davvblack

Hi there, I'm interested in getting some hosting here for a couple of specific reasons, and wanted to make sure they would all work out before commiting cash.

First, one I'm not worried too much about: while hosting here is cheap, the registrar service is several times as much as elsewhere. How trivial is it to connect a domain name I purchase elsewhere with sevice I buy here? (Also, are there any discount registrar's I should look out for?)

Ok: One of the things I want to do is make a useful utility for an online game I play. Every day, the creators publish a log file of the state of the game universe in a .tgz file. How hard is it to write a script that copies the file to my stuff, untgzs it, and runs some simple database stuff on it? Should I use PHP for that? (I haven't learned it yet, but its high on my to do).

Last question: does anyone happen to know the protocal games like runescape use? They are flash games, played in a browser, that communicate live with the server. I assume they are getting and putting XML files, would I need something faster than a shared server for that?

Anyway. Thanks for the help.

wickers

Not hard at all. That's exactly what I've done. Surpass gives you two DNS server addresses that you point your domain name at. This is usually done with the account from company you've picked up the domain name from. I used godaddy.com to save a few bucks... however I've found their sales team a bit pushy. And their website for account holders makes my eyes bleed with all their ads and 'bonus' packages that enjoy working their way into your view. :s

PHP will do, but if you don't have any prior programming/scripting experience I'd say to not expect it to take shape overnight. Do expect to invest a good amount of time learning PHP... besides you'll be able to apply these skills elsewhere.

Usually if the company does not release that information then they don't want you to know. (for security reasons, or just to protect their intellectual property)

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davvblack

Cool. Expected as much.

I already know C++ and actionscript, plus some other scripting sorts of languages. Learning wont take long, the only problem I run into now is mixing them up. (And remembering which languages decided to be dumb and start arrays at 1).

So it would be easy enough to use PHP to unzip a file?

Well, I meant more along the lines of implementation. Is reading and writing to a file going to take less time than a pageload, for example?