer to run the website.

Check out Redeyesblackpanda's free hosting and website for VN related stuff project.

If you want to get your own hosting, this post should help - Domain name, hosting and website - How to.

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Free hosting or website for your VN

I know I'm new to the forum, but I've been building websites since 1996 and my current main website has been online since 2004. I'm also a freelancer (writer). I've needed a website to promote my own writing services. I wanted to share some thoughts.

Starting your own website can be a very big decision. It does improve the quality of your brand. So if you plan on selling games it would be very important to have your own website. You don't really need to create the website alone. There's other people out there that can help.

On the flip side if you're doing game making for fun there's little reason to buy a domain name and hosting. WordPress and other freebies can look just as professional for a indie game maker who simply wants to have fun and make the type of games they enjoy. It will also save you lots of time and headaches. You can get away with having a Blogger blog or even a Tumblr account.

Running your own website is not so simple. There's coding and updating and the potential for trouble. My own personal website has been hacked several times over the last few years, most recently hackers were placing malware onto my scripts and getting me in trouble with Google and my own hosting. It took several weeks to fix it.

This is not to say you will have the same trouble. Mileage will vary.

That all said, when I look at a website hosting company, especially a free one, I usually have a few questions:

Stability: What's the likelihood this company will go down in a year (or less?) and will I be notified and be allowed to move files when needed? If someone else is paying the bill, and they happen to forget, your website may be affected.

Requirements: Am I going to be required to display someone else's ads? This is usually the case with freebie hosting companies, so I look at current websites to see how intrusive this might be on the website.

Ease of use and security: Am I able to access a CPanel that isn't networked to files that everyone else owns? (So I don't screw up files by anyone else?) Are security features updated regularly? I used to have problems with hosting companies (that I've paid a lot of money for) who would have my server down for a day at a time every couple of weeks. That's pretty bad when you're running a business.

Hope this helps.

Regarding website design:

I realize that there are a lot of default templates out there to use, but I don't want my website end up looking like I didn't put a lot of effort into it. I always wince when I go onto a Wordpress blog and it's the exact same design as millions of other blogs like it. It just stinks of unprofessionalism for me. I mean, they look great, but when I see the same thing copy-and-pasted over and over and over again...

I don't want an absolutely gorgeous fancy website, I just want something that's minimalist, elegant, easy-to-navigate, ad-free, and unique. I know how to get my own web hosting, but I'm clueless about website design. Any tips for doing that without having to resort to hiring a web designer to do it for me?

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Adversity Comp (2012): Review Guide

@Lishy
I can help make a website design for you, but it seems like you have one already that uses a CMS (Content Management System, basically the commenting system for your site).
I'm good with static HTML and CSS3. I would recommend using Wordpress if you're not too willing to mess with HTML.
Even if I did make a design for you, if you didn't know how to edit it, it's not too good for you.

@Calissa Leigh
Yay, another website designer (Do you do it as a career or as a hobby?)
That's unfortunate that your website was hacked. It's another reason why I'm too scared to make my own server...Internet can be a dangerous place.

@Anarchy
Well, if you're not into Wordpress, then I would recommend buying a book on HTML or even looking up online tutorials for it.
You might also get around by asking someone here on LSF to design a website for you. I'm willing to help make a design. However, if I did, you would still need some basic knowledge of HTML so you can edit it.
You can also make your own wordpress theme if you CSS and HTML, but even I'm too scared to mess with a wordpress theme.

The biggest problem I see with free blogging platforms, is that you don't own them. What if you get banned from Wordpress.com (guilty or not)? They won't give you time to save your content or even explain why they took your site down. If Wordpress.com, Tumblr or one of the bigger blogging providers decides to discontinue their service, it is highly unlikely, they would not give you time to move the site. However you will lose all the traffic from every backlink ever created, by you or your fans. You will also lose all the traffic from Google and most pages on your new site, will no longer show in Google - because your content was likely copied elsewhere on the web, Google will now see your own content as duplicate. I don't think that any free blogging platform allows 301 redirects, which would allow you to move the site, without losing all your traffic and indexing in Google.



Google Webmaster Tools has an option to check your site for malware (I don't know if it's any good at it). Wordpress installations also get hacked very often, because people don't update them often enough. A security fix in a new version means, that the hackers now know about the security hole in the old version. Custom CMS is much safer in this respect, because it's not as known as already made platforms and doesn't have open source code.



Well, you need to consider, you started all this when there weren't so many tools available or at least they weren't so mature. Things are a lot easier these days. Kids today just don't know how good they have it...
A good host can also mean a huge difference. A friend of mine got a pleasant surprise for a change, after he accidentally deleted his site. The hosting company support told him they do daily backups and just restored his site.



I sure wasted a lot of time with various free hosts. The problem was, that they either went down or started placing ads. Checking current websites won't really help. A lot of them place ads only on high traffic sites. A lot of them start with no ads for the first few months and add them later. Searching for a free host, that supports PHP and MySQL takes a lot of time in the first place and then you need to find a new one once or twice a year and move everything.

I don't think it would be econonomical to run a free hosting service with no monetization. Stability and advertising are always going to be a problem.

However, in a small VN circle like this, I think a free hosting service could be provided for anyone who needs it. With the "free hosting project", hosting is provided on reliable hosts, like Hostgator and GoDaddy. With "unlimited domains" packages, adding another website means no extra cost. If there will be enough interest, we could schedule automatic backups, from one server to another. With such redundancy and a few people sharing their hosting, even if one of the servers would be taken out, the websites could be restored from backups and continue running on another server. This would resolve the issues of stability and ads, while providing top hosting services for free.

@Anarchy:
Some themes for Wordpress are highly customizable from the backend.
For example:
http://completeorganizingsolutions.com/
http://nicolealexander.com.au/
http://gracefullplate.com/
These 3 websites are all using the same theme - Thesis, customized without CSS or HTML knowledge.
Thesis theme costs around $90, but there are free themes available, with almost as much customizability.

You can also get a fairly unique design, if you look for it on the web. Wordpress has only a couple of 1000 or so themes available directly from administration. However most themes are not in Wordpress'es themme database.

If you find a theme somewhere on the web, it is going to be used much less, than the ones available with one click. Often site with themes list downloads, so you can check if it has been used much.

Here's a preview of a HTML template I made - http://www.visualnovelenglish.com/VNtemplate/

It still needs a bit more work (and testing). I'll make a simpler version too. It should be very easy to edit with or without HTML/CSS skills.


@Lishy:
Do you have a MySQL database with your host? If you do, I can help you set up Wordpress. If you don't, there might be other options...
@ScottySeng:
We could make a few templates with a few different layouts and color schemes. People can just replace the placeholder text and images or expand it if they want and know how to.

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Free hosting or website for your VN

This is always true, so backing up a website would be very important and some websites make this harder than others. (I don't know the first thing about running a Tumbler! Wouldn't know how to back it up.)

There is a risk with every option, but I guess it is a matter of making that choice. More than likely, problems won't come up, but at least being aware of the risks is important.

Yeah, Google and Tumblr can't offer redirects for a website because it just isn't possible to do so.

But I haven't heard about people being banned from Google or Tumblr. I mean I know it is possible, though I think that's reserved for folks selling child porn and things like that.



This is true. If you don't upgrade WordPress, you become vulnerable. (Which is part of what I meant. It takes work and if you may not understand how to update, you might want to get a buddy (like Leon!) to help.



Oh golly, remember back in the day when it was all center images and text fonts that varied with every paragraph? *feels old!*

But yes, that's what I mean when I say ask important questions. Security (like backing up pages and hosting that actually runs security checks). Has been a lifesaver lately. I don't hand code web pages half as much any more. (I'm prone to throwing up a WordPress to save time, too. )




Finding a free hosting platform on a service like HostGator that also provides PHP and MySQL database access AND no ads is just awesome. So if someone is willing to share hosting space, it would be neat.

I don't know how it would work out, but if the hosting company could make it easy for say Participant A to move their website onto their own hosting program if they decide to actually pay for it later, and allows them to make their own back ups, etc., that would probably be the best way.

It started out as a hobby. I used to have a handful of websites, but now I've cut back so I could focus. I spent SO much time working on websites and updating, etc., I wasn't doing what I really wanted. (Like writing novels and now working on virtual novels!).

I think as long as you back up your work, it's fine. Don't spend so much time on a website that you forget what your goal is. Even a basic HTML website with your project ideas, an update page, and a contact page can be enough. And HTML is pretty secure. There's not a lot a hacker can do to mess with it unless they figure out your password for CPanel.