travstatesmen

Thank you for your advice shadowx. I have further questions though. If, as you suggest, I were to have one table per update, I would need to mass edit the map.sql files each time I update, wouldn't I? The file contains a whole load of INSERT statements, in the form... INSERT INTO `x_world` VALUES (data1,data2,data3,...); ...and therefore they would automatically be inserted into a table called x_world, unless I altered the map.sql file before running the script. I guess also I would need a new CREATE TABLE instance for each table, right? Please excuse my n00b questions, I have not done much with SQL before. Is there a simple way to do this in a non-interactive way, that could be called from the CRON job that grabs the latest update?

First of all, to get the idea of what I am trying to achieve here, please have a look at my idea thread, entitled Idea For Using A Cron Job To Grab Daily Travian Map.sql Updates. This gives a prelude to the project, what it is for, what it is supposed to do, etc. Now, what I need is specific advice on setting up the mySQL database(s) to implement this idea. There is a useful FAQ file for how to make use of the map.sql data located on the help.travian.com website, which also gives an example of the CREATE TABLE instruction that matches the data in the map.sql files. The problem with this FAQ, and the reason for my making this thread, is that the information is only presented for the situation where the user is playing on a single Travian server. As you will know if you have read my idea thread, I am planning to do this for each server that my clan members are playing on. So, here is the question. Do I need to make use of a new mySQL database (knowing that Xisto provides 99 of them on a hosting account) for each Travian server that I will be downloading map.sql files for? Should I just create multiple tables in a single mySQL database on my Xisto account, one table for each Travian server? Or, third option, should I put all the data for all Travian servers that I'm downloading map.sql files for into a single table in a single database, and create a new field on the fly to identify which server the data is from? Also, I notice that the example CREATE TABLE instruction on the FAQ page does not include a field for a timestamp, so how will I track the daily changes? Obviously, the information that I am looking at storing is going to result in a huge database, however it is sliced up, whether they all be in one huge table in one database, multiple tables in one database, or one table in multiple databases. I may even need to look at multiple tables in multiple databases. But the fact remains that the amount of data that I'm gathering is going to be large, and might even be beyond the scope of a free hosting account. They even mention this in the FAQ page... "To be more explicit: Don't even consider using a free hoster if you really consider writing this mapping tool." So, maybe I am biting off more than I can chew. I'd love to get some input on this. I am not planning on building yet another mapping tool, as there are plenty of those around. I am not planning to build a world analyzer, as there are also plenty of those around. I am not planning on building a signature image generator, as there are plenty of those also. What I want my website to be is elements of all of these and more, taking advantage of the data that is provided in the map.sql files. I should be able to query and present the data stored in the mySQL database(s) of my hosting account, and display the results as a single instance map in response to a specific query. I should be able to query information about a specific Alliance, player, or village and present that information. I should be able to create auto-updating signature images based on the data in the mySQL databases, but only for registered members of my clan. Again, any help or advice with specifics of how best to implement this would really be appreciated.

Here is an idea that I have been toying with for a while now, and I'd really appreciate some help with it, as I'm not a great coder. I can get by, and will probably work out the intricacies of implementing this, all by myself, but it is going to take me quite a long time. I'd really appreciate some help with making this happen, so that I can use it on my upcoming Xisto website. The MMOG that I am playing, Travian, creates a daily update file, which is essentially just an SQL file full of INSERT commands, that is made available to the public daily. Travian can be played on multiple servers, and there are also country-specific servers, and they all produce these map.sql files each day. For instance, if I am playing on the first international server then I can grab the SQL data from http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ whereas, if I were playing on the fourth Australian server, I would use http://s4.travian.com.au/, or for the second Hungarian server I would use http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/, etc. These map.sql files are already being used for some pretty complex things by other websites. For instance, there are Travian World Analyzers, that allow you to query the data over a period of time and see how players have progressed, which Alliances they have moved to, how fast their villages are growing, etc. Some websites use the map.sql files to generate a forum signature image that automatically updates with daily stats. Some are using the map.sql data to generate on-the-fly graphical maps of the Travian worlds, plotting on grids the locations of the villages. It is really useful to have a collection of these map.sql files. I want to get some for my new website on Xisto. In order to achieve this, I can see that I will need a CRON job to action a script every day that will go to the necessary sites and download the map.sql files. I will need to specify which servers to go to, as I will only be interested in the servers where my clan members are currently active. This will save my hosting space. Also, the map.sql files will need to be renamed with a datestamp and server name. There are several downloadable freeware programs that also use the data in these map.sql files, and I intend to have a selection of these tools available for download by my clan members. One such tool, TrUtil (by Lamb) is what got me started on this idea in the first place. This program allows you to specify a server to download from, adding it to your list of servers, then you select a server from your list and press the Download button, and it gets the latest data for that server and saves it as a file to your local computer, renaming it with a datestamp and server-name. But you have to remember to do that every day for every server that you play on. It becomes tedious and is often forgotten about, so my collection of map.sql files has pieces missing from it. I want to provide a useful resource for my clan members, a full, complete, up-to-date collection of all the map.sql files for all the servers that they are playing on. They will need to be hosted somewhere, probably separate to my Xisto site as they can be up to 10MB each, and I will no doubt be making use of them myself also, for team badges for my own forums, and other ideas, by inserting the data from each one into one of my own mySQL databases on my upcoming Xisto website. So, this is the idea for my upcoming website here on Xisto. Any help and advice that I can get for implementing it would really be appreciated. I have also created a thread on the forums for help with specific mySQL database issues relating to this project. If you may be able to assist with this, please have a look at the thread entitled Need Advice On Setting Up Mysql Database. Thanks!

That was an excellent topic opener, RAWRzilla, and it gave me much to think about. I have a particular interest in this topic, and I know that my wife will pop into this thread soon enough to elaborate. I wanted to take up two issues that you have raised and discuss them further. The Christian church is often one of the biggest culprits in this type of attitude. As well-meaning as Christians are, wanting to pray for healing of people with disabilities, wanting to see the miraculous power of Jesus Christ restoring whatever it is that is ailing them, sometimes God may have plans for people who have disabilities that may not necessarily involve them being healed. Take, for instance, Joni Eareckson Tada, a well-known American Christian author, artist, and disability advocate, who was left wheelchair-bound after a diving accident. Her Christian ministry has been much more prominent and powerful since she became disabled. Sometimes it seems that people with disabilities who are in the Christian church, but who never get "a touch from God" are made to feel inadequate because they are seen to lack the faith to be healed! As if it is their fault that God is not healing them. Remember, even when Jesus was walking on the Earth, he did not heal everybody. For instance, the miracle at the pool of Bethesda, as told in John 5:1-16, occurred in a place where there was a large number of people with disabilities, gathered together in one place, seeking the healing given by the waters of the pool. But when Jesus came along, of all the people gathered there, he only is recorded as having healed one of them. As RAWRzilla implied in the post above, many people with disabilities are not constantly seeking to be "healed", or to be "fixed". They don't consider themselves to be "broken", and so don't need to be "fixed". I don't totally agree with RAWRzilla on this, and I find it quite interesting that she compared the use of the terms "retard" and "spazz" to that of the "N" word used to denigrate dark-skinned peoples. The issue that I wanted to raise about this is that the "N" word is commonly used amongst dark-skinned peoples themselves. You only have to listen to the lyrics of some of the songs by artists such as Lil Wayne, Nas, Yung Berg, Mos Def, and David Banner to know what I'm talking about. And the same often goes for people with disabilities. My wife and I know many, many people who have disabilities. It is quite common for them to call each other "retard" or "spazz". I'm sure that someone who is not a part of that community could not get away with it so lightly, just as a white guy using the "N" word might not be as appropriate in situations where that word is commonly being used in the context of their community. But there is valid scope for these terms to be used in context. RAWRzilla even points to such comedians as Laurence Clark (whom, to my shame, I had never heard of before). We have a similar disabled comedian here downunder, known as Steady Eddy, who also, being disabled himself, is quite at liberty to poke fun at all things disabled related. How politically incorrect to make fun of disabilities?! How politically incorrect to use the "N" word (that which we dare not even give voice to, for fear that we will be struck down by lightening or something). And yet, people within those communities are doing it all the time, and it is accepted as normal.

Having been a moderator on a popular teen website recently, I have some interesting perspectives on this issue which I would like to share. Firstly, to address mrdee's assertion that "only whites can discriminate against other races, the opposite is of course impossible". One very offensive anti-Caucasian word that has sparked a lot of debate recently is the term "Cracker". Calling a white-skinned person a "Cracker" is extremely offensive, particularly if the word is used by a dark-skinned person. Apparently the term has the connotation of "cracking the whip", harking back to the days of slavery. This has become the premium insult against white-folk, almost on par with the N word as an insult to dark-skinned folk. I have seen much debate about this issue, and I know that it is extremely sensitive. As for other politically correct terms, we need to remember that language is constantly evolving. Something that we say as part of regular conversation today may tomorrow be considered to be offensive. I'm sure that the linguists in this thread, such as crazyfray, would agree. An interesting example of this, which was also mentioned earlier in this thread by rayzoredge, is the word "gay", and how it has changed from meaning "happily excited : merry" or "bright, lively" (from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary), to also having the meaning of homosexual persons and homosexuality. What was once considered to be a benign, innocuous word now has a sinister undertone as a derogatory slur against those of homosexual orientation. For a further look at this particular issue, have a browse of this article on Answers.com, entitled How did the word "gay" come to mean homosexual? The world is becoming smaller, through technology such as the internet, the jumbo jet, the television, etc. This has a result of bringing us into contact more often with people of other cultures, as smithy500 pointed out in this post... I emphasized the term "cultural ignorance" because I think that is the key to a lot of the changes in language, which fuels these politically correct issues that crop up. Something that we say in everyday English may be translated, interpreted, or even transliterated as something particularly offensive to another culture. Society has a knee-jerk reaction to such situations, seeing them as something bad, something that needs to be covered up and fixed, in fear that they will hinder relations between the cultures involved. Instead, what we should be doing is seeing them as an opportunity to learn from each other. Why does this word or phrase offend you? What does it mean in your culture? This is what it means in my culture. When I say it, this is what I mean, and it is not meant to offend you. If I were to go into a room full of people from your culture, and say it loudly with the intention to offend, then that would be different. But, please, allow me to continue my own culture and traditions, as I respect yours also. This leads nicely into what mrdee has just said above about Christianity, Christmas, and religion. But I will leave it there for now.

I first encountered Lorem Ipsum when I started doing Desktop Publishing, (about 20 years ago now), using a program called Aldus Pagemaker, which has since been bought out, as most good design programs have, by Adobe. We used to practice with the Lorem Ipsum text, doing things like hyphenation, wrapping and flowing text around images, text columns, and other fun DTP skills. Eventually I had begun to memorize much of the standard Lorem Ipsum text, as I used it so often. These days I use a great little Firefox add-on called Dummy Lipsum 2.3.0 which can produce an automatic random Lorem Ipsum text right in your web browser. Here is an example from it... Now, I'm not writing this to increase my post count, or earn extra Hosting Credits. I'm actually interested in this stuff! Yeah, I'm a nerd, it's true. My first step from having computers as my hobby to working with computers for real was through DTP, and playing with Lorem Ipsum text. Upon completing an advanced DTP course, I began designing screen-printed t-shirts, wedding stationery, community newsletters, and advertising flyers. I did this at a computer retail store, which was the beginning of my computer career. So, yeah, knowing your Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet from your Maecenas fermentum imperdiet sapien can really lead to something big!

We have a jet black 2000 Nissan Cube, just like the one in this picture. We have had it for just under one year now, and it is the first decent car that we have owned since we were married. Well, that's my opinion anyway, and I'm certain that my wife will disagree on that. Sure, it is still a 1300cc engine, similar to our previous vehicles, but we don't need much more power than that for the daily grind, traveling at an average top speed of 10 miles per hour in rush-hour traffic! And what's more, we have found that the smaller vehicles are much more economical on the petrol, and with petrol prices as high as they are these days (even down here in New Zealand), we are quite happy with owning a 1300cc vehicle. The Nissan Cube is powered by a 4 cylinder, 16 valve (4 per cylinder) DOHC engine, providing 62.6 KW of horsepower at 6000.00 RPM, and 119.3 NM of torque at 4000.00 RPM. The engine has a 71.9 mm bore with an 82.8 mm stroke, giving a compression ratio of 9.5:1. The transmission is a 4 spreed automatic box with a final drive of 3.83:1. Yeah, I can read spec sheets too! Our car is fully fitted out with electronic this, and power that, including the electric front and rear windows, power steering, electric wing mirrors, ABS brakes, and dual front airbags. With the black finish and tinted rear windows, the only thing that it has missing is the fake bullet-hole decals, which my wife has expressly forbidden me from adding to it!

Cellphones with GPS functionality are not really something new. It is what they are being used for that is new, and in some ways kind of scary. Take for instance the online, GPS-enabled friend tracking systems, such as mologogo. As they claim on their website, "Mologogo is a free service that will track you and your friends using GPS-enabled mobile phones." Welcome to the wonderful world of hi-tech stalking! The Forbes online magazine alerted their readers back in December 2006 about the new nefarious possibilities opening up with GPS-enabled cellphones, with an article entitled How To Stalk Your Family. Is anybody else worried about the risks that this poses? What happens when some enterprising pedophile works out how to reverse-engineer this system, so that they can tell exactly where your little bundle of joy is at any given time? Are we giving away too much personal information these days, even publishing our current presence on the Internet with services like mologogo, that could get us into serious trouble if it fell into the wrong hands? Personally, I think that revealing too much about yourself, even in a blog, can be dangerous to personal safety and security.

I'm with new-world-order on this. I'm a big fan of Travian, and I see that it has been around for quite a long time, and is still going strong. The current version of Travian is v3, which probably wasn't around when new-world-order made his/her post above. The graphics, while still simple, are certainly better than previous versions, and new gaming features such as the ability to conquer oases with Heros, adds to the fun of this browser-based MMOG. For those who don't know what Travian is, think of a simplified version of Settlers of Catan, mixed with elements of Age of Empires, but with only three races, the Romans, Gauls (French), and Teutons (Germans). The resources available are Lumber, Clay, Iron and Crop, with Crop being the most valuable as it is used to feed your army as well as for building upgrades. Research done in the Academy allows you to train more advanced military units. Once an army is trained up, it can be sent out to attack an opposing village, with the outcome of the battle dependent upon the quantity of offensive cavalry and/or infantry troops, and any upgrades they have, versus the quantity of defensive cavalry and/or infantry troops, and any upgrades they have, plus any defensive battlements, such as a Palisade Wall. Scouts can be sent before the attack is launched to determine the disposition of the target's troops, and reinforcements can be sent to bolster the defenses of the defending village. Seige engines can be used to overcome the effects of battlements, and waves of attacks can be sent out to try to outwit the defenders. Counter-attacks can be made while the incoming attack is away from their home village. Team-play is encouraged with groups of players forming into Alliances for coordinated attacks and defending. As these Alliances grow, they will often form branches, known as wings. These Alliances and their wings become a Confederacy, through diplomatic ties. Non-aggression pacts can also be negotiated. Eventually larger Confederacies will partner up, forming meta-Alliances that can hold the balance of power on an entire Travian server. But such a massive show of unified force would make the game quickly boring for non allied players if there wasn't some form of check and balance. In Travian, this comes in the form of the Natars, a fourth race, mythical in nature, that are released on the unsuspecting inhabitants of the game world after a certain period of time. The Natars are ruthless, brutal, and bloodthirsty NPC's that will attack anyone arbitrarily, no matter what strong friends their victim may have. The Natars are the great leveler in Travian, and many large meta-Alliances have been brought low by them. Should an Alliance be strong enough to defeat a Natar village, they may uncover the plans for building a massive Wonder of the World, a building so great that it can only be built on a certain type of valley plot (which first must be found) and even then costs such an enormous amount of resources that no one player could do it alone, and the support of a solid team is needed to achieve such a thing. The first Alliance to raise a World Wonder to level 100 wins the server and the game is over. But doing so is not easy, as anyone who begins a World Wonder instantly becomes target of both Natars and other enemy Alliances alike. This is a brief primer of what Travian is all about. There is much, much more to it than this, but you get the general idea, I'm sure.

Thank you Shree and Saint_Michael for the warm welcome. I am still wading through the vast quantities of information you have given me to read, Saint_Michael, so please go lenient on me for a few days if I inadvertently break a rule or two along the way. I promise to read it all though, to become a valuable and obedient member of this online community. As implied by the name, the "Statesmen of Travian" is a group of well mannered, eloquent, mature individuals who participate in an MMOG, and we are defined by these values and virtues. So many of the players that we have encountered in the game are rude, obnoxious, and lack any understanding of netiquette. The Statesmen of Travian take advantage of the rashness of those around us, using it against themselves. As it says on our current website, we don't just play Travian, we play the players of Travian. I have personally played a major role in destroying a #1 ranked Alliance on a Travian server, not using the traditional warfare system of the game, but by using politics, diplomacy, and espionage. We see ourselves as puppet-masters of the game, pulling the strings behind the scenes. One of my fellow Statesmen calls himself a Bounty Hunter (a play on the in-game moderator name of Multihunter), and has a long list of victories, having dissolved numerous Alliances purely using the finer arts that the Statesmen espouse. I'm sure that any of my fellow Statesmen who find their way to the Xisto website, like unto myself, will become valued members of this online community, being that we promote good netiquette anyway. Now, enough of my rambling. My darling wife has something that she wants to say also, so I shall leave it to her. Hi everyone! Well, I guess it's time for the wifey to have a word or two of her own. Practical? Logical? Well, that's debatable. A couple of months ago, I decided to have a spring-clean, and one of the first things I wanted to offload was a TV table that had become surplus to requirements. You should have seen my husband's reaction - whereas before that, the offending object was about as much use to him as a chocolate fireguard, once I mentioned getting rid of it, it became as important to him as his PDA. It really was pathetic; I mean, he all but slept with the darn thing. It just about became vital to his survival - in fact, it became known as his "Swiss Army Table". As far as women working for their own money, I hope my darling's comments in that regard don't bring a legion of Womens' Rights advocates down on his head. I work part-time because of circumstances which prevent me working full-time, and my husband supports me in that. But fair's fair, and my hubby's assertion that I'm the one who's stronger on the 'social and compassionate side' isn't all true, either. He's currently sitting in his easy chair with the cat draped over his lap, and boy, do I know where this is heading, as soon she'll be sitting on his chest, licking his face off (this cat thinks she's a dog). But I like to talk, and the name 'crazyradiochick' stems from a brief time in my life when I worked as a radio announcer, a job that was right up my alley. Have big gob, will use it, that's me. Sometimes it gets me into trouble (those are the times my husband has to get me out of it), but that's the way I am, and it's the way I've always been. But just in case you're getting the idea right now that this partnership my hubby and I have is a bit combative, let me tell you something - we love each other, we really do. I think you have to be good mates, which we are, to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous marriage. And our marriage sometimes gets very outrageous, 'specially when I'm trying to sleep with a non-collapsible TV tray. I look forward to meeting with you all on this website, and I hope to see you soon.

One of the many joys of married life is being able to cooperate and share responsibilities. I go out and work all day, sometimes 12 hours per day, and my wife looks after our wellbeing, using the money that I make at work to ensure that we continue to thrive. Where my wife's own income wouldn't support our family financially, I can assist with my income. If I were responsible for keeping us fed or keeping the house clean, I wouldn't have the time to work as many hours as I do in order to keep the cash flowing in to our household. It is a mutually beneficial relationship. At least, that is how it is meant to be anyway. There are always problems and pitfalls, but overall it works well, and people have been doing it for many, many years. We don't always see eye-to-eye on all things, and our tastes vary widely, but each others personal strengths often complement and balance the other. I'm rather logical and practical, which helps in areas that my wife lacks in. She's compassionate and outgoing, which helps in areas that I lack in. I enjoy playing online games, which she hates. She enjoys online discussion, chat,and forums, which I don't always have much time for. This symbiotic relationship is ideal for an account here on Xisto. While I get the benefit of the Hosting Credits that my wife generates with her avid forum posting, she gets the enjoyment of meeting people and getting into deep and meaningful online discussions. We are Statesmen of Travian and Radio Chick, a new dynamic duo on the Xisto forums. We use the same forum account, travstatesmen, but we are two separate people, logging on from the same computer. No doubt my wife will make her own post soon and debunk pretty much everything that I have said here.

Thanks Nabb, that was very useful seeing your account's stats. 99 mySQL databases huh? I don't think even I would need that many! I'm already running three installations of Truppentool in a single mySQL database and they seem to coexist quite happily. I'm sure that once my site starts getting popular thiings may change, but I still don't think I'll use the full 99 databases here! * Hugs Saint_Michael back. * Thanks, I'm sure that uncle Xisto will take good care of me. So, how does the Xisto forum know about "quality of post"? I could copy the Desiderata (first copyrighted in 1927, thus now well out of copyright) and just insert some choice words that match the subject of my thread, if it were a fully automated system. Surely real human beings like yourself have some input? To Saint_Michael and rpgsearcherz, thanks for your words of wisdom and caution. I guess all hosts, free ones especially, have their technical difficulties every now and then. But I am still unable to get much done on my current host, even now. They seem to have resolved the lack of hard drive space problem, but the HTTP server is still going offline all the time, and it seems to be down more often than it is up. I'm forcing myself to add content to my site using the online editor that is part of Lanius CMS, as I expect that this is how my users will mostly be adding content to my site also, and it is a real problem with the HTTP server going down all the time. I can imagine how frustrating that will be for my users. I take a copy of the raw HTML of each page that I create using the Lanius editor, and I use that as a backup on my own computer, so I can easily migrate to a new webhost when that becomes an available option. Speaking of which, I don't intend to earn my 30 Credits here in this one thread, so I'm going to cause some bedlam post in some other threads on the Xisto forum. Again, thanks everybody for your welcome, your advice, and words of comfort.

Thank you, jlhaslip, I see that I have gained 10 Hosting Credits already, and could now apply for a Package 1 hosting plan on Host17.com if I wanted to. I gather than your reading my post had something to do with that, so thanks again. I will be going for the Package 2 offer though, so I still have some forum trolling posting to do yet to get to the next level. I will be reading through all the information that you have given me the link for, thanks. I am particularly keen to know such things as the number of mySQL databases available between the different packages offered by Xisto.com, the number of Email accounts, FTP accounts, etc that can be created through cPanel depending on which package I take from Xisto. I don't only look at disk space and bandwidth, as I know there is more to it than that. My previous host limited me to only three mySQL databases, and I hope to find that Xisto allows for more than that. I shall continue reading to find the answers to my questions. Again, thanks for your help and your welcoming me to Xisto.

On 9-Aug-2008 I decided to set up a new site for my MMOG clan, I play Travian on the .com servers and I'm setting up a new clan that spans multiple alliances and metas, and even multiple Travian gaming worlds. We consider ourselves to be above the pettiness of inter-alliance and inter-meta warfare, and thus many of our members are from opposing factions, yet we all work in together as a team, pulling the strings like puppet-masters. Anyway, I scouted around and found what I thought looked like a great hosting deal. I got a free webhost, which the review at free-webhosts.com said did not have forced adverts (first mistake, as they do!) and it supports CGI, PHP, SSI, FrontPage Extensions, Perl, Python, and mySQL databases, all the technology that I need for my new website. Also, the offer that I chose gave 1GB of storage space on their server, plus 20GB of bandwidth per month, as long as I host one of their adverts on every page that is visible to the public. So much for being free of forced adverts. Anyway, I created my new free account at this particular free webhost that shall remain nameless, and set to uploading my website components. I uploaded the Lanius Content Management System, then phpBB3, then the Truppentool software that I use for troop management in Travian. I configured the mySQL databases for each component, and then backed it all up, before I ran the installation routines for each component, so that I could quickly restore to defaults if I mucked anything up during installation. This proved to be a mistake, as the backup routines in cPanel have a high processor overhead, and my account was suspended immediately for excessive processor activity. A great start to the first day of my new website! By the time my account was unsuspended, I had to log off for the night anyway, so nothing more was done on the site. For the next few days I was busy with work, and only got to spend a little amount of time each day working on the new website. It took me a couple of goes to get phpBB3 running properly, and Lanius took a while to make it look like my own website, rather than just a Lanius mirror site. During even these short periods of working on the new site, the HTTP server was locking up every now and then, and I never achieved as much as I wanted to. It was while I was waiting for one of these outages to be restored that I stumbled upon the fact that I have to get my required host-supplied advertising up within one week of account creation, or they will suspend my account (again) or possibly even delete my account! A quick post on their forums left me with the reply from one of their admins that I will be granted extra time to meet the requirements of the TOS, due to the outages. It turns out that the outages are due to their admins upgrading PHP on their servers to the latest version. This upgrade seemed to take infinitely longer than I thought it would have, and I was still unable to get the required adverts up because the HTTP server was down more often than it was up. remember, I only registered the account on 9-Aug-2008. It is now 17-Aug-2008, and apparently the upgrade is completed. I am at last able to see my web pages on their server. However, that is not the end of it. I can only see whatever pages that I had previously uploaded, and cannot add any new pages, as their hard drive on the server is now overloaded, and there is no spare room left! All FTP uploads fail with an error code 553 Disk full - please upload later. Another message on the webhost's forums, and the admins assure us that this new problem will be resolved shortly. All the while, I still don't know whether my changes to my compnents are going to display the required adverts or not, and if after all this waiting I will not meet the requirements of their TOS and will have my account deleted. So, after all this I am searching again for another webhost for my new MMOG clan website. I see that to gain access to the better hosting package here on Host17.com, I need to gain hosting credits, and that one way to do that is to post meaningful messages on the forums here. The only thing that I could think of posting was a rant about useless webhosts, and Trapped In *BLEEP*! was like a beacon to me. Thank you for allowing me to vent.