Originally, javacakegames.com was hosted… well, I don’t remember exactly where it was hosted, but I’ve been through a few hosts in my time.
I started with HostMonster, which seemed a bit expensive and limiting for what it was.
Then I moved to DigitalOcean, which was and still is great, being able to spin up servers with hourly billing at a reasonable price. It did get a little more expensive after they started charging VAT. Funnily enough, it’s now back to what it cost before for a basic server now that they’ve reintroduced the 512MB server option. I still have a fair chunk of credit left over, so it remains good for any testing and what have you.
After that, I learned about Netcup. They bill on a 6-month basis, working out both cheaper and offering better VPS specs than DigitalOcean for the same price. While the Netcup experience as a foreign customer is an odd mix of German and English, I enjoyed my time with them.
Finally, I am now on Oracle Cloud for this blog, as of November. The 4 virtual CPU cores, 16GB of RAM and 200GB of storage is far more than I have ever had before, and far more than I need for that matter. And it is free!
I’m a little apprehensive about it, I must admit, due to it sounding too good to be true and the fact they don’t lose any money if they choose to terminate my account (if anything, they gain money by freeing up resources) but I’ve tested it by leaving a server running on there for three months, and so long as I make regular backups (which I should be doing anyway…) I feel confident to fully migrate there and cancel the Netcup payments.
While I’m here, I may as well discuss what other things I use. Cloudflare handles the DNS and domain renewal. While I quite like Namecheap for purchasing domains, Cloudflare is better for renewing since they do that at-cost instead of adding a (rather large) markup. I don’t make use of Cloudflare’s reverse proxy service.
Email I’ve been doing through Zoho, though they seem to have reduced what you get for free on there. For other accounts in the past, I’ve been able to forward emails sent to Zoho to my personal inbox, but on this Java Cake Games account that’s no longer the case. Also used Mailgun a little for sending automated emails such as forum account activation emails.
Now that we’re in January, I’ve cancelled my Netcup VPS and moved the rest of my stuff over to Oracle Cloud. I’m due a refund for unused hours, which I wasn’t expecting. Had I known about this refund, I may have got on with the transfer more rapidly.
Additionally, I don’t have a submission for libGDX Jam 23. The two-year tradition has been broken! I was working on a game but didn’t complete it in time. I blame the impending Christmas, but in reality I wasn’t completely starved for time. Perhaps this game will one day surface — who’s to say?