Downloads Section - Please Read - Updated 1st January 2004
Thanks for visiting the downloads section of the Infinite Frontiers website. Before you start downloading files, we'd ask that you spare a few minutes to read this and try to appreciate the pressures we are under in providing this free service.
It has always been our intention to run this as a free website and when we started the downloads section, we never expected it to be as popular as it has proved to be. We sent a press release to the games industry press resource site, Games Press, expecting maybe a couple of thousand hits - instead, within 24 hours we had received 20,000 hits and had used a massive 20Gb of bandwidth. As you can imagine, this was far in excess of what we could normally handle and we hae had to buy in additional bandwidth at a cost to ourselves.
As well as this, as we add more games for downloading (as well as the videos and music files that we are now including in the music section), we are rapidly approaching our 1Gb storage limit. Once this happens, we will need to spend more money again in expanding our server to handle the additional content.
All of this is going to cost money, and although we have said this before, we can't stress the importance of this to the future success and viability of this site. Without support, we may have to cut back on the downloads section, or remove it from the site altogether and that is something that we don't want to do.
In order to help alleviate the pressure on our server, we would ask that you try to observe the following when downloading files:-
1. Try to limit the amount of files you download in a single session, and if you are planning on downloading a number of files, please try to spread these out over a period of time to allow the impact on our bandwidth to be spread over a period of time. Some people have abused this considerably and on some days, the average bandwidth used per visitor has been in excess of 10Mb and it soon takes its toll.
2. With multiple visits, this has the added benefit to ourselves that the banner adverts on these pages will help generate more income for the site (although the amount per view is relatively small).
3. For the banner ads on the site, please click on as many of them as possible and visiting the sites in question. Some of them offer us payment on a pay-per-click basis or a payment each time a visitor signs up for their free email news updates, and this all helps towards our running costs so please try to support us as much as possible. Others offer us commission on sales, and with our growing running costs, this will help keep the site online indefinitely.
4. DON'T use a download manager when getting files from our server. Most of these work by accessing the file once to make the connection and again to download the file and this places more strain on our bandwidth.
5. Sign up for our free forum - we want as much feedback and input as possible on the site, our service and other things we are involved with. It will also help to keep our forum lively and active, as well as giving us an idea of how many active visitors we get to our site in addition to our regular stats.
6. Finally, if you are downloading more than a few files, games and applications, PLEASE make a donation to us, no matter how small. Every pound counts towards our running costs and without your support, we can't continue to offer these games free of charge. If you download a few files, please try to remember that there is an incredible value of software on the site and with over 200 titles currently available for downloading, even a small donation of £5 represents incredible value for the amount of software at your disposal. To make a secure donation, click on the PayPal link below.
As we've said earlier, because of the popularity of the site, we can't maintain this service and handle the amount of traffic without additional funding. We get an amount of bandwidth included with our hosting package each month, but we have exceeded this considerably and we are having to spend money on additional bandwidth which we cannot afford.
If any of you could help with donations, this would help us immensely, and please follow the above PayPal link. We are also looking at extensive advertising and sponsorship. While we don't want to have adverts all over the site covering every page and menu, we feel that in order to maintain the service, we will be left with little or no choice. At the end of the day, if we don't get the funding we need from donations, we have to find this by any other means possible. If any of you know of any companies who might be interested, please get in touch.
We don't want to have to suspend the downloads service, but unless we received adequate funding and support we may have no choice as our funds are limited and we can't maintain the site at this level for much longer.
With your help, we can keep this site running, and make it the largest multi-format legal downloads site on the net, but we all need to work together to make it happen.
The Infinite Frontiers Team
