Best Guild Website/VOIP Hosting?

Best Guild Website/VOIP Hosting?

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Posted by: Mo Mo.1947

Mo Mo.1947

Hiya!

I’m thinking of starting a guild and wondering what people use to host their forums/websites and voice chat?

I was thinking of using enjin.com as a guild forum/website because I’m familiar with it but I’m wondering what DNS providers people use to register a .com for their guilds? (I don’t want to just have “blah.enjin.com”) I’ve heard that some DNS providers really blow because you don’t actually own the domain name you’re just “renting” it from them and then you always have to go through them when it comes time to pay your fees a few years later.

What DNS providers do ya’ll use for your websites to own the domain name? Is there any way (even if it’s tedious) to just directly register and pay for a domain name without using some company? I’m really unfamiliar with how the process actually works.

Also with voice chat, I’ve always liked Ventrilo, but is it best to pay for a hosting server through the Ventrilo website or use a third party company for hosting? I was thinking of having a 30-50 person Ventrilo server for starters.

I appreciate any insight or experience people have to offer~!

Have a great new year!

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Posted by: rapthorne.7345

rapthorne.7345

Not sure about websites. Not too many guilds these days actually have websites that are active and serve a purpose.

As for VOIP, Discord seems to be the way to go these days. totally free, anyone can make a server, great sound quality, multi-platform and low resource usage. Supports both text and voice, as well as direct private text and voice calls.

Resident smug Englishman on the NA servers, just because.

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Posted by: nottsgman.8206

nottsgman.8206

not sure about hosting and stuff, but for VOIP, I prefer discord. its free, easy to set up and has no slot limitations.
you can read about the features here: https://discordapp.com/features

70 ‘mains’ and waiting for more slots
| 61 Asura | 5 Charr | 2 Norn | 1 Human | 1 Sylvari |

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Posted by: SlippyCheeze.5483

SlippyCheeze.5483

The best choice for a guild website is Facebook. Other than a small number of people who object to using it, it provides an excellent group forum, the ability to schedule events, photo hosting, etc. It’s also widely used, has good push notifications, etc, so people actually, y’know, see the posts.

Some sort of web board thing, either hosting your own, or via enjin and competitors, is pretty much the worst possible choice. Even in extremely dedicated guilds, it’s home to a half dozen people who use it mostly for off-topic chatter, and not much more.

The best choice for voice chat is almost certainly Discord today. It’s the new hotness.

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Posted by: Mo Mo.1947

Mo Mo.1947

Oh lol I haven’t done guild stuff in a while due to good old life stuff. People don’t widely use forums anymore? lol I feel so old.

The only thing is I was thinking of making a website for people to post fanart/comics they collaborate on. But I suppose that would be just like wordpress or something if people generally do all their communicating on FB now.

I’ll look into Discord though!

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Posted by: Donari.5237

Donari.5237

My two main guilds use Enjin for forums and permanent threads holding art and writing, and Discord for ephemeral chatter in text and voice. It works well, even if Enjin goes bizarro at times.

Discord is fantastic. I really recommend it for anything other than posting information you want to access weeks or months later. It offers a continuous buzz of conversation but no pressure to monitor the chat unless you have the mental time and energy since you can scroll back easily enough (my guilds are small, chat doesn’t overflow in minutes).

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

My two main guilds use Enjin for forums and permanent threads holding art and writing, and Discord for ephemeral chatter in text and voice. It works well, even if Enjin goes bizarro at times.

Discord is fantastic. I really recommend it for anything other than posting information you want to access weeks or months later. It offers a continuous buzz of conversation but no pressure to monitor the chat unless you have the mental time and energy since you can scroll back easily enough (my guilds are small, chat doesn’t overflow in minutes).

Discord doesn’t work for me because of two reasons:

  • The application (for those who install it), offers too many opt-out options in an effort to be helpful. People start their laptop while at work and start hearing random chat about the game, because it’s “always on” (until you turn it off).
  • Their text-to-speech option broadcasts in all channels within the same node, rather than just to the the channel to which the /TTS is posted. Any group that includes a person that doesn’t use a mic has to create a separate node.

Both those handicaps can be worked around, but they don’t have to be in Mumble (a 10-site license comes free with Enjin).

If your guildies just use the web version (i.e. never install the application) and don’t need TTS, Discord is otherwise really easy and effective. And, the price is right.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

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Posted by: ionix.9054

ionix.9054

How about Mumble? “Mumble is an open source, low-latency, high quality voice chat software primarily intended for use while gaming.”

https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page

I have an original raspberry pi running a mumble server at my place. Works like a charm

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Posted by: altermaven.7385

altermaven.7385

I can agree with the ups and downs with Discord, but if you want a standalone client-server architecture without having to pay, I will definitely side with Mumble. However, Discord has a lot of flex, and has definitely ironed out some bumps, even if you need to do some options cleaning-up on your first sign-in.

Still, both of those have their equal weights — Discord is mained on their architecture, but you can host your own independent Mumble server. The choice is strictly yours.

“To be rid of chaos, all must restore the balance.”
Part of the [PORT] mystical tour – “Marilee Mangletooth.” What main?
Something something Autechre fanatic.

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Posted by: SlippyCheeze.5483

SlippyCheeze.5483

Oh lol I haven’t done guild stuff in a while due to good old life stuff. People don’t widely use forums anymore? lol I feel so old.

Some people do, but really, Facebook is much, much more a part of today than web forums are. If it helps, ten or fifteen years ago I said “People don’t use usenet any more, but web forums instead? I feel so old.”

The only thing is I was thinking of making a website for people to post fanart/comics they collaborate on. But I suppose that would be just like wordpress or something if people generally do all their communicating on FB now.

I’ll look into Discord though!

Yeah, so, here is the thing: Facebook provides really good support for doing all those things. An FB “group” is very much like a blog, with a much, much lower barrier for entry to post your stuff there.

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Posted by: savacli.8172

savacli.8172

For voice?

Hands down I’d have to recommend discord. Very low maintenance for a very robust front facing application.

Website? Hard to narrow down the best especially if you’re looking for a free solution. Hard to get a variety of options for a low cost. Personally I had to develop my own site to fully meet my needs, but for a while enjin was a good solution for the time being.