micro-site hosting:
» affordable hosting & support for smaller sites!
» for amusement industry manufacturers, suppliers, & consultants or any other small business or professional seeking hosting & personal support for their smaller site!

Amusement Industry Links & Directory: With close to 3,800 amusement industry links, fan sites, manufacturers, consultants, engineering firms, service providers, suppliers, theme parks, FECs, discussion groups, & more, this is one of the largest amusement industry links lists on the Web. Includes links collected & compiled during the course of maintaining & updating the AIMS website. (Includes rescued links formerly maintained by Tim Melago at
http://users.stargate.net/~rollocst/amuse.html.)

 April 1999 to November, 07, 2002: During this period, one of our ongoing projects consisted of revising, updating, and maintaining the web site for the Amusement Industry Manufacturers & Suppliers Int'l.. It was work worth doing and it was always interesting.

On November 07, 2002, the AIMS site was replaced by a PHP database driven CMS (Content Management System) application designed to be updated and maintained by office staff. This allows maintenance of the site to be performed in house, eliminating a need for outside support. This saves AIMS a little off the operating budget, but it's a system that has limitations for organization members relying on this as their primary web presence. Following the transition, different members indicated, to us, concern over the new site organization/structure. Obviously, the new format will not be as effective for smaller companies, consultants, & service providers who relied on the AIMS site for their primary "web presence".

 micro-site domain hosting options:

Here's the deal: Our purpose is to make available an essential adjunct micro-site (we define "micro-site" as ranging from a single page up to as many as a hundred with up to 2.5 gigabyte monthly bandwidth consumption) management & hosting solution to companies we know and have already worked with. While AIMS refocuses on its mission of safety training & certification, our mission continues to be web standards compliant, multi-platform accessible, web design, maintenance/support, & hosting priced and delivered effectively for a varied base of samll to medium-sized business & professional clients.

At the present time, we're making available a micro-site domain hosting option to amusement industry manufacturers, suppliers, & consultants -- (you know who you are, we know who you are, you know who we are) -- for just $270/year. Registration of available dot-com, dot-net, or dot-org names, if you do not have one, is available for only USD $20 additional. Other "TLDs" (Top Level Domains) are available at additional cost. While this solution is primarily for AIMS members, companies & individuals do not need to be a past or present member of AIMS or any other organization. The solution does however, assume that clients partaking of this offer supply their own html/page content. If they do not have html/content available, site design & development is available for an additional cost. In the case of AIMS members, we have backup copies of all member html/page content as it was last published on the previous version of the aimsintl.org site and would simply restore this content under the member's new or existing domain.

In most cases, with appropriate edits, we can simply install previous HTML/content from backup copies to the new domain account in a matter of a few minutes during the setup process. We'll also make sure that your HTML validates and meets (at least) basic WAI-Web Accessibility Initiative recommendations along with United States federal government United States Section 508 guidelines. We believe it's important that information be available to as many users with as few platform or accessibility issues as possible.

Since it's your website, on your own domain, and we don't have to worry about possible consequences effecting other member pages on an organizational website... anybody who wants to display content that's in the category of proprietary html or OS specific application(s) or media file(s) is perfectly free to do so. While we generally do not advise or recommend this, sometimes things like that are just useful. But, also be aware that invalid or proprietary html or OS specific file formats can, in some cases, adversely effect search engine profiles.

Because the hosting is provided on our system, owned & operated by us... we do not have to address ongoing issues with a third party hosting services provider. This is a secure, industrial-grade system running on Red Hat Linux and powered by Apache; real web server solutions for real businesses vs. consumer or hobbyist level site hosting. Your site functionality will never be affected because unreachable admin personnel decide to make substantive changes to a system configuration without advising clients beforehand. If you discover a problem, you can pick up the phone, call us, and the individual you talk to will be able to address the issue without having to make out a work order that will take 24 to 48 hours to fulfil. Normally issues are addressed in a matter of minutes -- not hours or days. HTML files, on this system, will never become unreadable because the file permissions suddenly were changed by an unexpected changes in system configurations or transfer of the site from one machine to another followed by sys-admin failure to reset file ownership and permissions. Clients who choose to edit their own files need not expect to find their FTP or SSH access erroneously and unexpectedly disabled, either. We not be some big hosting company, but we're a no-nonsense professional operation, run by professionals, for professionals. Simply say this; You won't have to log in daily just to make sure your site hasn't been substantively affected by unexpected changes to the web server.

Once you're up and running, you can ask AIMS to link to your new domain from your new AIMS member page. If you want to provide a link to AIMS, either the AIMS site in general, or your member page specifically, we can do that too. In fact, we would encourage doing both.

All web host accounts have their own individual username/password and are enabled with a 25mb disk quota (much bigger than AIMS allocates). With few exceptions, this is adequate to restore any existing AIMS member page(s) & content just as they were on the previous AIMS site. Additional space, if needed, can be allocated in 5mb blocks at a cost of $5.00/month per 5mb. Email for all domains is powered by the qmail mailserver software. When you have your own domain, you have a permanent email address. As long as you renew your domain registration, you can take it wherever you go. You'll be able to send & receive email as anyname@yourdomain.tld. Incoming mail can be retrieved either directly from our mailserver (using any POP enabled mail client like Eudora, Outlook, Lotus Notes, etc.), or your incoming mail (addressed to YourName@yourdomain.tld) forwarded to any address you want (most ISPs allow this - some may not).

Anytime you require changes or updates, we're just a phone call or an email away. Or, since you have your own username/passwrod, those who want to do their own site maintenance are perfectly free to do so.

-- In other words; Your website will be an asset, tied to your business, that you control. You will own it, rather than it being a membership benefit subject to modification or abbreviation at the decision or whim of an organization's Board of Directors!