Website Question

xG00BERx

I know lots of people out there are making UO Servers and stuff and a must is a website...

This is where I have run into some contact. I have never found a website that actually looks as good as some of yours (the ServUO Community). Lots of you have very very nice looking Forums and webpages...

If it is not against the rules to ask where you are getting these? Which provider you are going through etc?

I personally like a ton of languages and program in multiple languages but cannot stand Web based languages.
 
I use Godaddy hosting for the website and domain. Im not all that good with website languages either, so i just use a little css and html in Dreamweaver. For the forums, Godaddy had SMF available for install so I use that.
 
Hey,
I've done a bit of part time web design before for several businesses.
ServUO use the XenForo software a long with a custom theme, many of which are available for free on the XenForo website, some of them are paid for and there are other websites such a PixelEdit.com which sell premium themes and I think offer custom theme designs too.

There are other website solutions, one of the easiest ways is using a CMS (Content Management System) such as Joomla which is free, there are also themes/templates for Joomla.

I've not attempted to make a custom theme for XenForo as that is slightly outside of my knowledge, I did manage to make one with the help of online tutorials for Joomla.
With XenForo you get a whole host of addons for free and again many addons which you have to pay for but can be created yourself if you have the know-how. VBuilliten is another forum software but I've never really looked into that one.
phpBB is yet again another forum software, this time a free one though.

So there are a lot of options it just depends on your budget. I saved up and shelled out for a XenForo license not too long ago and can say that it was well worth it and it's very powerful even if you have no prior knowledge of web design.

Then of course you have the DIY approach which would involve creating webpages from scratch, I usually use Dreamweaver like Ravenwolfe said but you have to pay for that too however there are various tools available to help you code it for free and if you wish to you can write it in Notepad :p

For hosting solutions i use NFOServers web hosting as it was one of the cheapest I found for their bottom line package which is sufficient for a small website and as for purchasing a Domain I use OnlyDomains, I used to use GoDaddy but their custom service seemed a little shit to me. :p - For price point GoDaddy seems to have the most regular deals on domains etc.

I hope that helped out somewhat, if you've got any Qs let me know! :)
 
These both really helped me! Thanks to the both of you! I have looks at Xen like ServUO uses as well! Just never purchased it!

I need to look into how to actually install one of these onto a server! :)

Sure youtube will work just fine ;)
 
XenForo is one of the easiest to install (imho)
http://xenforo.com/help/installation/
Basically you upload it onto your web server with an ftp client, set the permissions so it can read, write and edit. Then point your browser to the install file and it walks you through it in their set up file. The only hiccup you might come across is setting up the database but that's pretty straight forward once you know how as with most things :p
 
Ce Jayce said:
XenForo is one of the easiest to install (imho)
http://xenforo.com/help/installation/
Basically you upload it onto your web server with an ftp client, set the permissions so it can read, write and edit. Then point your browser to the install file and it walks you through it in their set up file. The only hiccup you might come across is setting up the database but that's pretty straight forward once you know how as with most things :p
Click to expand...

Thanks very very much mate!
 
Wordpress would also be another free option. Many forum softwares out there offer bridge addons for WordPress. Meaning you can share accounts/data/ect between Wordpress and your forum software.

ServUO doesn't use a CMS, instead we use a portal setup with XenForo for the whole "CMS" feel and look. The style we use here is a paid style for XF, with a lot of mods to the style to make it more suitable for UO.

As for hosting, I would suggest you stay away from GoDaddy. ServUO used to be hosted on DreamHost, which is a great service and pretty cheap when it comes to shared hosting. You could get a deal with them for $20 for a year of web hosting, plus 2 free domains (or one domain registered for 2 years.) Small sites/shards shouldn't need much more than shared hosting. So it would probably be a perfect fit for you.

If you're looking to get setup and going quickly. Wordpress or Joomla would be your best choices. They're easy to install, highly used, and both have a great open community to support them. As for a forum software...many claim to be great. Very few FREE ones are that good. If you have plans to perhaps purchase XenForo some day down the road (and I highly recommend it) you would probably want to go with phpbb or MyBB, as they're easy to convert over to XF. SMF is free, and a lot of people use it (why I'm not sure, it has more security holes than swiss cheese has holes.) Although it's rather difficult to convert from SMF to XF.
 
Insanity said:
As for hosting, I would suggest you stay away from GoDaddy.
Click to expand...

I'm curious why, I've had no issues with them and I love that they auto-converted my site for mobiles.

Let me know so I can drop them if need be.

And yeah, SMF is definitely full of holes, but it was free and easy, and don't think for a second that phpBB doesn't have holes! :D

Someday I will transition to XenForo, they are clearly the best.

Personally, I would steer clear of Wordpress, those guys are getting eaten alive with compromises. Joomla is pretty nice and not hard to figure out.
 
GoDaddy is just a greedy and evil company, imo. They've been know to register domain names that people search for using their services, and inflating the value of the domain when the person returns. Which is fucked up enough for me to not use them. Although then you must know that they also was a supporter of SOPA. Plus their support SUCKS.

I've know many friends that honestly didn't know much of what they were doing use GoDaddy. On most default installs you'll find you may need to edit a file on the server side in order to allow larger uploads. If you're a novice and don't know what to do...you'd do like most people and put in a ticket for support. GoDaddy usually responds by trying to explain to you where the file is and what to edit. Most novices won't even know what to do with the instructions they receive. Less time could be wasted if the support team actually did the changes for you with your permission (like most real web hosting support teams will do.)


The reason why I find most people using GoDaddy is because they see it as cheap. When really it's not that cheap (you can find cheaper if you look harder.)

As for phpbb and wordpress. Both of them are insanely popular, and have a rather big community and developers/contributors to the projects. Meaning any issues are usually dealt with quickly. Plus the large community means a much better selection of mods/styles/ect. There isn't much of a selection for XF yet. Phpbb probably has the most mods/styles out of any forum softwares out there. So you'll find it easier to get phpbb to do what you want, and look how you want it to look much easier. Same goes for Wordpress too, it's popularity just keeps growing.
 
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