Hi,

I am developing the chess site ChessClan.com
You can play free onlne chess here. You don't need to download anything in order to start playing.
All comments and sugestions are welcome.

I joined your site. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

It's a pity there are so many correspondence chess sites and only few real-time chess sites. Of course correspondence chess is easier to develop, but there are so many of them already.
Anyway, ChessClan, how did you plan to make your site better than GameKnot, RedHotPawn, ItsYourTurn etc.?

It is already better because ChessClan.com is absolutely free. I love to play correspondent chess but greedy sites like gameknot and redhotpawn want to get money if you want to play many games concurently. That is why I created my own.
ketchuplover, I challenged you!

Ok, so your site is free. But GameKnot.com is free too for a certain amount of games. Will your site remain free? Even if thousands sign up, play thousands of games, which needs thousands of entries in your database, which will cost you alot of money for data transfer, server space?

The main reason GameKnot is paid is because of the costs for maintenance and server storage. They're overcharging probably, but will you really remain free, even if alot of people sign up?

There is no problem to have few thousand players on the site. data transfer and server space price still will be no more then my pocket money amount. So the answer is yes my site will be free even they will 1000 players and more.
Besides what is so special about gameknot. I see only one special thing about gameknot, redhotpawn, itisyourturn - they are charging money.

Ok, suppose you could handle thousands. GameKnot has maybe a million though. That means that thousands are online simultaneously, and all want a fast website. For that you need either a website which doesn't need difficult stuff like database connections (which is impossible) or you need alot of servers or very good servers. Can you then still buy it from pocket money?

Please don't get me wrong. I'd love to join your site, if it looks good, is fast, has enough opponents to play, and has good features etc etc. I'm also not trying to scare you or anything. I just want to know how your site is going to beat the rest of the correspondence chess world What will make your site better than the other sites around?

I am not forcing all the players to join my site. I just want to get more opponents for myself. Chess world is huge and it would be mistake If I would think I can get 100% Internet chess players to my site. Even if 0.000001% of Internet chess community join my site I will be happy to have chess players on my chessclan site.
The point is I have my own homebrew site. If you don't like some particular things on my web site tell me what it is and I will strive to improve it. That is why I started this topic.

So it's more a (small) chess club where you can play chess with friends than a commercial business which aims for at least a couple thousand members?

Yes. It is more like chess club.