Starting a video game site.

2 Marcus 2 Ravens

Yeah, it's terrible I know. But my room mate and myself are trying to start a video game website for fun. I'm in college for television production and plan on focusing heavily on video content. The problem is, neither of us have any idea what we're doing when it comes to web site creation.

Where do I start? I know I'll need to buy a domain name. Is there any site in particular I should do that? A quick look at GoDaddy looked pretty good, but I really have no idea.

The site would probably be in a blog format, at least to start, with lots of videos and hopefully a forum. That being said, it'd be nice to be able to end up with something a little more fancy, so I guess we'd need flexibility as far as the layout goes.

Neither of us know much html, but we have some friends who could help with that.

If anybody has any advice at all, it'd be greatly appreciated.

Jasconius

For video content you'll need a host with decent bandwidth. Your standard 10 dollar Godaddy hosting package will not support video that well at all.

Unless you plan to host the videos on Youtube/Vimeo or something. That's totally an option.

Basic blog software, of which there are millions of choices, will provide you with some rudimentary functionality for getting the videos on your site.

You will need someone with moderate HTML knowledge and is at least loosely familiar with a server programming language such as PHP.

2 Marcus 2 Ravens

Jasconius wrote: »

For video content you'll need a host with decent bandwidth. Your standard 10 dollar Godaddy hosting package will not support video that well at all.

Unless you plan to host the videos on Youtube/Vimeo or something. That's totally an option.

Basic blog software, of which there are millions of choices, will provide you with some rudimentary functionality for getting the videos on your site.

You will need someone with moderate HTML knowledge and is at least loosely familiar with a server programming language such as PHP.

Thanks for the help! Do you have any particular suggestions for a hosting site?

Jasconius

Not really.

A lot of people seem to like Dreamhost. I've never used them.

MediaTemple is a very popular medium-high range solution.

Then, if you've got dolla dolla bills, Rackspace is at the top.

FrozenTempest

I was thinking of doing that for quite a while, considering the sheer amount of games I played, but I never really tried or anything. But I believe decent design is a must.

supabeast

Pair.com is a great host. Not the cheapest around, and they don’t have a sparkly web site or lots of instant templates, but everything just works except for major server upgrades which impact users maybe once every three years.

bruin

I've done a good little bit of writing for small video game websites over the past couple years. One piece of advice I can offer is to keep in mind that you are doing this for fun (as you said in the OP), and that if you want lots of hits, your content needs to stand out, be consistent and updated frequently, and you need to smartly and relentlessly promote it. It's a lot of work. But it can also be a great time. My taste in video games has matured greatly due to writing about them, too.

2 Marcus 2 Ravens

Thanks for the advice! I'm checking out those sites and Dreamhost looks pretty good to me. Plus the free trial doesn't hurt.