Member Discussions

There are a number of questions and points I want to address in this thread. For the sake of summary to the bare bones of the matter, I am looking for a host for my mud. I've been through the resources section of TMC already, but I'd like to see some further information from the people themselves.

The following are the various sorts of information I'm looking for, and who from:

If you run a mud hosting service:
-Who are you?
-Are you free, or do you cost money?
-What do you offer?
-Are you still accepting accounts?
-What is your security like? Do you have problems with hackers?
-What is your ethical code? Do you require to have an admin on a person's game? Do you alter/view someone's personal game code?
-Any other pertinent information.

If you do not run a mud hosting service, but are hosted by one:
-Information about the service you host with similar to the above.
-Do you like the service? Why?
-Does your service have problems with code being mishandled/stolen/given out? Does it have any known problems at all?
-Etc.

If you do not run a mud hosting service, are not hosted by one, but know of one:
-Information similar to the above.

If you do not run a mud hosting service, are not hosted by one, and don't know of one, or simply have nothing constructive to say:
-Click the back button on your browser.

That about sums up my questions.

-Who are you?

Hosting Unlimited
www.fatemud.net (Website under heavy re-construction)

-Are you free, or do you cost money?

We have given out several free accounts (see our other posts) however those are all full. Our packages are very competitive and we believe them to be the best deal around.

-What do you offer?

Please see our packages section on our website http://www.fatemud.net

-Are you still accepting accounts?

We are always accepting new accounts. If we can not meet your needs, we will either make changes to do so, or find you someone that can.

-What is your security like? Do you have problems with hackers?

Our security is excellent. We have had one major run-in with a "hacker" if you will (more of a script kiddie) that took server two down for around 5 hours, however the holes were fixed and we haven't had a problem since.

-What is your ethical code? Do you require to have an admin on a person's game? Do you alter/view someone's personal game code?

We provide commercial hosting service and carry the ethical code of the majority of large hosting companies. We do not require/ask or will we take an admin char on a customers game. None of our staff will even log on your game unless you ask us to, or we have a serious, serious issue at hand that needs your immediate attention, and even then we will not disturb your game, regardless of the situation. We will NEVER view a customers files UNLESS we have received reports that you are performing illegal actions with your account. We have and abide by a strict privacy policy which is available upon request through E-Mail (admin@fatemud.net)


-Any other pertinent information.

All other information not found in this post and not found on our website can be requested through E-Mail and we will respond A.S.A.P


Regards,

Dan Gohn
Hosting Unlimited Administrator

There's another point I forgot to cover in my previous post, which is:


If you aren't hosted by a mud service, but host your own mud from your own private server/computer:
-Which method do you use for doing so? (there are several I can think of)
-Do you have any links to resources for setting up one's own server in this way?
-What spec of machine are you using? High-end? Low-end? Somewhere inbetween? (I imagine running just one mud as compared to several has different hardware demands)
-How well does it work for you? Are there issues with it, such as slowdown, bandwidth problems, etc?


(Comment added by Sora_ on Tue Jan 2 11:37:16 2007)

Also:
-Is the computer/server you host it from the computer you use normally, or is a seperate one set aside just for hosting it?

I host off my own server, it would be considered low-end probably (800Mhz processor, 256MB RAM, and a 15GB drive). The only hardware it shares with my main PC is monitor, keyboard and mouse via a KVM switch. The mud is still in alpha stage so I'm not sure of any eventual slowdowns, lag, etc due to players. We have had about 7 immortals on at one time all doing stuff, while the coder was also doing compiling and there was no slowdown. No real issues with bandwidth as of yet.

We're running SuSe Linux v10.0 (with upgrades as available) and also run the mud's website set up via apache. The mud itself also uses MySQL for the database and there doesn't seem to be any slowdown caused by that either.

As to the actual set up to be able to put the mud up, it was simple, wipe the drive, install SuSe, make sure I opened the correct ports for incoming access via the router, install all the virus scanners, firewalls, etc. Copy over the zip file I made from my old host, unzip/untar it, and then start it up. We've since ditched the old code entirely and are coding our own, but thats besides the point.

The only other changes we needed to do at that point was set up the backup scripts to run at correct intervals. I think the whole process took 24 hours since life kept interfering. BTW, I picked up the server (old PC, whatever) off EBay for like $90 including shipping.

If you aren't hosted by a mud service, but host your own mud from your own private server/computer:
-Which method do you use for doing so? (there are several I can think of)

We have used multiple options over the years, from free hosting by an ISP or corporation, or paid hosting

-What spec of machine are you using? High-end? Low-end? Somewhere inbetween? (I imagine running just one mud as compared to several has different hardware demands)

A variety of hardware over the years, starting with a second hand SparcStation 2 (SunOS) in the mid 90's, to a 600MHz Pentium 3 (late 90's - 2005), to an Athlon 2800+ (current). We used FreeBSD on the latter two. Reliable hard drive storage and hardware has been important, because we do not have on site administrators.

Problems encountered:
a: getting hardware maintenance or troubleshooting without a local administrator
b: finding a reliable ISP or company who will provide the bandwidth and hosting free
c: when dealing with paid hosting (which gives outstanding service, but at a price) - raising the $$ to pay for the connection
d: mitigating downtime. With every extended period of down time or flaky service, we lose players.

- Is the computer/server you host it from the computer you use normally, or is a separate one set aside just for hosting it?

Dedicated to just the mud and the mud's web server / email server / ftp (all for mud purposes).

If you run a mud hosting service:
-Who are you?
>> Internet Services Unlimited, Inc (http://www.isunlimited.net)

-Are you free, or do you cost money?
>> We have a free base package available for MU*'s that can be upgraded as requirements are needed. Our packages are 100% customizable, so you only pay for what you use above and beyond the ISFree package. Our pricing is extremely competitive and we offer discounts for quarterly, semi-annual and annual payments. We currently accept credit cards through Paypal, Paypal payments and checks (3 month minimum).

-What do you offer?
>> Our free package comes with 50 MB of HD space, 1% CPU on a AMD Athlon 3200+, 10 MB of RAM, 1 port, 1 subdomain (domain.isunlimited.net), and up to 10 simultaneous connections. Pricing details are currently available at http://www.isunlimited.net/hosting-mu.php. We will shortly be releasing a brand new site which may result in that URL being defunct. I will post an update at that time if this occurs.

-Are you still accepting accounts?
>> We are still accepting accounts for both the ISFree and the ISCustom accounts as well as accepting requests for Dedicated and/or Colocated servers.

-What is your security like? Do you have problems with hackers?
>> We keep our servers up to date with the latest patches and have, to date, not had any issues with hackers. We have a specialized security admin with DOD experience on a contract in case of significant problems.

-What is your ethical code? Do you require to have an admin on a person's game? Do you alter/view someone's personal game code?
>> We do not require admin on a person's game nor do we require any sort of access to the game itself. We will not alter nor view personal game code without permission or legal requirements.

-Any other pertinent information.
>> Our services have been up and running for a year with very limited downtime. Prior to ISU's release, our staff have run free hosts and servers for over ten years.
>> Please feel free to email us at sales@isunlimited.net with any questions that you may have.

(Comment added by Xandar on Fri Jan 5 8:21:51 2007)

Pricing URL has been changed to:

http://www.isunlimited.net/i/hosting/shared

You can also download our MU Quote Request excel spreadsheet from

http://www.isunlimited.net/includes/MU_quoting.xls

Thank you,
- Philippe

A very important detail has been brought to my attention from another thread, that I missed out on clarifying in my former request for information on mud hosting. The addition is as follows:

If you run a mud hosting service:
-Know what you're doing and how to do it.

A thanks from me for all the information shared by the rest of you so far, I'd like to note. However, I'm still looking for a host as of yet, so further help is appreciated.

Well, if Hosting Unlimited or ISUnlimited do not meet your needs or fall under the category of Know what you are doing... Well then I do not know what you are looking for. Maybe you should tell us exactly what you want and are looking for and maybe we can help you out or point you in the right direction. It seems that you are looking for something outside of what has been offered to you and a specific request would see more realistic.

Regards,

Dan

I made what I'm looking for very clear in my previous posts. No, the services suggested so far don't meet what I'm looking for, but I will not specify why.

I just want suggestions that meet the criteria.

When you reply in a surly way to a post, you're
actually talking in a surly way to everyone who
reads it.

Just a thought.

If you want people to take the time to respond,
as a favor to you, to your post, it might be in your
interest to adopt a more conciliatory tone.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

Thank you, Sally, for that motivational speech. And yet, nothing you said contains potential hosting services I could be looking into instead of listening to you rant.

So here's a thought I have for you, you do-it-yourselfer. I don't care if you don't like my tone. I especially can't read what you're saying, look at that horse-faced avatar picture of yours, and take your advice seriously. Especially when there are people before you who were, despite my surliness which is aparently of a calibur to get you to interject your worthless opinion about it, trying honestly to help me out here; which I have since thanked them for.

If you really want to help someone, Louise, instead of just sounding like an ass, you could try just sticking to the topic that was at hand instead of taking to your one man mission to change the world one attitude you don't like at a time.

Thanks.

Good advice. Thank you for your time.

Best of luck in your efforts.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net/

Wow Crat, you surprised me ;) I was expecting this to turn into an all out CENSORED throwing contest!


hahahaha, anyways,

To the OP... Post why the other services do not meet your needs would not be a flame, put down, or anything of the sort on the few services providers that responded to your post. In fact it would help everyone decipher what it is that you are looking for. Believe it or not, your original post did not outline exactly what you were looking for in a host. You simply asked everyone to submit information to you. We could narrow your search greatly if you gave specifics :)

Just my 2 cents.

Regards,

Gilmore

- Hosting Unlimited

(Comment added by cratonia on Sun Jan 7 3:24:35 2007)

** ORIGINAL MESSAGE QUOTE **
To the OP... Post why the other services do not meet your needs would not be a flame, put down, or anything of the sort on the few services providers that responded to your post.
** END QUOTE **

This should read:

To the OP... Posting why the other services do not meet your needs would not be a flame, put down, or anything of the sort on the few service providers that responded to your post.

Sorry about the typos, im full of them. Probably a few in this edit

Warmest Regards,

Gilmore!

"Wow Crat, you surprised me ;) I was expecting this to turn into an all out CENSORED throwing contest!"

Eh, some people are worth bothering with, some aren't.

If someone resorts to mocking your *avatar*, that's
a good clue which column they fall into.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net/

Well stated. Touche Volcano Insurance Salesman! Touche!


Warmest Regards,

Gilmore!
http://www.hostingunlimitedservices.com

What a *CENSORED*. tnuc a tahW

Well, it's not that I'm wanting the search to be narrowed any further than I defined it. My point was to put out enough room that I could get enough sources to make a much wider comparison of the options available to me. Of course, when it comes down to it what I'm looking for most of all is A) Free, B) Enough storage space, and C) Enough processing time and RAM. But I wanted to keep things open-ended for the most part so I could go for options not neccessarily fitting my best-case scenario. Such as if the only way I'm going to get B and C is to drop A, then that's what I'd have to settle for. But I want to make sure I've exhausted all other possibilities before going that route, you see.

That's why you'll notice I have a combination in my initial post for both hosting services and information for setting up one's own server. As it stands, I think I'm probably leaning towards the latter route. Although there are a lot of complications in that I really don't want to deal with.

Well since your original post we have opened up unlimited free accounts, however they do not compare to the free accounts we previously offered as far as system resources. If you would like, you can e-mail me a specific list of what resources you need, such as how much disk space, how much ram & how much CPU usage you will need and I can see what I can work out. I may be able to swing a free account if the demands are not too high. Up to you of course.

As far as anything else goes, I can only recommend one other hosting service which is www.genesismuds.com as back when I was hosting my mud elsewhere, I personally loved their service. They had 99% stability, excellent customer service and tech support & very inexpensive packages. However, the packages that my company offers do "beat" theirs if you will, however I have yet to match their stability rating.

Now, as for setting up your own server to host your mud. Their are several "easy" options out there that would allow you to host your own mud yourself. However, to truly get the maximum potential of your mud, running on a well set-up, administered, and monitored server is a much better idea. That is why people like myself charge for hosting :) Its alot of work to run a succesful server/servers and I applaud all that do it. Stability vs Non-Stability is really your debate when choosting commercial hosting vs private do-it-yourself.


Hope this brings in some light, however I assume you already knew most of this :)


Warmest Regards,

Gilmore!


(Comment added by cratonia on Sun Jan 7 21:34:18 2007)

God, my typing, spelling, grammar and punctuation are horrible aren't they? Truly disgusting! And to think I made it past middle school. HORRIBLE!

God, my typing, spelling, grammar and punctuation are horrible aren't they? Truly disgusting! And to think I made it past middle school. HORRIBLE!

Don't worry about it Cratonia, you may have made it past middle school but not past high school. *ducks*

Don't worry about it Cratonia, you may have made it past middle school but not past high school. *ducks*

Thanks, Drizzle, for all that useful and helpful information regarding potential hosts I could be looking up and/or information about setting up one's own host. I'm glad there are people like you out there that know how to stick to a topic.

I think his handle is Drizzt1216, not Drizzle.

-Crat

Once again, Cindy, you post in this thread without contributing to the topic at all. Instead, you decide to inject your horse's ass opinion about something wholy insignificant. You believe his handle is Drizzt1216, and not Drizzle? Fascinating. I don't really care.

What gets me though is this isn't the only time or place you keep putting your head up your ass and then proceeding to write forum posts. In most of the recent threads I see you trundling into a topic, and making some inane, whether it be wrong or right, correction to something. As though to say you're better than everyone else, and they need to know it right now. So I'm going to give you some free advice to help you with your problem:

1) Stop doing that. Now. You're not helpful, you're not funny. You're just annoying when you do your "I must go out of my way to correct people because I am the God of Right" act.

2) Get a new avatar image. Seriously, that is one of the single most disturbing-looking avatar images in all of TMC; and to top it off, the jackass expression on it's face matches the attitudes you've been showing in your correction sprees. Not to mention, you and the other people taking avatar images that display haughty, self-absorbed, mid-to-senior-aged men that resemble buisnessmen is in poor taste, aside from already having been done before. You are not Tyche. Stop trying so hard.

3) Take your own advice. Now, while I'd like to see you stop being a horses ass in all of the threads you post in, I'd at least like you to stop doing that in mine, since you're hindering my efforts to obtain information and assistance instead of helping them. As you said yourself to someone else, it's not in your best interest to argue with someone who resorts to insulting your avatar image. And yet, you jump back into the thread again, completely forgetting that. Make up your mind.

4) Stop adding that -Crat at the end of your posts. We know what your member name is. We can see it at the start of your post. Knock it off. I very much doubt that anyone reads any of your posts, and by the time they get to the end of it they have forgotten who you are and need a reminder.


Now, if you're quite done making a mess of a thread that should have remained on the positive side, you can stop with the unhelpfullness. You don't even have to reply at all. Strange concept to wrap your head around, but trust me on this one. If you get the urge to post anything not related to the above topic of hosting, don't.

Thanks.

I will take your advice if *you* do. Stop messing up
this perfectly good thread with your offtopic
ranting, and maybe then I'll follow suit.

Then again, maybe not. We'll have to see.

There's this group of people I've noticed, I think they
might be fans of some kind of cartoon stuff, and it seems
that wherever they go, they expect only one thing:
total obedience or total war. It's really odd! It's
like, "my way, or the MAD FLAMES way!"...I can actually
picture them flying through the air, screaming,
foot out for an ultra thunder megazord kick.

It's the weirdest thing ever. They have only one
response to anything-other-than-praise-and-submission,
and that is belligerence.

I think we all know who I'm talking about here.

Anyway, thanks for laying out the law for me. I'll
be sure to keep that in mind. In the meantime, you
might want to just chill. I'm ok with you not liking
me. It seems to really be upsetting you, though,
and I hope that's something you manage to get a
grip on.

-Crat

PS I might or might not be "better than anyone else".
I do think I'm better than you, though. :)

PPS I'm not the one arguing and getting all huffy
and snippy. Maybe you need a less stressful hobby?

PPPS What's so "disturbing" about my avatar, anyway?
Not everyone is into your space cartoons, yknow.

Also, the name's not "Cindy".

-Crat

I like your avatar Cratylus. I like your posts too; you speak coherent sense. Whether i agree with your opinions or not is irrelavent. Peoples opinions differ; that's why we have dicussions on forums like these.

This Other guy is a nutcase. His posts are rambling, pretentious nonsense. His first reply to those posting helpful information in response to his (in retrospect) OBVIOUSLY unclear post, stunk of ignorance, rudeness and outright hostility from the start. I sense an element of insecurity from the original poster. In the 'real world', people that behave like him lose their teeth. Its easy to be a bully behind the internet.

I'm sure you have no clue who I am, as i don't know you either, but i had to respond to this thread as it infuriated me so much. The mudding community does not need people like this, and i urge people reading not avoid whatever MUD he is planning on hosting, and any other he may be involved with, like the plague (Although i'm sure my suggestion is unnessecary. Common sense is called 'common' for a reason).


I'm not sure of your intentions, Sora_ (or is that 'Jessica'?), but surely you must be able to see that this thread has not exactly been a good advert to any future enterprise that you may be researching for.