massive-war

I know nothing about the web. i can program games, and that's it, nothing else. So... my question is: how does hosting work?

If I wanted to make a game (which I'm doing at this very moment) and I needed servers to run the game (because basic web hosting isn't enough---I know that), would it be better if I made my own servers and managed them myself, or spend the money for some halfway across the world?

Thanks

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Infinite Recursion

You could host it locally. I would want complete control over my network.

If your IP is static, register a domain name with someone like GoDaddy.com.
If your IP is dynamic, you can check out no-ip.com.

Or you can pay someone else to do this for you... and the more features you need
PHP, MySQL, etc... or more space you need, the more money it will cost you... and even if they say its 100% uptime, they can never guarantee it.

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Ooble

I would personally host them myself - when you own the servers, you own the power button. Just be prepared to spend a lot on bandwidth.

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massive-war

But then don't I have to worry HORRIBLY about security issues?

Also, what does static and dynamic IP addresses mean? sorry I'm completely unfamiliar with this whole subject.


I registered a domain name with www.hostway.com

In order to host it locally, what would I do?

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mackenga

Every computer connected to the internet has an IP address. If you have a static IP, your computer always has the same one. If you have a dynamic one, you get allocated one when you connect (the norm for home users, especially on dial-up or ADSL connections).

Personally, I use web hosting; I move around too much to run a server. However, if you want to do more interesting things than just run a website, hosting can be hard to get and quite expensive. If it's a game server you want to run, and not something that can be done with server-side scripting, you probably are better off running your own server. Although you could do both - if you want a website, get hosting for it, and just run your own game server. That way you may save on bandwidth.

Basically, I think you've got a lot of reading to do. If you want to produce network multiplayer games, you're probably going to have to look into socket programming anyway; it'll be a while before you're ready to produce this type of program and actually get up and running.