Join the Summer Host Club™
Running short on money? Want a little extra cash to spend on minecraft server donation ranks?
Well you’ve come to the right place! View our ultimate guide to learn how to become a genuine Summer Host™ below.
Step 1. Acquire Contabo VPS
Everyone knows that Contabo is the number one source of premium virtual private servers (and also the cheapest).
Find the nearest credit card from your parent’s wallets and buy yourself a server. Look for the one with the most ram as that will enable you to sell the most servers.
When ordering, be sure to install Ubuntu 14.04, because 16.04 and 18.04 are newer, thus consuming more of your valuable RAM. We can’t have that. Plus, our game server panel is fully compatable with 14.04.
Step 2. Set up SWAP
SWAP is an amazin’ technology that allows you to magically turn your hard drive into ram! Yes, you heard that right. You can turn your hardrive into ram. This works especially well with SSD as they are much faster than HDD.
Running out of ram? Just sell SWAP, it is just as good. Remember not to give this secret away to anyone, including your clients.
Step 3. Install Nulled WHMCS
You’re currently in the “testing phase”, which means you have an excuse for using a nulled copy of WHMCS. Google “Nulled WHMCS” and click the first link that looks appealing.
Hopefully the website you’re looking for has a shoutbox or chat, which means you can have people guide you through the entire install, including the part where ionCube doesn’t work.
Step 4. Install Pterodacley
Pterodactylylee is the most important part of this, since it’s where you’ll be hosting all of your servers. We reccomend Pterodactil, for it’s ability to run more than one type of gameserver, and most importantly, it’s free.
You can head over to pterodacly.io and click the Discord button, where you can proceed to spam #support and call the panel trash to get people to help you install it. This is the most crucial step so do it carefully.
Warning: If anyone tells you to remove the default nginx config, whatever that is, don’t remove it as you’ll need it for your website to work properly.
Step 5. Link WHMCS to Pterodacley
You don’t want to create servers manually do you? Neither do I. Luckily for you, there’s a free WHMCS module available for hosts just like yours! Head into the #whmcs channel in the Pterodactyl Discord server you joined earlier and spam until someone sends you the download link.
Once you’ve done that, hire a sysadmin on MC-Market to install it for you because you’re “too lazy”. Once you find someone that’s willing to install it for $0.43, you can proceed to the next step.
Step 6. Download a template
Since no one actually wants to code a website, have a look around Themeforest and find a minecraft hosting template that looks good.
Wait, WTF? This template is $9? You can’t afford that! You’re still in the “testing phase”! Google “Themeforest Template Name Here
Template Nulled” and download them one by one until it doesn’t give you a virus. Upload it to your default nginx directory, /var/www/html/
, and edit away with notepad!
Word of Advice: Some people may suggest to use something along the lines of Atom or VSCode for editing your template. Ignore them, Notepad is the fastest and most efficient editor on the market currently, and it’s built into Windows!
Step 6 ½. Customize your template
The cheaper your services, the better, but you still want to make a profit. Since you’re not a registered host and are still in the “testing phase”, which means you don’t have to pay taxes, I recommend starting at $0.99/GB for base pricing, to attract any potential customers that may have a sensitive budget.
Be sure to also advertise your node specs boldly on the front page, and the DDoS protection that you definently have. Also, I would exaggerate the node specs so customers can proudly show off what they bought and don’t think you’re overselling, creating a sense of pride and satisfaction.
Step 7. Get a domain
Every host has to have a domain to look good. You wouldn’t want a free subdomain like explosivehosting.weebly.com
for your hosting would you?
You’re going to need one of your parent’s credit card again for this step. Head over to Namecheap and pick up yourself a .host domain, you can pick whatever you want. It’s only $1 for the first year, so they probably won’t notice it go through. Be sure to enable auto-renewal for the domain so it won’t suddenly stop working. Not like you’re gonna be charged $70 after that or anything.
Step 8. Use Cloudflare
The market is extremely competitive, so it is crucial not to giveaway your actual provider. You wouldn’t want your competitors to find out your Contabo VPS wouldn’t you? Use Cloudflare to manage your domain and turn that orange cloud on.
Lie that you own the hardware. It is a good marketing stratergy afterall. If your clients are somehow smart enough to check the IP, just tell them you are collocating. Nothing can go wrong from there 😉
Step 9. Offer Discord Support
WHMCS Tickets can be slow and annoying for customers, be sure to create a Discord server and offer support there.
Word of Advice: You may want to mute the support channel in your server as the constant pinging can get annoying while you’re in school or watching YouTube.
Step 10. Advertise your host
Now that you’ve got yourself a genuine Summer Host™, it’s time to advertise it on MC-Market, the same place you hired your sysadmin from earlier.
Before you do that though, you should hire a graphic designer from MC-Market to make you a cool thread template design, and then do a paypal chargeback afterwards. They don’t really need the money at all, trust me.
To get the most clients, search for “minecraft server” in the search bar, and rapidly copy/paste your thread template you paid for you got earlier into the reply box on the page.
You may also want to go into the Hosting - Offering category and paste it there as well for maximum effectiveness.
Step 11. Defend your host
You may receive some backlash from the community in the form of negative reputation and namecalling.
The hosting market is like the battlefield, you’ve gotta kill or get killed. Be sure to deflect anything they throw at you with insults, personal attacks (recommended), DDoS attacks, and other things that may want to make them cry. Offer to 1v1 them IRL too, that usually shuts them up pretty quickly.
A good example of someone doing this properly and effectively can be seen below:
(these are real unaltered screenshots from the Pterodactyl Discord earlier)
Yes, this is a joke. Don’t take any of the advice on this page seriously.
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What is a “Summer Host”?
A “Summer Host” is a hosting company that someone’s trying to start that’s usually not a legally registered business, has bad business practices, uses nulled billing systems, or just low effort in general. They usually have an average lifespan of a couple months, and are mostly out to appeal towards the low budget audience (mostly made of kids) for hosting in order to make a quick buck or two.
Disclaimer
Everything you see above is a joke and should not be taken as serious advice. This site exists simply to critize and warn about some of the “summer hosts” out there.
Credits
Original Creator: tenten8401#8503
Current Maintainer: d0ct0rjack
Contact Us
Got any suggestions? Is there a host I am missing or is there a host you think should be taken off the list? Join our Discord Server and give us your ideas. We are welcoming to everyone, including the angry Certified Summer Hosts™ owners if that happens to be you!