Let's discuss site running and maintenance fees, with a dude who has been there.A reasonable look at fees in USD, assuming art isn't being factored in and all staff are unpaid*:
Going to assume you need to hire one of these...
Coding wrote:From Google and PayScale.com
Coders can make 15.84-54.74 AN HOUR. 34.50 is an average.
Java: 35.93
PHP: 24.05
...and the number of hours doesn't even matter. Teach yourself the code. Paying for code kills.
As a side note, a friend of mine does HTML/CSS for CS pets and C$. She also offers advice on the topic. If you need someone to discuss the realistic possibilities of a site and what is/isn't possible, PM me and I'll give you her username. (This goes for anyone.)One note though: Know of someone who DOES code in your site's language for emergencies. You always need an emergency fixer if you can't solve an issue. Make sure you acquaint them with your code early on, and always pay them on time.
My friend says that if she gets paid on time by someone every time, and gets two rush orders for something, the one who pays on time gets priority unless she is less than two hours from done with the other project. Paying your coder promptly and praising everything they do will earn you privileges and benefits. Like, you know, emergency favors.
Hosting the Site wrote:From experience here!!Hostinger starts at 3.99 a month. Their 8.84 a month deal is a lot better quality-wise. Their 11.99 a month has great features.
iPage starts at 9.99 a month and they go down per month if you buy bulk. (It's cheaper per month for two years than one, and for three years than two.)
GoDaddy is a popular one, they start at 7.99 a month but their best deal is 10.99 a month. For 16.99 a month, you get a SSL certificate... which is a good thing. But I don't think the pricing on the most expensive one is justifiable for a game, so I'd go with the 10.99 a month after the site picked up.
Rule of thumb: you can always upgrade hosting if you need to do so and not regret it. You are wasting money if you end up having to downgrade hosting. Start small. Think big, but start small. Be frugal.
It won't hurt you. If you run over bandwidth three months in a row, or over two weeks in the same month, upgrade. That's the best way to determine if you need more speed.
Since I've stated I've been there, done that, I used iPage and wasn't really impressed. I think GoDaddy would be my next choice for a larger project, and Hostinger for a small one. I'm not being paid to represent any of these. These are just the three I know a lot about and that people use pretty often in my area. iPage's on-site image hosting speed though? It's absolute CRAP. Takes forever to load a single high-quality image.
Would never use it for a petsite based on that one factor.
Domains wrote:Domains are simple. They start at 0.99 a year, and go up a LOT higher. Buying one for good will cost you more than 700.00 as a low price, I often see them costing over 950. Rent a domain. It's cheaper in the long run. Rarely will a site live long enough to warrant buying the domain.
Fun fact: even GOOGLE rents their domain, though they may own it for good after the following happened. The domain went up for renewal a few years ago and someone managed to own it for about a minute, before the error was discovered and they took it from him.
Since I know this sounds like a prank, CNN did an article on it and I'm linking it here, so you know I'm not actually joking.*Unpaid moderators are ILLEGAL in some countries, including mine. Please do your research.