Novul

[Kyttias]

Thanks, cailynmae! I definitely feel I'm getting closer to launch.

I'm now officially considering myself a 'sole proprietorship' - smaller than a small business, my assets are my own and I have no employees. As a sole proprietorship, all income from my site (through ads and, inevitably paid currency) will be taxable as simply personal income. No extra forms needed. In my state, I don't even have to file since I have no employees and I'm not selling anything taxable under Indiana state law - digital goods are not tangible items.

Should I somehow earn more than $400 (after expenses) I'll file as something beyond a sole proprietorship. Luckily, my girlfriend's mom's job is to help people with their taxes so I'll have no trouble properly filing my expenses and shouldn't be at any risk of being audited (not that they'll care until my yearly end profits exceed a certain amount, anyway).

I've upgraded my PayPal account (it's free) to a business marked as a sole proprietorship and will look into how to securely receive and automate payments for digital goods (in-game currency). But to do that I need a live website.

Then there's Google AdSense. I also need a live website for that.

I'm currently self-hosting my site on my local network - not the internet at large - during my development period. But I'm considering hosting through BlueHost. It's just under $4/mo for the first year and $5/mo after that. The first year also comes with a free domain. The next largest plan is $10/mo, and I can upgrade at any time.

However, I don't want to be paying any earlier than necessary. Just because I've looked into it, it doesn't mean I'm near ready to set up any of the above.

I really love the Mysidia framework and I'm happy to continue to build off of it (and continue to offer free support to the community now and then). But I'm starting to reach the point where I need to advance the features in place. I'm not fond of, well, any of the existing features the framework offers as they are. Some of them just need a 'look and feel' upgrade while others need additional features and these take time. There are also entirely new features I need before launch.

Before I launch I want to try to rebuild both Breeding and Trading to my liking. I haven't looked at the Personal Message system but I despise the current WYSIWYG editor. Hopefully replacing just the text area will prove easy in comparison to rebuilding the former two items.

Features I've deemed unnecessary for my initial alpha (friend-only) testing phase include a player-driven Auction House, implemented Quests and a fleshed out Exploration system, Achievements, and the Rues (real-cash) currency. In between hard things I also need to make sure my user profiles tabs are working, make considerations about user avatars, get off my butt and make the forum match my site, implement chests with items inside, my gacha machine, spruce up the user registration, get user factions ready to go for competitive events, etc etc.

So, am I ready? No.

But...

In the past year, I've - learned a ton about the template system and built myself a theme I'm happy with, implemented genetics, made nice modals for the stores and inventory, changed how pets are displayed and made profiles for them, and created entirely new features such as shop loyalty, tabs for the inventory, and a stamp game.

I think, at the current rate, I can be ready. It's just a matter of time.