Hello all!
I’m going to be changing this blog to be more of what it was intended to be. That is: a blog about gaming, with reviews, news etc. The hosting part of the blog will be moved to my company’s blog (found at blog.fragswitch.com), it will be updated more often, with more advice, techniques and information for people looking for web hosting.

Upwards and onwards! New posts will be coming and the archives will be cleaned to make way for the new blog (they will be moved to the company blog for safe keeping).

Hello all,
on my travels around the internet recently I’ve spotted an increase in the amount of people wanting to set up family websites, understandably, with the increase in global travel and families now being more seperated out, keeping in contact easily, quickly and cheaply is on the top of people’s agendas. But then these agendas breed numerous questions, mostly how? How do I post a video/picture to the internet? How do I set up a place where I can talk with my family and share videos and pictures?

Well I figured I would talk about that this time on my blog and see if I can point people in the right direction.

How to get started
To start off any website, you will need space and an address to access the website. Space comes in many flavours, from the numerous different types of hosting accounts out there from Shared to Clustered, to free and home hosted. Addresses also come in different forms. You might think that a domain name is one of the most important things on your website and that no one can access it without it, however, that’s untrue. A domain name just makes it easier to access a website and provides an easy to remember name. This name represents a number, the Internet Protocol Address (IP Address, think of this as a phone number, just in computer terms). Talking about IP Addresses and the Domain Name System is completely out of the scope of this post, so I’m not even going to scratch the surface of it. But, what I’m trying to say is that you don’t need a domain name, such as myfamily.com, you can just give your friends and family the IP address, yeah it will be difficult to remember and if you ever move hosts, it will change, so while you don’t have to, it’s best to.

So, add the first two things to your check list for an easy to access family website:

1. Web Hosting
2. A Domain Name

Finding a suitable web host
Finding a suitable host in the current market is extremely difficult, with many offering 24/7 support and the world for next to nothing per month and many websites out there claiming to be the world’s number one web host. A great resource for checking out reviews on websites is www.webhostingtalk.com, you might also find some great offers there on web hosting, so it’s always a good place to check out.

Your main considerations with a web host should not be the amount of space they provide, consider that your pictures and videos are going to be under 5mb and 50mb a piece and you see that you really don’t need 50 Terabytes of space (being 50,000,000 mb). Rather look for a reasonably priced host that you can choose to upgrade through at a later time.

Registering a domain name
Finding a domain name that is easy to remember, short and links to what you want can be a little difficult. With millions of websites (and thousands more appearing each day), the difficulty only increases. As we are talking about family websites, think of something that might be personal to your family, maybe your second name or a mixture of names. Domain name registration is a lot about creativity and coming up with interesting (but remember short) names.

There are some great domain registers out there, some hosting companies allow you to register a domain with them, however it is always best to ensure that the domain name is in your name, if it isn’t then whoever owns it may hold it hostage, if you are named as the owner on it, then that’s not possible.

Creating a website
This can be both the most frustrating and enjoyable time you spend on your website. Creating new looks, adding in new features that look good and act great can be very rewarding, however, having problems is something everyone wants to avoid. Some hosting companies offer Site Builders, these are services that create a website based off a template. They are quick and easy to set up, but they lack in features and you may find difficulty moving it to another host if you have problems. The best thing to do is to use a Content Management System (for this site, I use Wordpress). There are several available for free and are easy to install and configure with some direction.

If you really don’t want to install it yourself, there are some services available which can automatically install scripts for you, and keep them up to date. Installatron is a great example of this. When signing up with a host, you can see if they provide an auto-installer and what scripts they install. Normally it’s then only a couple of clicks to set it all up.

Uploading pictures and videos
So you’ve got your website up and running and now you want to upload some pictures and videos? This can take a little time, but once you’ve gotten the hang of it, it can be very quick. The first thing you will need is an FTP Client, this allows you to connect to your website and send it files from your computer. I recommend Filezilla (http://filezilla-project.org/) it’s fast, lightweight and free. It’s then simply a case of reading your welcome e-mail from your webhost, and using the FTP details they have given you.

Once you connect you’ll see a few folders with some wierd names. On most web hosts, the folder that is important is www. This is where your website is kept and where files need to be if you want them to show up on the internet.

You will want to make sure your files have simple names as well, you will also want to change any spaces for underscores _ that way, there won’t be any problems when you want to access them through your browser. When you want to show off your pictures, you will then only need to link to them (an example would be http://www.coldkill.co.uk/images/image.png).

Anyway, that was quite a long post (over 1000 words), but it should have been helpful .

So here are some videos to keep you interested until I’m back with more posting nonsense!

So this week I’m going to be reveiwing (to what extent I do actually reveiw) Killzone 2, go figure, I mentioned that in an earlier post and also in the title so I guess I shouldn’t have really said that… oh well… moving [swiftly] on.

Intro
Killzone 2 follows on from the previous Killzone titles, in that you are fighting the Helghan, an entire planet of people behind a leader who wants nothing more than to be the leader of all, that and kill the ISA for their past history together (the Helghast lost the first war and were subsequently kicked off their home planet, then Killzone 1 comes in with the Helghan invasion of Vekta).

KZ2 sees you, a nigh indestructable ISA soldier take on hundreds of Helghan soldiers across the single player campaign and utterly kick butt (after a few reloads that is). The story starts with the ISA landing on the planet Helghan, the original protagonist from KZ1 is your commanding officer, with you playing a different guy this time round. Well the invasion isn’t quite going according to plan, besides the ISA missing a bunch of nukes, the Helghan are putting up a huge fight. Enter you, after a cinematic landing on a beach, you have to fight you way through the heavily defended capital city of the planet.

There’s some new tech in KZ2 (besides the awesome looking engine), and some old equipment from the prequals. There are two small vehicular parts in KZ2, one sees you commanding a tank, the other sees you piloting a mech, which while fun, last for a very short time.

In the Zone!
KZ2’s seems to have picked up some of the best parts of the most recent FPSes and combined them into one game. A cover system, with a peak and shoot feature, character weight and lot’s of friendly NPCs to help you out through the game.  I particularly enjoyed the weighted characters as it made them feel like more than just a floating gun in space, although this has been done before, so it’s nothing ground breaking, it’s still a good thing to see.

There is no health in KZ2, and you must rely on visual cues to tell you when you’re dieing, that and your squad mates helpfully [not] yell “GET IN COVER SEV!”, sometimes so late that you are just about to press the restart button to load up your save file and try a second time. Your squad mates can be incapacitated, but don’t die (at first), and you are able to revive them (yet they can’t return the favour, presumably to make it harder). While at first this isn’t really a problem, through the game it can get a little tideous running in the middle of a firefight to get to your stupid squady who decided that bullets were friends.

Grenades are a fun part of KZ2, they have lights on the side which tell you how much they’re cooked, allowing you to time the throw perfectly so the grenade explodes just above the heads of those Helghan… people… However, hold the grenade for too long and it’s a quick way to the load save file screen.

The Sixaxis part of the PS3 controller is used quite a bit, but it can get a bit tedious and is a little unusual. It feels a little tacked on in that the developers seem to have been unable to find another place to stick it and were “encouraged” to use the full range of features available on the PS3. Sixaxis being used for a few things, including planting bombs and operating valves, the entire part seems like little thought has gone into what else it could have done.

The game itself is very cinematic from the beginning, this entire theme carries through the game and makes for an interesting play through. The cut scenes are well directed with very good voice acting which empower the storyline, rather than detract from it. The story is a little lacking but still quite interesting for those into story telling, as an example, it’s far superior to Gears of War and is told very well through all the cinematics, however KZ2 does follow on from the other Killzone titles, so a little background knowledge is required to fully understand everything.

Gameplay is slightly different for online play, the cover system is slightly dumbed down with you having to duck below cover rather than pressing a button to make it easy. While this isn’t a huge problem, it can be a bit of a pain in the butt as the character never quite ducks down far enough and you’re left with your head and shoulders full of bullets. Multiplayer is great fun though, with 32 player maps and randomly selected modes on each map (dependant on how the server is set up), it creates variation (to an extent) in the games you play. You can unlock extra characters, guns and abilities as you earn badges and rank, which is quite easy and doesn’t take long to get to the top rank.

Conclusion
Overall, Killzone 2 is an excellent game. While a little rough around the edges, it’s definitely worth picking up and playing. The single player campaign provides quite an experience, although it isn’t very repeatable unless you’re hardcare hardcore about it. The multiplayer provides quite a lot of fun to balance that out though, especially with rotating game types on the same server. I would recommend playing this game if you are a fan of the FPS genre (and if you have a PS3 console), it’s definitely a match up to some of the current titles available for the XBox 360.

Not sure what the next post is going to be. To the drawing board!
Have fun, Cold

Well, a little while ago, I had an accident on my motorbike. I won’t go into the details of it, but I ended up in hospital and so I haven’t been around to post this. 

Anyway, I still have to catch up on a few things but I can say, the next post will be on Wednesday and will be about Killzone 2 for the PS3. 

Anywho, enjoy!
Cold

Hello all! 

So Dawn of War 2 was released on the 20th in Europe, so I had to wait an extra day (OH MY!) to play the game than those in the States or in Australia, however, the thing that was a tad annoying was the fact that I had the disk in my hands before I could play the game because Steam (and THQ) decided that I wasn’t in the right region to play. So while waiting to play the game that was sitting on my desk, I read through the manual, and something hit me when reading through the introduction which was the stray in storyline from the original produced by Games Workshop and then a later change of direction back onto the original. 

The Bare Metal

Anywho, moving swiftly along from my rantings about not being able to play a game I had in front of me, let’s get down to the game. DoW2 sees you, a recently promoted Force Commander, stave off both Orks, Eldar and Tyranids with your band of hearty marines, not just any marines at that I might add! Marines that come in threes and wield death in the form of bolters! Now if you play the table top game, you might know that Space Marines can only be fielded in a minimum of a five man squad, unless you play by the crazy rules known as “Kill Team” where there is only one squad, so throughout the game you play with multiple squads of three marines (or four for your tactical squad). 

DoW 2 has moved away from the old Real Time Strategy template of building a base, building an army and utterly crushing all the weaklings that stand in your way to glorious world domination! Wait… where was I going with this? Oh yeah… DoW 2 has completely moved away from the aforementioned RTS template and has instead chosen to completely disregard everything but the movement of your squads through cover. Another thing to notice, is that there are no resources in DoW 2, your squads are automatically reinforced for free and as long as you have one sergeant (or your commander) alive, you can revive your squads as many times as you need to, again for free. This makes for some quite easy gameplay as you can keep your commander in cover and use stimpacks (which are a finite resource you almost trip over in your travels) to revive your fallen comrades, retreating them to the nearest Communication Uplink to replenish their squads. 

Talking about cover, Relic have gone all out to make DoW 2’s cover system the best in their RTS games. The great thing about the cover is that it can be destroyed, either by vehicles (or Terminators) driving (or walking) through it, or by heavy weapons fire or grenades. This means that you can approach unsuspecting foes from different directions by literally moving through cover, or destroy an enemy’s hidey hole with a well placed missile. 

The campaign in Dawn of War 2 sees you initially fight an Ork uprising on your recruiting world, eventually this progresses to killing Eldar and then Tyranids and some Orks on the side. However, as you progress through the campaign you will notice that you play on the same maps multiple times, sometimes with the same objectives. While the first few times playing through this can be enjoyable it eventually gets very tedious and more of a chore than an enjoyable experience. Most of the missions involve you killing an enemy commander, from any of the opposing factions. Sometimes a defend mission comes up which pits several waves of enemy units against your force. With deployable turrets, heavy weapons, cover and a narrow killing field, this tends to just be you watching a massacre and doesn’t really present a challenge, although diverging from the usual commander kill is a welcome escape. 

Unlike previous Dawn of War titles, you pick up your equipment from the battlefield and all your squads can be adjusted with a stats system akin to a Role Playing Game. This adds to the divergence from the standard RTS template and does make DoW 2 feel more like a Role Playing Strategy Game than a classic RTS, especially with your commander bearing a name of your choosing, which is a common feature of MMORPGs. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, Dawn of War 2 isn’t particularly a bad game in itself, however, fighting on the same battlefields over and over, doing the same missions makes the game feel repetitive and boring after a while, much like Dark Crusade and Soul Storm. Unlike Dark Crusade/SoulStorm however, there is a clear progression path, which sees your squads find and unlock technologies on their travels. Multiplayer is limited with two modes available, Anhilate or Victory Point Control. Units (at time of writing) have strange costs which don’t seem to be in line with their roles or abilities, which can make players favour cheaper but heavier weapons and in turn, make games lack difference.

If you are a keen Dawn of War fan, then this game is for you, however, if you are looking for a classic RTS hit, then look elsewhere.

Until next time!
Cold

Happy Valentines to all my readers! I should have posted on Saturday I know

I hope everyone had a great day!

Cold

So I’ve kinda skipped ahead of GoW and gone straight into number 2. Why? Well… I don’t really have a reason.

Introduction
The game sees the return of the Locust. We thought they were all dead from Gears of War 1 and the release of lightmass bombs into their home turf. Well that didn’t quite work as planned… the Locust are still around, and worse yet, they’ve grown in numbers and they’ve got some toys to play with.

But wait… how did that happen? We nuked ‘em back to… well… the stone age I guess… Well that didn’t quite work. We didn’t hit their home turf, we hit their neighbours home turf instead

Gears of War 2 starts with an attack on the home base of Jacinto, you have to help defend it with your squad. After that’s all done you find out more of the story. 

The Nuts and… Gears of it
The biggest shortfall in the entire Gears of War series is the story. It is rather… limited. You are fighting a horde of things which are trying to kill you. You don’t actually get any clues as to what they are until GoW2 (although I won’t be spoiling them here).  Other than that, you don’t know anything. Gears of War is very much a shooter game and that’s it. It lacks story and any real substance for those looking for an indepth trail to follow as you kill a hostile horde.

Although, in terms of actual gameplay the game is extremely good. I particularly enjoy the cover system and roddie running into cover. It really makes the game feel realistic, unlike say Call of Duty where all you do is kneel behind some cover, in GoW you actually get behind the cover and keep your head down like you would for real. 

The guns and toys in Gears of War two are quite fun as well. From the Lancer Assault Rifle which features a chainsaw bayonet, to the Hammer of Dawn orbital strike system. Gears of War 2 also sees new grenades. The first is the smoke grenade, which as the name suggests, fills an area with smoke. The second new grenade releases a cloud of poisonous gas, which can be particularly effective for getting people behind cover

The graphics in Gears of War 2 are extremely good, just like it’s predecessor, however this should really be expected from a next gen game on the latest console.

Overall
Well overall, GoW 2 is a very good game. It’s got great looks and the gameplay is awesome but it really does lack on the storyline side of things. 

If you’re a fan of chopping uglies up with a chainsaw and shooting your way through a horde of guys with guns, this is the game for you, if you’re into deep stories and a reason to everything you do, then probably not something you’ll enjoy.

Until next time!
Cold

Merry Christmas to all my readers this year and I wish you all luck in the year to come. Sorry I haven’t been able to get another post up, but I will soon™! The next one will be on Gears of War 2 for the XBox 360! I’ve had it for a while and just not reviewed it

Enjoy!
Cold

Ok… so maybe you’re not going to quite start an online super market, but really this applies to any shop you want to start. Even if you are selling T-Shirts with obscure yet funny remarks printed on them. 

So this post is going to talk about how to set up an online shop, what you will need from your host, security, and payment gateways. 

So as always we start with:

What you will need from your host
Really if you want to be serious about starting a shop, you will not want to cut corners when selecting a host. You don’t need to go overboard, but going with a package that’s offering your unlimited everything for $2 is definitely cutting corners. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, these are oversellers and you will experience problems with them at some point, from suspending your account for overusage or bad uptime and availability. 

Well now that’s out of the way, we’ll cover what you will actually need:

A dedicated IP address: Normally when you sign up for shared hosting you will be given a shared, main server IP address. This won’t do for a shop… SSL certificates (which I will talk about in a bit) require a dedicated IP address and will present problems if you are on a shared address. You can get shared SSL, but again it comes to cutting corners.

PHP/MySQL (or any combination of scripting language and database): With e-commerce software being freely available now, there is really no reason to be producing a static HTML website. A lot of hosting companies can provide you with an automatically installed shopping cart, however check that it is the latest stable version as they are the most secure. 

Redundant services: Lost time is lost sales. A good host should have redundant networks, power supplies and parts. The less time your shop is offline, the more time your shop can be selling people things. I’ve covered this more in depth in a previous post, but it did warrant a special mention here

Security
Would you want your private details being read by the postman or the person who stole his mail bag? Not likely, so as this applies to the online world as well (just in a bit more of a technical and complicated manner), you will need to secure your shop from those pesky theives. 

Your host should have secured their server, although it’s worth asking them what they’ve implemented in terms of security and then it’s worth researching into what they have to see if it’s any good. 

The second part of security is the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate. This allows you to initiate secure connections with a client’s browser (when you see https:// in front of an address, it’s secured with one of these). This will set you back a yearly fee on top of your hosting, but it again comes to cutting corners and not… well… cutting them… Not only will it give you an extra layer of security, it is also a sign of trust between a shop and their clients. People are encouraged not to send their private details over an unsecured connection, so what are they going to do when you ask for their card details and you don’t have an SSL certificate? 

Once you’ve got the certificate, you can take it with you wherever you go (as in, if you move hosts you don’t have to buy a new certificate), and most control panels allow you to install a certificate with very little hastle.

So your server is locked up tighter than… well something tight… hmmm… let me think on that metaphor for a while and get back to you all… anyway… erm… ah yes… your server is locked up tight and no one can get in, you’ve got your certificate in place and no hacker is getting in that way. You’ve logged into your admin panel with the password “myshop”… wait… what? Even though your server is set up to handle the biggest security threats, your password will be broken within seconds (literally). When you make any password for your hosting account it should be very secure, using random letters, numbers, symbols and capital letters to make it just that little bit more random. The latest cPanel even has a fancy password generator you can use to make a password, it might not be something you can remember easily but it will be worth it in the end to get it memorised.

Payment Gateways
So we’re onto the last hurdle for your brimming online shopping centre. You’ve got your products in place, you’ve got a fancy style and some cool features on your shop and you’ve got security covered. There’s just one thing missing… how do you get money from people when they buy products? 

This is where payment gateways come in. You can get some for free, like Paypal or Google Checkout which are quick to set up and easy to integrate, there are others which integrate seemlessly into your shop but will set you back a fee every month, like Authorize or Paypal Payments Pro. 

Payment gateways require research by you and if you want a really professional look, further investment. However, if you are just starting out there is no problem using something free with a low transaction fee like Google Checkout or Paypal standard. 

So that’s it for e-commerce. Check out WebHostingTalk if you’re looking for a host; ZenCart or OSCommerce are two (free) very good shopping systems; RapidSSL or VeriSign both provide SSL certificates which will cover your shop and finally; Paypal, Google Checkout and Authorize are very reputable payment gateways. 

Good luck and above all, enjoy!

Cold