Websites and Advertising

Creating a game is one part of being an indie game developer, gathering fans and an audience is the other part. Having a website for you and your games is an important part of appearing professional and letting fans know that you're committed to creating games.

There are a variety of services on which you can have your website on, as well as many social media platforms that can help spread your games to a wider audience. This page is a list of suggested online platforms that may be of interest to developers. Everything you need to know about domain names, hosting and getting your first website up and running can be found here. Tips on using the Social Media Websites can be found here.

Hosting and Domain Registration
1. A web hosting service provides space on a server and internet connectivity. It allows you to make your website accessible via the World Wide Web.

2. Domain name is your web address (such as yourgroupname.com or yourgame.com). In addition to hosting, you need a domain name to run your site.

It is recommended, to use different companies for registering domains and hosting, as this allows more quality and reliable service in addition to being cheaper.

Free Hosting
Visual Novel Initiative
 * A free service provided by LSF user redeyesblackpanda to give creators and VN enthusiasts free website and hosting with no limitations. WordPress installation is available by default, supports HTML customization, PHP/MySQL, ad-free hosting, unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Also offers free sub-domain names on vnovel.com. Adult content is allowed. See this thread for details.

Zymic
 * Free web hosting which includes PHP/MySQL, free sub-domain names and ad-free hosting. 6 Gb disk space and 50 Gb monthly bandwidth.

Paid Hosting
It is recommended that you get a good and reliable hosting provider, as this will determine your website's loading speed, uptime, available options and limitations.

All the hosting providers below offer cost effective shared hosting packages. They have good support and are run by reliable companies. PHP, MySQL and several other features are supported.

Unlimited disk space and monthly bandwidth:
 * Dreamhost
 * HostGator
 * BlueHost
 * 1&1

Cheaper hosting packages with limited disk space and monthly bandwidth:
 * NearlyFreeSpeech
 * A Small Orange

Note: It is highly advised to use domain registrar companies (like GoDaddy, NameCheap, ...) ONLY for registering domain names. Hosting packages from domain registrar companies aren't as good as those from proffesional hosting providers, they offer poor customer service and are usually more expensive.

Domain registrars
Unlike with a hosting provider, domain registrars do not effect your website's performance, so it's best to just pick the cheapest one. It is also advised to buy from an established company, so you don't have to worry they will disappear in 3 years).


 * NameCheap
 * GoDaddy
 * 1on1
 * Name

Note that the prices change all the time, so make sure to compare different offers before buying. It is also advisable to google for discount codes; some codes offer over 50% discount. Discount codes only apply on the first time purchase, you will need to pay a full price for renewing the domain (however there can be discount codes for renewals too).

Self Hosted
These require your own hosting and installation.

ImpressPages Joomla! WordPress.org'' Drupal Django Project Mezzanine concrete5
 * A drag and drop Content Management System built on PHP5.3 and MySQL.
 * A free, open source Content Management System which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications.
 * Web software used to create websites and blogs. One of the best known Content Management Systems based on PHP and MySQL. Read this page for key differences between the .com and .org versions of WordPress.
 * Free and open source CMS.
 * High-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
 * Based on Django, Mezzanine provides a simple yet highly extensible architecture that encourages diving in and hacking on the code.
 * Free and open source CMS. Plugins/add-ons and themes need to be purchased.

Remotely Hosted
These do not require your own hosting and installation and are often easy to set up.

Blogging Platforms
All of these double as social media platforms.

Blogger/Blogspot Dreamwidth Studios FC2 LiveJournal Posterous Springnote tumblr Weebly WordPress.com
 * As the name implies, this is a blog platform. Users need a Google account to create a blog.
 * An independent, Open Source, community-centric home for writers, artists, and everything else.
 * Easy to use blog service that provides 10GB to users at the start.
 * An online journal service with an emphasis on user interaction. A basic, fully-functional account is free, while Paid accounts receive access to premium features.
 * A blogging service made for personal and photo sharing.
 * An OpenID enabled web application that combines the elements of wiki, word processing, and file organization into an easy, simple, and intuitive user experience. Users are able to write notes through a WYSIWYG editor along with templates and plug-ins that are continually being expanded for endless features and increased functionality.
 * A micro-blogging platform which also doubles as a social media platform. Users mainly use the dashboard to view the posts of blogs they follow. Note: Tumblr is infamous for having the occasional long downtime (they went down for 2 days once, according to this article) and thus isn't ideal for your main development blog.
 * A platform designed to be easy to customize for people with very little technical knowledge.
 * A self hosted blogging platform, using wordpress.org software. ''Read this page for key differences between the .com and .org versions of WordPress.

Website Builders
Google Sites Wix Wopop
 * Easy to use website builder provided by Google. It has customizable look and pre-built templates.
 * No coding needed to create an HTML5 website, with 100s of pre-made designs.
 * Suitable for enterprise and personal website building. Simple operation and delegate templates to build your website easily.

Remotely Hosted
Wikispaces
 * A space on the Web where you can share work and ideas, pictures and links, videos and media — and anything else you can think of. Gives you a visual editor and a bunch of other tools to make sharing all kinds of content as easy for students as it is for their teachers.

Self Hosted Forums
These require your own hosting and installation.

bbPress MyBB phpBB SimpleMachines VanillaForums vBulletin xenForo
 * Forum software made to integrate with WordPress.org powered sites.
 * Easy to use board system for both users and admins.
 * Free flat-forum bulletin board software solution that can be used to stay in touch with a group of people or can power your entire website.
 * Easy to use forum with many powerful features for you as well as your users. An open-source project made by volunteers from across the world.
 * Free open-source software to create a customized community that rewards positive participation, automatically curates content and lets members drive moderation.
 * Simple and engaging forum software that can integrate with Facebook. Comes with other features, must purchase.
 * Extensible and flexible community software, must purchase.

Remotely Hosted Forums
These do not require your own hosting and installation and are often easy to set up.

FreeForums.org Forumotion InvisionFree Lefora ProBoards ZetaBoards Get Satisfaction
 * Free phpBB3 forums that can be set up quickly. Hosting is free on a subdomain and upgrades are available for more popular forums.
 * Free forum that can use phpBB, punBB, or Invision software to host your forum. Has several subdomain names.
 * Free forum hosting with full customization via CSS, support for custom domains, and spam prevention.
 * Easy to use forum with 2GB storage, automatic spam detection, widgets, mods and more. Hosting is free on a subdomain and upgrades are available for more popular forums.
 * Free forum hosting designed to offer a simple platform with powerful features.
 * Free forum hosting designed to offer a simple platform with powerful features.
 * A simple forum with features focused on customer support. Can be used as a help desk or community driven support. Core features are free. Upgrades such as Get Satisfaction for Facebook and domain aliasing are available as monthly subscription.

Social Media Platforms
Facebook
 * A social networking platform with over a billion active users. It has become one of the most powerful advertising agents on the internet today.
 * Estimated unique monthly visitors: 750,000,000

Twitter
 * A microblogging service that allows messages up to 140 characters long per Tweet. It has become one of the most popular advertising agents on the internet today.
 * Estimated unique monthly visitors: 250,000,000

tumblr
 * A micro-blogging platform which also doubles as a social media platform. Users mainly use the dashboard to view the posts of blogs they follow.
 * Estimated unique monthly visitors: 120,000,000

Pinterest
 * A virtual pinboard. Allows you to organize and share images.
 * Estimated unique monthly visitors: 85,500,000

Google Plus+
 * Social networking and identity service owned and operated by Google Inc.
 * Estimated unique monthly visitors: 65,000,000

reddit gamedev thread
 * A social news website, with a game development section, where registered users congregate to talk about creating games. Users submit content in the form of either a link or a text “self” post. Other users then vote the submission “up” or “down”, which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site’s pages and front page.
 * Estimated unique monthly visitors: 39,700,000

deviantArt
 * A popular website for artists. Anime is popular there so some people will try visual novels.
 * Estimated unique monthly visitors: 25,500,000

HootSuite
 * A tool to manage and measure your social networks. It supports posting and scheduling messages to most popular platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, ...) from one interface.

Indie Game Portals
PixelProspector Desura FreeIndieGames Indie DB IndieGameStand Indie Games: The Weblog Jay is Games Rock, Paper, Shotgun Steam Greenlight TIGSource
 * Features indie games and also includes "essential resources for game developers" such as links to more articles. Consider looking at this list for more game portals not listed here, there's a lot!
 * Community driven digital distribution service for gamers, putting the best games, mods and downloadable content from developers at gamers fingertips, ready to buy and play. Note: The community here is more accepting of VNs than Steam at this moment.
 * A website with a bunch of free games featured on it.
 * Supports independent developers and their games by providing them with a place to showcase their hard work (in-progress or complete) to fans seeking original gaming experiences.
 * A website that promotes indie games for 96 hours. Games are bought with a pay-what-you-want price tag and a portion of all sales go to charity.
 * Presented by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, which runs the Independent Games Festival & Summit every year at Game Developers Conference.
 * A casual game portal that showcases "only the best games available on the Web." On weekdays they write about free online games and on weekends they review indie titles. More focus on gameplay rather than story-based games.
 * About PC gaming – all of PC gaming, rather than just one of the weird and wonderful niches most other PC-centric sites confine themselves to. It’s written by four of Britain’s top games journalists, and it aims to cover everything from the latest breaking stories about the biggest releases to esoterica from the format’s obscurest peninsulas.
 * A system that enlists the community’s help in picking some of the new games to be released on Steam. Developers post information, screenshots, and video for their game and seek a critical mass of community support in order to get selected for distribution. [Note: The community as-is doesn't receive VNs as 'real games' and the general thought is that they are all hentai/weeaboo games. You should probably have more gameplay elements or be cautious when applying for Greenlight at the time of writing.]
 * The Independent Gaming Source: A community of independent game developers and players. Has a very active community and forums.

Visual Novel Directories
The Visual Novel Database
 * VNDB.org strives to be a comprehensive database for information about visual novels. It is built as a wiki, meaning that anyone can freely add and contribute information to the database.

Ren'Ai Archive
 * A collection of original English-language visual novels and ren'ai (romantic) games. Aiming to provide an archive of all completed games of this type that can be distributed for free.

Ren'Py games list
 * A directory attempting to catalog every game made with the Ren'Py visual novel engine.