I think this topic is in a 'gray area' of whether or not it counts as 'off topic', so if it isn't allowed, please remove the thread.
What host does Flowergame, both chat and game, go on? I'm trying to get my site started but don't know who my host should be. I think I read on the forums that it's free to the owner and pays for itself through its ads, right? Thank you for your assistance in advance.
The site host is not free. The owner pays for it. Ads help defray the costs.
If you want to make a game site, it will cost money. This is because clickable pets take a lot of space and bandwidth. The databases also get huge in both number and size as the number of players grow and each player's collection grows. Even if you find a "free game host" you will outgrow it very quickly and things will get very expensive.
If you still want to do this, I have had good time with Anubianhost. They are very inexpensive, hosting comes with a domain, and the owner is willing to work with you if you need something the host doesn't already have. They also have the option of dedicated servers so there is plenty of room if your site makes it big.
Darn. I was really hoping I could find a free host for my own games, but from the sound of it, it's a no-go.
I don't have any money at all, since I don't have an income, and was hoping that I could temporarily use a free host to get my games off other people's sites and on to mine, and get it popular enough that the ads actually bring me into the positive since I can't work anymore.
Back to the drawing board! Thank you again.
The hosting is not free, in fact it costs quite an amount of money every month. Depending on the size of your page, a server will cost between 20$ and 200$ per month, huge sites like gxplus will cost even more. Free webspace will usually not allow you to host a real browsergame of any type, simply because such a site consumes way more performance then a static webpage like a blog or such would. Shared webhosters are critical since you are most likely to get kicked of the server if you page consumes to many resources and you are going to hit the traffic limit for sure. Flowergame for example hasn't that many active users and comperable small graphics, but still produced almost 20GB of traffic PER DAY in june. This is 3 times the traffic, the hoster lamoxlamae recommended would allow in their biggest webhosting package (if i may say: this hoster is expensive anyway, at least the prices for the dedicated servers are extortionate). You'll also need basic knowledge about maintaining a linux system as anything except for shared webhosting and managed hosting (first one too small, second one far too expensive) will mean, that you will have to set up the whole server yourself.
The ads make up for the sheer running costs so we don't have to pay for the game from our own pockets at least, but there is more to running such an site then just paying for the server. Programers and artists will most likely also want their share for all the hours of work they put into this.
