Article: Welcome to PSO-World.com's New Server!

[Tomeeboy]

If you're seeing this message, you've successfully made it to PSO-World.com's new dedicated server! Due to the recent plague of downtime and other related issues, we determined that something needed to be done to make PSO-World a more functional and reliable web site for the Phantasy Star community. Unfortunately, this meant leaving Gamespy & IGN, our gracious providers of free web hosting for nearly nine years.


It was a tough decision to make, as the site now has to support itself, but we feel it will allow us to make PSO-World better than we previously could. We've chosen a web host with industry-leading reliability and hope that everyone will notice a huge improvement in the months that follow. If you were previously experiencing issues with the site, these should now be fixed. This was a big move and there may still be a bug or two hiding somewhere, so please let us know if you find anything by posting in our Site Related forum.


In addition to the increased stability and future improvements, we'll be trying out some different methods of generating the money needed to pay for all of this. Some changes to the ads on our site have already been made and you likely won't even notice (though it's worth noting that we are currently displaying less ads for members who are logged in!). We've also teamed up with a number of retail partners so that you can help support PSO-World simply by shopping online through our links, something we could not do with our old host. We'll have further details on these efforts in the coming months and thank you all in advance for your support!


P.S. A big thanks to Ryna for putting countless hours of work into making this move possible!

[W0LB0T]

So this is why you're selling out to Amazon. I knew you had an ulterior motive for all those Amazon deals on the front page there Tomeeboy.

[Boxblaster]

This is very exciting news! I can't wait to see how the site shapes up now that it's on it's own. I'm expecting great things in the future and I already see improvement in load times. I'm also curious if there will be some changes to the site's rules anytime soon because of this.

[Tomeeboy]

The primary motive for posting deals will always be to let people know about legitimate video game deals that are available. However, you are right that the deals served a dual purpose (an experiment we could not reveal until now).
When we were trying to figure out how to pay our massive new monthly server bill (trust me, it's not cheap), we all agreed that plastering the site with advertisements, pop-ups, full page interstitials, etc. was NOT the way we wanted to go.
We also discussed the idea of accepting donations or voluntary subscriptions, but I personally felt there was a better way to do it, which didn't involve taking money directly out of our members' pockets.
By partnering with retailers like Amazon, we're able to provide visitors with a way to help support the site with no more effort than clicking a link and buying something nice for themselves (something they are genuinely interested in buying anyway). If we can save people some money and help offset PSOW's new monthly expenses at the same time, then I think that's an awesome alternative to having a bunch of obnoxious ads plastered all over the site. Don't you agree?

[Tomeeboy]

The site is definitely loading MUCH MUCH faster. It's like a night and day comparison and I am really happy with the performance of the new server so far. We wanted to make sure the new setup would alleviate all of the issues we had on our previous host, especially the downtime and slowness. I'm glad you're excited, because we are too!
As for rule changes, there's a possibility that we'll need to tweak things a bit to make sure we are in-line with the terms and conditions provided by our new web host and advertisers. This will all be ironed out over the next few months as we settle in.

[Kent]

Wow, the new server sure is a whole lot faster than the old ones.
I wonder if I can set my max posts per topic back to 99 without the thing getting its knickers in a twist.

[Tomeeboy]

This was one of those annoying bugs caused by a configuration issue on the old server. Should be all patched up now, so go for it!

[Ovada]

Just set up some type of donation thingy. You guys have been more helpful to me than I can remember. And unlike PSU, you actually update your stuff. So I don't feel like it's a waste of money

[landman]

Congrats psoworld, I hope you have a long and successful life with your own hosting

[Ghostcat]

Hey I can finally log in!
Woohoo!
Great job guys