a FREE site needs help!

[ratfink]

Their host seems to be one in Croatia, which may explain the price.  If the person is from there it's sometimes difficult to get support from the US when timezones are so far apart.

[Amazone]

i am sorry if this is the wrong section.and im sorry if i am not supposed to post this at all...i just happend to open

http://www.simshowroom.com/

today and i thought that it looked kinda sad that they only need $76 bucks and all they've collected is $3!
i just wanted to post that somewhere ,where people care...and since you guys say all the time that you would support a free site in every way possible,this seemed like a good place..

if you wanna jump on me about a wrong section,a wrong topic,typos...or whatever else you wanna jump on me about....go ahead-thats not gonna ruin my day!

Thanks for the link. I am not going to support the site, but keep an eye with it. I see it's registered on a person from Croatia, and sadly enough this could be a scam. It sounds ridicilous claiming one have only collected $3 - and i doubt the price for the domain is that high.

Look up the domain server.

Their host seems to be one in Croatia, which may explain the price.  If the person is from there it's sometimes difficult to get support from the US when timezones are so far apart.

What about the rest of the world? Europe do not have the big differences in timezones.

[ws-jessica]

$189/year is...what $15 a month? As pes said, its not that high. Most hosting packages come with a free domain, but you can get one separate from various places from anywhere between $6 to $15 a year.
Expensive hosting would be $25 a month or more, and probably provides the same as the host charging $8 a month lol

I've never even heard of this site before, i dont think its popular enough to warrant a big hosting plan. But who knows, it might be lol

I will message them with a list of cheaper hosts. Although anyone could have pointed them to MBS' "go free" page that has a list of free hosts, or MySimSite which has a list of cheap paid hosting and some free hosts.
Most free hosts though are only good for tiny sites otherwise you end up with frequent "bandwidth exceeded" pages.  :roll:

[Ry]

I actually signed her guestbook and left links to Money Better Spent and MSS.
 

[Saraswati]

I know where I come from, if I was relying on domestic hosts they're actually all about thirty dollars a month even for relatively tiny bandwidth.. I was just lucky that I stumbled over the information on US hosts and I put up with shitty service to be able to afford to run a website.

[SavageArtistry]

I didn't mean to come off as offensive in my initial couple posts (and this next bit is not a sob story - just letting you know why I feel the way I do).  When I first began goofing off with website making about 10 years ago or so, I didn't have any money to put toward it.  Literally, I was lucky to have food and a roof over my head at that point, but I digress... If I wanted to do something with my website, I had to find a way to do it without spending money, and that led me to finding a lot of free resources on the internet.  I will be the first to admit that those free resources have dried up to a degree over the years, but with a little searching you can still find plenty.

Now with that said, I understand higher cost if you're doing something special, like with sites that get tons of traffic or have specialized setups (Wicked/Nouk family of sites, InSim or Mod the Sims to name a few).  What I don't get is that her site looks kind of small/medium sized.  If bandwidth is eating her alive couldn't she host her files on some file host like MediaFire?  If the cost of the website itself is so high, why not find a better host?  Does the country the site or person is operating out of have something to do with it?  I'm sure there's something I don't get - maybe she has some restrictions or circumstances that I'm not aware of.

[calalily]

I think you're missing the overall point - this is where we tell paysites they're doing it wrong - not freesites.  We don't critique freesites because it discourages paysites from becoming free, and some freesite owners have come out and said that her hosting is within expectable parameters.

[SavageArtistry]

I suppose you're right.  It just seems even letting a free site owner know about free resources can't be a bad idea.  That's all I'm trying to get across.  Anyway, as stated above, ultimately it's up to her where she hosts - and ultimately it's up to me whether or I donate or not.

[liegenschonheit]

Quality free hosting is drying up, unfortunately. Most of them put ads all over your site or severely limit your bandwidth. Several smaller sites I've seen have been using Moonfruit or other free hosts, then linking to files hosted on Mediafire, or use blogging sites and do the same thing. Now the problem is that Mediafire is problematic in that it doesn't guarantee that it will keep your files. Files have been known to get dumped, and in the case of filesharing they certainly delete just about everything if anyone complains about it.

So yes, it is still possible to run free sites. However, even going with some of the cheapest packages of paid hosting gives you a lot of security. And for all the stuff people say about GoDaddy, you can get a decent package for $3 or $4 a month, and it's normally quite reliable (unless you do something dumb like me and unknowingly used an expired license for a program ).

It's my opinion that whatever host a free site wants to use is up to them. I don't think her choice is our business at all, except for the matter of how much people are willing to donate to help them. I would hope if that site can't get enough donations, they'll look around to see if they can get one cheaper, but that is all on them.

[littlegeisha]

can i add my 2 cents to this discussion in my bad english?
since i discovered the booty i start donating to free sites.
so when i went to that site and saw that announcement, i was about to donate something. i registered (it's a forum so you must register to be allowed to download) and went to the advent calendar to see the downloads. it looks very good from the previews. but by clicking each day i got always a "page not found" error. so i discovered in the faqs that the dowloads are available only for the current day, because people must go to the site and check it every day. ok, so i clicked the current day, the day before, the day after: nothing, none of the days works.
I always thanks free creators, i always hit the thanks button and i never do bad comments to creations. Everything is free is good for me and i say always thanks.
And everyone can run his site as he wants and decide its rules.
But if you're looking for (money) help, if you want encourage to donate as many people as possible, i think it is not a very good idea to have a so restricted policy.
But i feel a little... tricked. i'm sorry i don't know how you say that in english: specchietto per le allodole. Some birds are attracted by shining things, like silver and gold, so if you want to catch them you can use a mirror and make shine with the sunlight. the bird sees the shine, comes and doesn't find any gold or silver but only a shine and maybe a cage.
In other words... a preview with beautiful things is to attract you to the site, but you won't get them. but instead you get an announcement: "i want your money, i make these beautiful things and if you don't pay i will close the site, but i don't dare to say that clearly, so i cry and ask for help".


Edit: IT ISN'T A FREE SITE!!! http://phorum.mustnotbenamed.com/viewtopic.php?t=1358

[Kyalesyin]

Edit: IT ISN'T A FREE SITE!!! http://phorum.mustnotbenamed.com/viewtopic.php?t=1358

Sneaky...

[deelink]

It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of donations get done by people who can't/or have very limited understanding of the site's language.
A lot of donation sites use very Orwellian language too. Making that much more confusing (TSR is famous for this).

Having said that.. I'm sorry littlegeisha for you having to spend money on a worthless endeavor. But don't worry, you have the booty! And now you know Knowledge is power!

[Duckie]

Edit: IT ISN'T A FREE SITE!!! http://phorum.mustnotbenamed.com/viewtopic.php?t=1358

Sneaky...

It was a paysite when the above linked topic was started. About a week after the topic began the site went free: http://phorum.mustnotbenamed.com/viewtopic.php?p=59807#59807

[glitter-and-hairspray]

Edit: IT ISN'T A FREE SITE!!! http://phorum.mustnotbenamed.com/viewtopic.php?t=1358

Sneaky...

It was a paysite when the above linked topic was started. About a week after the topic began the site went free: http://phorum.mustnotbenamed.com/viewtopic.php?p=59807#59807

Voice of reason FTW.
High five please?

[Flying Dutchman]

I'm not going to comment on where you should or should not have posted this. I shall leave that to others, but I have to say why would this person stay with a web host that charges $189 per year?  That's a ripoff. I have my own domain (not a sims site) and free hosting from doteasy.com for $25 a year.  They also have tons of free add ons.  Unless this site has huge amounts of traffic (like Mod the Sims 2) I just don't see how the bill could be so high.

If they don't mind not having their own domain they can go to others for hosting.  I have a game site for an older game on GameSpy.  When the game was new, it was pretty popular. I never had to pay a dime.

No offense, but it sounds like this person hasn't done their homework. I could fill a page with links to free web hosts.

Mate, some people may more for hosting because they NEED it to keep the site up.