Been Awhile Since I Posted
As always AngryGaming has been showing steady signs of growth to handle this steady increase in users we have added two new staff members to our little family here and appreciate the time they donate to my project. I say my but it really is a group effort I would of gone crazy long ago if it was not for Peterson, Cody, Stefan, Vuk, these core members of my group have helped shape and bring AngryGaming to where it is now. With that being said here are some things for the next few months we are looking to focus on.
AngryGaming will be focusing on these tasks:
Custom In-House Stats Software to handle more than just Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2 as well as some other things we are just unable to provide with HLXCE
One-click installs for popular open-source software Gaming Communities prefer to use (sourcebans, stats, and more!)
Addition of GameServer Hosting added to our Network
Introduction of our StarCraft 2 Community site
Introduction of our Video Streaming site to members
As I continue to provide free hosting to gamers I am always seeking out ways to make this project self-sustaining as even now after a year I am still using my day job to fund the project and steady adding webservers as well.
Keep an eye out for new services to be offered and never hesitate if you have a suggestion for improvements.
As we complete the final upgrades to our network we would like to say thank you to everyone for choosing the AngryGaming Network for their stats, general gaming hosting services. To reduce costs for ourselves we have been building the servers ourselves and establishing relationships with premium datacenters asking for any kind of discount for our good cause. Although we have not had anyone grant us flat out free hosting we have had some costs reductions here and there and at this point every dollar saved is a blessing. AngryGaming Network for just the web-hosting side of their operation has entered the double digits for dedicated servers. As we prepare for solid growth we are looking for a potential way to exploit our user base to create a reliable self-sustaining solution. The idea is to get so many free users and with those that get premium and the donations develop a viable advertising revenue. Or something along those lines.
As always AngryGaming is looking for a perl programmer to take their project to the next level.
We are also looking to add one staff member to assist with account creation. (knowledge as a basic web admin all that is needed)
Times….A-Changin
After this large upgrade that occured on Sunday April 22, 2010 on both Box 1 and Box 2 which would be the third upgrade I thought Angrygaming would be okay. However it seems Angrygaming Network has officially outgrown VPS’s through and through. Angrygaming will be adding a Quadcore dedicated server to replace both VPS’s and this will also cover the rapid growth we are currently experiencing. We are also proud of the successful expansion into London and Germany with our new servers across the Atlantic. After setting up the servers we set-up a test run of 25 users on each box. After a week we asked for their opinion and not one single person rated it below a 9 saying it is insanely fast. I being a person that lives in Maryland have no way of really knowing. However I can say I ping only 78 to it somehow and when I shell into the server it is actually faster than my two US central boxes which doesnt say much. I do apologize however I am making up for it in a big way with this huge upgrade. Don’t forget to donate if you are a customer of Angrygaming!
Catching up……Several Improvements over the past two weeks
I am going to just go ahead and post all the improvements, upgrades, add-ons, releases since so much has happened all at once or right around the same time and this was not intentional. Just coincidence that different staff members had completed their tasks at or around the same time and the servers finally got setup at our Euro locations after 6 weeks of waiting. So without further delay here is all that has occurred within the Angrygaming Network.
Germany Server now added for our Euro Users (DirectAdmin)
London Server now added for our Euro Users (DirectAdmin)
Florida Server now added for our USA Users (ISPconfig) (Possibly Cpanel soon)
Kansas City Server now added for our USA server (GameServers)
Total Server count now at 6.
Angrygaming is now comfortably setup for international hosting services.
We have dropped our Vbulletin 3.8.4 forums in favor of IP.Board 3.x since it was time to renew our VB license we decided it was time to make a change as the costs did not justify the quality and I am really enjoying the change in every way. The only thing I will say from an administrator stand point is that Vbulletin certainly has a larger database of addons/hacks however every addon I have added for IPB 3.x has been of higher quality. I also have managed to do every single thing I was doing previously with my Vbulletin board so for 100.00 less I find it to be absolutely worth it. Vbulletin kind of shafted me on my license as I specifically asked about a new license rumor and they made me pay 80.00 plus transfer cost. They than offered 10% off the new license but that was it, so aside from that IP.Board look wise is just more appealing to me. Although right now 3.x being brand new has limited skins, addons the ones that are out there are of very nice quality.
Themes:
We will be adding our database of Angrygaming Network Exclusive Webspell Gaming Sites (Templates) that will be a one stop solution to getting your clan online and socializing with each other! Currently we have already paid more than 1,450.00 in unique designs to call our own and gain exclusive rights including reselling. We will be offering these to our paid subscription users (must sign-up for a one year contract but still able to pay monthly). We are still debating offering it to our free users however they would only get access to the admin panel of webpsell CMS. However this is still in discussion and planning phases.
New Website!
Angrygaming Network Staff member Stefan did all the artwork and css coding for the layout and the cross over to CMS was performed by staff member Jessay you can view the new layout at http://www.angrygaming.org The new site allows us to offer much more content and make it easier for our staff to post as its now all handled automatically in the back-end. This has been a huge milestone to overcome as we have been operating successfully now without any kind of proper website so we are anticipating a solid growth over the next few months as our site hits have already tripled.
We will be looking into expanding into definitely GameServer Hosting and potentially VPS hosting as well as we are coming near the completion of our dual quad 1u HP servers we are building. After several requests for gameservers we are going to expand aggressively in this field so we can gain EA server ranked files as you must appear legit and so on.
Safe Holiday
From the team here at Angrygaming Network we would take this opportunity to wish all of our fellow Angrygamers a safe and happy holiday. Support will be on holiday staffing limiting availability so please be patient when submitting tickets. As always if anything serious occurs I will have my laptop and phone keeping me in contact with the operations while visiting family up in Baltimore.
Expanding and changing panels!
With the need of resources which means more server expansions more costs and so on we will be eliminating cpanel on all but 1 server. This will be due to fact that I (Jessay) will be able to drop a hefty bit of money at once for a lifetime license eliminating a monthly bill. We will be going from cpanel back to direct admin which I was more fond of originally and are crossing our fingers for a smooth change over. There should be no downtime however a new IP will be sent out to those affected by this change. Users that are on paying accounts will stay on Cpanel for now.
Welcome to the Angrygaming Network blog
This blog serves as a purpose to allow members of the Angrygaming community to keep in touch with the services offered by our network. It also will serve as an area for staff to make general topic posts related to gaming, hosting, hlxce and so on. Here is where we status wise on the overall project.
Angrygaming official new site has been completed and although it needs minor tweaks we are now in the process of fully enveloping it into an advanced CMS. Upon completion we will load the site up with tutorials, editorials, guides and so on.
We will be adding a new server to the network in a matter of days finally which should be nice to have an abundance of resources. This server will be for fast map downloading as well as free users. We will more then likely be using Directadmin however there is another panel I am currently looking into and requesting prices on. To be honest I am pretty sure the prices are going to be outrageous and I will just go with Directadmin.
Since Europe is nearly triple the cost of USA in relation to co-location I am going to be looking into setting up a server in Virginia/Maryland area to provide better connections to those. Even though we have had no real issues on the Internap trunk line depending on tests we will decide if its worth it or not. If anyone knows of a colo willing to work with our non-profit cause please let us know immediately! Our current desired locations anywhere we can get in Europe, and a west coast box possibly in the future.
I will also be looking into possibly renting a high end vps or server in europe and just going with that however costs are always a worry since it is only myself funding the entire operation. Even though we are about to celebrate our one year anniversary we have been operating longer then that with the testing and are glad to be able to celebrate a legitimate 99.7% uptime! I would also like to take this time to say thank you to my staff, Vuk, Stefan, Peterson primarily as they have been working hard recently with the web, forums, and customer service.
This years goal will be to focus on expansion and ability to pay for itself. I do not ever wish to seek profits however I do wish to make it able to pay for itself with out having to rely on my primary job to cover costs. With hard work and the continuing of customer satisfaction I believe we can go farther then we ever imagined.
