Do I have to ask permission to get stuff (songs, noteskin ports,etc) to a website?

[henke37]

Technically, everything is copyrighted to the original creators, but when the creations are released freely and openly to the public, chances are the author won't care a whole lot.

Actually, a lot of people don't want their work stolen even if they make it avalible for free. Even when it is fully credited mirroring with links to the author, some people want to be the only distributor of their work. Lost advertising money or not.

[Karai]

This is true, but I can't recall any themers having ads on their sites. I'm not trying to argue with you, you're right, I'm just playing devil's advocate. freeware is slightly different than a skin for an open source program, but all in all you SHOULD ask permission first.

[musicbeatz]

Ok, I got myself a website a couple of days ago. www.musicbeatz2008.webs.com I'm going to put my stepfiles to my website. The songs are in OGG format, however. I'm going to be using links to mediafire to download the steps, and all the others. The files I'm going to host are my stepfiles with songs and bgs (With just some tweaks and text added), also courses, and other stuff, like noteskin ports for SM4. Those are the files I'm going to host. I'm just telling ablut what files I'm going to host, and what files I'm going to put on my website

[Karai]

Not to be rude, but a lot of SM sites are hosted on paid servers, not free web hosting. Your site may be taken down without notice by your host if they deem you to be using too much bandwidth...

[musicbeatz]

Your site may be taken down without notice by your host if they deem you to be using too much bandwidth...

Ok... BTW, Chicky uses free web hosting, and uses links to download his steps (I think.)

[Karai]

I don't know who that is, but I am thinking of larger sites such as SMthings, pump haven, etc. A lot of people use their own PCs as web servers to host their own files, such as myself, although I am getting some real webhosting soon...

Just a thought, if you want to make this site big, you might want to consider paying a little cash out to allow it to expand, among other things~

[manda]

If you are going to host works that aren't yours, such as themes or packs, etc. it is always common courtesy to offer your site as an extra download, but if it's just to have it put on mediafire and such again, then it defeats the purpose of being an extra host IMO

[musicbeatz]

it defeats the purpose of being an extra host IMO

What do you mean by the purpose of being an extra host?

[derangedKitten]

What do you mean by the purpose of being an extra host?

i.e. a mirror.

[Karai]

As akhonda stated, if you are planning on having a site where people can download a lot of themes and songs etc, then they should be hosted by you, not by a third party (mega upload, rapid share, media fire, etc) because that is really defeating the purpose of mirroring files. Mirrors should be permanent, or at least as permanent as they can be on the net, but your files are not.

And if you DO make them permanent by hosting them yourself, your host will delete your account because you'll be consuming too much bandwidth. Unfortunately, web hosting is not as easy as some people consider it to be. You aren't going to get much for free these days, but for rather small prices you can get a good starter pack, and if need be, upgrade that pack when you need more space or bandwidth.

www.slicehost.com offers full root access to a Linux install of your choice even on their $20/mo package, if you know anything about Linux you might want to look into them, if you don't there are tons of other places you can host for a monthly fee.

Making a website is not like how it was in the 90s. Slapping together a make-shift HTML document and calling it your homepage no longer works.

If you want some help with anything, feel free to message me on MSN or PM me on the forums.