[ADVICE] Your Responsibilities as a Server Owner

[Beaverbeliever]

This guide will help you whether you are renting, or running your own server. This lays out the basic ground rules when you do anything technical with your server.

1) More mods, not good.
Some of the people think that since they love Surf, RPG, Deathmatch, and Zombiemod, they should do something new and put them all on the same server. *Extremely Loud Buzzer* Wrong! When you do this, sometimes not only can it cause technical issues with configs and lag, but it can also confuse the players coming in. A rule of thumb: run the least amount of plugins and mods as you can!

2) Admin plugins
Now sorry for you Mani fans, but that Mani just doesn't cut it anymore. Not only is their site currently hacked, but the plugin itself is full of holes and is extremely hackable. The new answer that is rising faster and faster is Sourcemod. Sourcemod provides a good base for an admin system for any HL2 game, and is extremely customizable. Simply dropping .smx files into a folder enables them on your server. Although the menu itself doesn't have as much options as Mani, it holds unlimited possibility for customization. If you are running Mani and having server issues, I dare you to take it off and try it without. From personal experience, it has made the server better 9 times out of 10.

3) Skins, Sounds, and Materials
Now I know its really cool to be running around with a hat that has ADMIN on it, but is it really necessary? In most people opinions, its not worth waiting 30 seconds to a minute to download each skin required for playing in the server. A better option, make it downloadable from your website, and not from the server. Same goes for sounds, is it really necessary for each person connecting to download what seems like your entire iTunes library? The less time a user has to wait to get in means the less of a chance they will disconnect while connecting.

4) Keep it constant
If you are one of those people who likes to try out a new mod every few days, maybe think about testing on a private server. Players don't normally like to save a Surf server to favorites one week, and a week later it be a Deathmatch. Pick a game type, and go with it. Changing it every few days does not help you build a valuable player base, only temporary players which will probably never play on your server again.

I hope my tips help out some of those newer people to the Game server management hobby, and also help those who have been around for awhile to share with people who are new. Please feel free to comment on my opinions. Feel free to disagree, but please be kind about it Thanks for reading!

[dualcore1289]

This is a great tutorial, definatly sticky material lol.

[realchamp]

Nice job

Post stickied - 2009 17th june 10:28am.

[Beaverbeliever]

realchamp Wrote:Nice job

Post stickied - 2009 17th june 10:28am.

Thanks

[bennit]

Apart from the mods I agree totally.
Some mods can actually be a nice combo.

I've been running one server with the folowing mods for 3 years now:
DM, RPG and a couple of event scripts to catch flaws of the HL2 engine for this combo (like noblock, nooverflow)
http://igor.rave.org/css/tracking.png
And it's always been around the top 90/100 (if there were 100 servers, 90 would be worse than mine).
In the weekends I get about 33 people over the floor and 24/7 there are averagely 8 people on it.
That kindof prooves my concept.

If you're aiming at mods like "extra gore", "hey you are from this country", "sounds" I do agree completely!

[rautamiekka]

There's one thing I won't use for Admins: SourceMod. Its Admin/Immunity Group methods suck, are as brainless as C++ is old fart. If even new Mani v1.2T is hackable, go there and help it if you're that excellent which I doubt 100%.

[Beaverbeliever]

Every expert on this forum can agree Sourcemod is better all the way around.

[DNG]

Thanks for the ADVICE

[Spartanfrog]

DNG, please do not bump old threads.

[Mooga]

...I don't see MAKE MOOGA AN ADMIN on that list.

[realchamp]

Mooga don't bump old posts or I will have to ban you permanently.

[Mooga]

Don't tempt me realchamp.

[ENS-LTD]

Nice!

[gamingchampion]

I know this forum isn't that active anymore. But still I am thankful for the information provided here.