For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last few months the Shining Force: SOS Campaign is drawing close to its end – the middle of March. In a bid to drum up a bit more support I have been hard at work on my sewing machine (and indeed with a needle and thread!) making two Shining Force: SOS Special Edition Yogurt Plushies!

One plushie will be sent to Camelot with the other fan mail & goodies, but the other will be included in the prize draw for Campaign supporters.

So, the prize draw as it stands has the following as prizes:

• Sega Official Limited Edition Shining Soul II Yogurt GBA Pouch (only 100 made, worth around US$200)
• Shining Force for Sega Mega Drive
• Shining Force II for Sega Mega Drive
• Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon for GBA
• Special Edition Yogurt Plushie

To have a chance of winning all you need to do is support the Shining Force: Save our Series campaign by making a campaign video and/or sending a fan letter by post. Full details of how to go about this are on the Campaign website. If you send both a letter and a video, you’ll have not one but two chances to win!

For more pictures of the Yogurt plushie, click here 🙂

So, what are you waiting for? Help to Save our Series and you could win!

In other news, we recently switched forums from an ancient IPB to phpBB. All accounts and old posts have been ported over (although a few oddities remain!) – please log in to the new forums as soon as you can, to allow it to update your stored password to a more secure format.

Due to the forum switch and the fact that I am still not finished with the main SFC site overhaul, updating the news is now a bit awkward, so bear with me if there aren’t many updates (as if that’s unusual ;)) in the next month or so before the new site is ready!

Many thanks to SFCer Martin III, who typed up the SitD script a couple of years ago and posted it on the SitD Forum.

I know I’ve been slack the last few years, but am finally starting to catch up here a little bit at a time. Over my lunch break today I’ve prepped the script for addition to the site and have imported it – shazam!

So, the script is now available in the scripts section here at SFC, complete with pictures for most of the characters.

I could do with in-game pictures for the following characters as I don’t seem to have many SitD screenshots to hand (only played it on the console, not emulated!) – if anyone can provide them that would be great!
Princess Jessa, Jessa Doppler,Xern, Spirit of the Fountain and Mortred.
I could also do with a better picture of Pyra, the one I’m using has her name over it.

Thanks again to Martin, and sorry it’s taken me so long to add it. Nice work mate 🙂

Hi all and welcome to SFC’s Annual Beg!

As you all know I’m still working on the new CMS for the site, along with the new design & new RPG/shop system. I’ve been dead busy with work all year and haven’t done much for the last few months, but plan to have more time for it again towards then end of the year when things get quiet at work again. I’ve been so busy that this is my first day off in almost 3 months. So I thought I’d best make the most of actually having some time, and put up the beg 😉 I may spend some of today working on the rebuild, or I might treat myself to some gaming time, and pick up where I left off on STHA!

Since moving to the new server last September, SFC has taken on the SFIII Translation Project website, as well as having another new hostee planned (sorry I haven’t had the time to set that up for you yet dude!!) with a fab Shining site. We’re also now hosting Shining Only: UK, where plans for UK Shining fan meets are arranged. I’m so glad to be able to offer hosting to Shining sites who need it, and of course I don’t charge anything for it. The SFC server has been almost entirely fan funded for some years now, so I’m trying to give back where I can 🙂

Anyhoo, long story short, the next year of hosting fees is due at the end of September. So, if you’ve got a few spare dollars kicking around in PayPal, every little helps!

Well folks, it’s that time of year again. Actually, it’s well beyond that time of year. Normally I’d’ve started this beg months ago.

You see, several months ago I was contacted by a kindly fellow who volunteered to pay for the next year of hosting when it was due. I had no reason to doubt this fellow, having stayed in contact by email & mobile phone and he also bought me SF:Feather as a thank you for my work on the site. I don’t know what’s happened, but having tried to reach him several times in the last month or so I’ve had no response. Although I don’t think it was his intention to let us down, I find myself with no choice now but to launch a beg. I’ve planned on moving the site to a new host since Smoove have not been up to their former high standards of late and now I have only a week left in which to pick the host (which will now be solely based on how much money I can raise – I have a choice of two hosts), transfer the entire site over and get it up and running. I’d hoped to have an extra month to trial the new host first and ensure it’s the right place for SFC. If I raise sufficient I will try to do this by staying with Smoove an extra month while running the forums on the new host.

Over the last year I’ve been working hard on the SFC CMS in all the spare time I can find, and it is certainly coming along well. I’d like to think that over Christmas (when there’s not much fishing to be had!) I’ll be able to finish it off, but in reality the project may take longer if it’s to be able to do everything I hope. Once it’s finished, selected site members will be able to update areas of the main site, keeping the content fresh like it always used to be. I’ve also planned out the new site design as many of you at the forums will have seen. For those of you who haven’t, here’s the draft (note I plan on implementing a colour selector of sorts

It’s not often you’ll find me SHOUTING online, but this time I really feel I need to!

In case it wasn’t already apparent, SFC needs a new host. SmooveNET, the current host, has been rather lacking in it’s support department (weeks to respond, if at all; regular downtime…) for the last year and I’ve had enough. Others are jumping ship too.

The question is, where can SFC go where it will be welcome? Fansites in general can struggle to find decent hosts because of the amount of content which is of questionable legality due to copyright. The very nature of a fansite is to include materials about someone else’s products, be it a videogame, movie or TV series.

SFC hosts a great many images, magazine scans, screenshots and game scripts, not to mention the hosting of patch files for the game ROMs and ISOs (though I must point out I do not host any ROMs or ISOs here, nor will I as long as they are so blatantly illegal). I do however include links to MP3 files on other servers. A great many hosts seem to even frown on this, classing it as the ‘facilitating of copyright infringement’. How a host can complain about what a website owner links to is beyond me!

So, who’d have us with content like that? I can’t get permission from the companies involved (ie, Sega, Nintendo, Camelot etc) although they have on several occasions complimented the site, offered news exclusives and donated prizes. If that doesn’t ring of some kind of approval I don’t know what does.

I don’t want to move the site only to find it getting shut down because of the content.

Similarly I’m very cautious about hosts who offer ‘unlimited’ bandwidth and disk space. Usually they have some kind of fair usage policy and can still shut a site down if they feel the use is excessive. How is this ‘unlimited’?! So, I’d prefer a host which is up front about the usage figures.

Of those few hosts who seem to genuinely allow large volumes of traffic, most seem to have some kind of limit on the amount of files that can be hosted. While I don’t see SFC hitting these limits, I prefer not to have them in place if they’re going to seem like low numbers – 50,000 or so – especially when each email received on the domain counts towards the file limit.

I’ve only got about a month in which to find a new host. So far it’s proving quite tricky. I’ve been recommended the likes of Bluehost, 1&1, Pinchhost and HostGator. Most of these seem not to be ideal for the site’s needs. DreamHost looks ok, but still has rules on copyright issues and linking to such content.

I’m not looking for free hosting. Not even for dead cheap hosting. I’d happily take on a VPS or similar if it fell within budget.

So, here’s what SFC needs – can you recommend a host or do you know someone who could offer this kind of hosting?

– US or UK based server
– at least 2.5GB of space (more preferable)
– at least 50GB bandwidth per month (200GB+ preferable)
– php, mysql (probably 10 databases or so would do – no size limit please)
– subdomains (at least 5)
– fairly relaxed rules on content
– fast tech support, reliable server
– monthly cost of US$30 per month at most

Or should I just give up and stick with Smoove? >.<;; Tasukete!!

Well, after all these years it may finally be time for SFC to move host again. The service myself and other Smoove customers at SFC have been receiving has not been up to their old standards over the past couple of years. Downtime has increased, errors are on the up and with the credit crunch it would be nice to have a lower bill too.

Smoove has always had its benefits and in some respects I am loathe to move because despite downtime, I know SFC is safe here as regards my hosting of Shining artwork and other such ‘copyrighted’ (but now rather unlikely to be causing anyone any losses) materials, the hosting of the translation project, linking to MP3s etc. They’re also very good about bandwidth, space etc and will usually increase it if needed – no risk of the site being closed.

But, with downtime increasing and tech support not being what it was, I really do need to consider a move.

So, I’m looking for recommendations for a new host. Here’s what I’m looking for:

– at least 2.5GB of space (more preferable)
– at least 50GB bandwidth per month (200GB+ preferable)
– php, mysql (probably 10 databases or so would do)
– subdomains (at least 5)
– fairly relaxed rules on content
– fast tech support, reliable server
– monthly cost of US$30 per month at most

It would also be nice to be able to offer sub-hosting on SFC to other Shining fansites – for free or a minimal cost I’d imagine.

I’ve looked around online and most of the places I’ve found which seem to fit the bill have very mixed reviews and often it seems those who seem to offer a lot (eg, ‘unlimited’ bandwidth/space) for a low price actually don’t like it if their hostees really use that much. So, I’d like recommendations if possible from people who have similar size sites on a good host.

Or, perhaps you run a server yourself and can offer the above?

There are also a number of other Smoove hostees looking to jump ship at the moment who may well be interested in hosting – possibly something comparable to the Smoove basic hosting package.

For full details of the Smoove packages for comparison to your own suggestions, click here.