[ShepardG]

Hey all,

I'm on Phoenix and come May/June, I'm going to be playing again, and wanted to start a LS. I like organization, as far as being able to play around my life, and I hate Endgame, so I want to try and mitigate some of the un-enjoyment of the different lvl75 activities available.

My questions are these:

*Note* I want to keep it somewhat small, around 24-36 dedicated members. I don't really want to focus on dynamis, or sky, or einherjar, or limbus, but more on BCNM/ENM/ZNM.
1. What sort of job spread would I be looking at divided by 30 members? We'll say that's the limit, for this line of questions.
2. What website host would everyone recommend? I plan on getting active,dedicated players through the homepage interface. I think that's one of the nicer selling things, when a member joins, and you direct them to the site.
3. What sort of web design software would you recommend? I'm planning on investing 200-300 dollars on the software if need's be.
4. What sort of bandwith do most LS website's see?
5. Would It be better to focus the LS into one of the previous mentioned area's? and if so, can dynamis/einherjar/assault/limbus be low manned?

Basically i know some of the questions are rather vague, but I'm mainly interested in number 2 and 3. Thanks for any input guys and gals.

[DakAttack]

If you don't already know the answers to some those questions then running a LS and respective website might be out of your league.

[Ameroth]

Originally Posted by ShepardG

I'm planning on investing 200-300 dollars on the software if need's be.

Wait what? You plan to drop 2-3 bills on website building software for a non-commercial site to host a some forums for a few people you play ffxi with? Did you forget that HTML is free?

If you really need any software, I recommend Dreamweaver. But I certainly do not recommend actually paying for it.

You won't need to worry about bandwidth for your LS's website. Realistically speaking, you're unlikely to have more than a few hundred unique hits per month.

In the end, there is already (free) software out there for guild leaders to use for point keeping systems, and plenty of free and not free bulletin-board style forum software you can use if you don't know what you're doing when it comes to web design.

[Ziero]

Try ZetaBoards » Free message board hosting to run your site/forums. They have fully customizable webpages that you can use as homepages and plenty of options to work the rest of site as well. And best of all, it's completely free and should have no problems staying that way for a private LS like you want to start.

As for your other questions, really can't help you. Running an LS is a tricky business and it all relies on the people you have and the things you do.

[Amberly]

I would say to start with a socail ls and see what happens from there. Mine ended up running nyzul isle, sea, and sky after 5 months

[Illuen]

Originally Posted by ShepardG

1. What sort of job spread would I be looking at divided by 30 members? We'll say that's the limit, for this line of questions.

This is something you need to figure out/know before you start this LS up. If you don't know what jobs work well for the events you want to do, then you're not ready to lead a endgame linkshell.

Originally Posted by ShepardG

2. What website host would everyone recommend? I plan on getting active,dedicated players through the homepage interface. I think that's one of the nicer selling things, when a member joins, and you direct them to the site.

I'm a fan of forumcircle.com, it is a pretty nice free host, with enough options built into it that you don't have to know much about building webpages to get it to do what you want.

Originally Posted by ShepardG

3. What sort of web design software would you recommend? I'm planning on investing 200-300 dollars on the software if need's be.

You really don't need to spend any money for this. If you're insistant on building a webpage on your own, you might want to look at Amaya as an alternative to Adobe Dreamweaver, and GIMP as an alternative to Adobe Photoshop. For a more exhaustive list of anything OS you might need to build a website, look here.

Originally Posted by ShepardG

4. What sort of bandwith do most LS website's see?

Unless you become a wildly popular site ala BG or FFXIO, or you host an insane amount of media files, you shouldn't have to worry about bandwidth, and can probably work more than well with the minium amount a webhost provides.

Originally Posted by ShepardG

5. Would It be better to focus the LS into one of the previous mentioned area's? and if so, can dynamis/einherjar/assault/limbus be low manned?

Again, if you don't know the direction you want your LS to take, then you're on your own. At the same time, I know from experience that Dyanmis can be low-manned (and I wouldn't call having 30ish people in a Dynamis run low man myself) and Assaults are capped at 6 people, so I don't know how much lower a bodycount you want with it.

[Feba]

I have to agree with Ziero and Illuen. Your best bet is in a site that hosts online forums at no cost. You don't need anything more fancy than a basic phpBB board; and any web development tools would be wasted unless you're willing to spend at least a year or two studying web design. If you need to host files (such as videos of a fight), you could easily host them yourself through torrents, or sites like rapidshare. There's really no point spending hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours to make a website that maybe fifty people will ever use look pretty.

[Balfree]

You GUYS! ... just ruined my opportunity to some quick cash....

[TheGrandMom]

LS setup really depends on the quality of players you get too. You could have 5 tanks for an event but if they all suck then it doesn't matter. My biggest issue with people is that they don't pay attention. Talk to people you are recruiting and get to know them. One of the things I like to do is just be talking friendly with them, get them to relax, and then get them on the right subject and say something like "ya, my computer/360/ps2 is in my bedroom and I use my tv as my computer monitor so I can't watch tv when I play FFXI." If they respond with "Oh I don't use my tv for a monitor so I always have my tv on and watch it while I play." Then I know this person has a high likelyhood of being one of the asshats that doesn't pay attention when playing.

Be careful when recruiting. You'll find that key jobs like bards, tanks, whms, etc are the hardest to recruit. Don't fill your ls up with jobs that "can probably" do what needs to be done. It takes time and the more patient you are, the stronger your ls is. On the other hand, they don't come to you. You need to be out there and pressing the flesh, so to say.

Einherjar and Assualts are quite popular now so you might want to advertise for those too. I personally think Einherjar is friggin fun shit. Remember sometimes you have to do things out of your comfort range to entice others.

[Durahansolo]

Originally Posted by "Illuen, Feba, Ziero"

Use Forums

^^This

If you really want to have a website, all you will need would be a few pages at the very most. You might want pages for different members/sackholders, pictures from linkshell events, random messages from the shell creator (aka "that's you Shepard G" lol). Then the actual events, messages, fun stuff can all go into the forums. Our linkshell has a website, and the website hardly ever gets updated, all we ever use is the message board to communicate.

EDIT: Also if you don't really want to deal with the end game aspect of the game, why not make a social linkshell. I remember when i first got in my linkshell, we were a social ls that did garrisons and what not together. The linkshell is a hooking point to grab people, the website is used to get organization within the ranks. We use the website to organize NM hunts as well as post ToD's for NMs in case somebody wants to go after one.

[ChildofValhalla]

I'd recommend Dream Weaver, but if it's just for an LS, use forums.

[Yellow Mage]

Since I saw nobody else mention it, you *could* always use the Linkshell Community thing that hardly anybody who is a native speaker of English knows exists is a perfectly good option that S-E themselves provide for you!

[Feba]

Originally Posted by Yellow Mage

Since I saw nobody else mention it, you *could* always use the Linkshell Community thing that hardly anybody who is a native speaker of English knows exists is a perfectly good option that S-E themselves provide for you!... if you're a LOSER!

ftfy

[Yellow Mage]

Fixed fail: Linkshell Community helped me find a linkshell on my server focused on people with San d'Orian allegiance, that even has one of my friends in it!

Such a feat would be much more difficult to accomplish with the Googles alone: Sarutabaruta sees Yagudo blood this week on San d'Orian swords.

[Feba]

Originally Posted by Yellow Mage

Fixed fail: Linkshell Community helped me find a linkshell on my server focused on people with San d'Orian allegiance, that even has one of my friends in it! ...proving I am indeed a LOSER!

Fix win.