What do you think of membership charges? Have your say here.

[Kherr]

Yet again, cool cool... Sounds like fun on hyperdrive. X3

[Hot Trout]

Update :

As you may now be aware, the fnal part of the membership system is now in place. As of today, all sections of the rom database are now controlled by user status access control. Every folder has three levels of access, Guest, Registered User, Unlimited User. You can change from Guest to Registered for free just by registering and from Registered to Unlimited just by a one time donation of $10.

I have made a few sections Unlimited User only. This is to control access for age and mostly to control download bandwidth issues. It has to be said though that 98% of all the roms remain available to everyone for free. The following sections are now changed to

G = Guests
R = Registered Users
U = Unlimited Users

Apple Pippin - R,U
Atari ST - R,U
Bandai Playdia - R,U
Commodore Amima - R,U
Fujitsu FM Towns - R,U
MAME - R,U
Nintendo GBA - R,U
Nintendo N64 - U
Nintendo SNES - R,U
PC Abandonware - R,U
SNK NeoGe - R,U
Sega Mega CD - U
Tandy VIS - R,U

This should control download use and also bring in a litle revenue, hopefully

Let me know what you think guys.

[gamfrkI]

i like the G R U

[crustyasp46]

I'm here till death do us part, regardless of what you have to do to make the site survive, I like the site, I believe that old games and old systems should survive in some form way and shape, and also they are enjoyable to play even yet. Registered membership attests to that, and watching the registrations rise so fast shows that this site is wanted.

[MadMunk]

I would say no charges.

Users would go elsewhere.
You only run a site like this because you are driven by a passion for retro gaming.
you can host high-functionality sites for a song these days.

[Hot Trout]

Madmunk,

It costs $250 a month to run your own dedicated server with 1TB RAID5 storage, Core2Quad CPU and 4GB Ram on a 10MB line with 5TB download. That is currently what this site uses. Anything less results in downtime, slow connections and user time outs.

[MunkHead]

You need unlimited disc space and bandwidth.

Between 2002 and 2005 I had a high volume site, 550Gb per month (mainly videos), plus a very active phpBB forum - a lot for its day and I did it all on this: http://www.globat.com/globat/gx01.bml with plenty of room to spare.

The only drag was it took all night to upload it all to start with.

[Kherr]

5TB download.

HT says that's the download limit per month. Not what is actually used. What's used isn't that much, but it does come close at times (to my general understanding).

550Gb per month.

This is what you said your site used per month. ~ 1/8th of this site's limit. That would not be enough. Besides, your site more than likely doesn't do dedicated server hosting. At 5 bucks a month, I guarantee it's NOT dedicated hosting, but shared hosting. With 1.9 million page views per month (not including the downloads per month which I guarantee are more) we NEED a dedicated server. I've had this conversation with HT already. Believe me, he's basically getting the cheapest service for what he needs... or he wouldn't be paying that much per month or so one would assume...

Not trying to be rude, sorry.

[Sellbars]

if you are doing a search for roms and come across this site and see a banner that says "you must register and participate to download this rom" or even "please register to download this rom" (assuming you start out with some free credits) what is the end Surfer gonna do? he might say, "Screw this and continue searching"

SO, the question is how do we go about this in a way that won't scare away people?

Put a good, convincing text like "To enjoy hundreds of THOUSANDS of 100% working ROMs and a very fast download, please register!" Then you can list how manys token you get after registering, extra stuff you get by being a Member, etc.

[MunkHead]

Try it for a month and see if it works.

Unlimited downloads for a one-off £25.

Actually got a better idea: Sell this for £29 hardware only and throw in 'free' unlimited MAME ROM downloads http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-Arcade-Joysti ... 3a5f5fce92


Repeat £19 for USB NES controller and 'free' access to the NES ROM downloads. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PC-USB-GAMEPAD-JO ... 2eaaaa006e

Repeat ad-infinitum with all the other USB controllers.

That way you are selling the controller and giving away the ROMS to use with them. You cant be accused by some eagle=eyed lawyer of 'selling' ROMS or emulators.