If you have never hosted VGA Planets before, or are just starting, here are a few thoughts from an experienced host.
VGA Planets is a great game. I've played since the first version and still play. It goes through phases, but I've never enjoyed one game longer than VGAP. It didn't take long playing before I wanted to play in more games and wanted to be able to start a game whenever I needed that "vgap fix". This is partly what led me to being a host, and might be at least one of the reasons you're here too.
AutoTroll will take a lot of the work out of hosting - taking turns in from lots of different players and putting the turns into the right directories, and so on. But if you're a new host, realize that players mostly don't care about the host (as long as it's reliable), so for players to come to your site and play, you have to be fare and efficient, but you also have to offer something unique and different from other hosts that will make them want to come to your site.
You can explore the tons of addons out there. Surely as a player you've seen at least some games with addons, but you may not realize just how many there are. I'm not aware of any single organized website that has a list of addons, but those in the VGAP webring (off our homepage) probably at least have links to other sites with lists and so on. It's a bit unorganized. You can also look at other hosts sites for links - and there are plenty of hosts who post in the newsgroup alt.games.vga-planets. You might find some good mix of addons to attract players. Of course if you don't want to spend money on host utilities you can also offer "vanilla" games. There's a lot of people like me who just like the vanilla "old fashioned" type games. Probably whatever type of games you like to play in is the type you'll like to host. You can also join the AutoTroll mailing list and get ideas there or I'm sure there are lots of other mailing lists out there to help you find players. As a player you know what you liked about the host sites you played on, when you become a host don't forget those things!
Hosting is a hard job - but the harder you work the more successful you'll be. It can't be for the thank you's that you want to become a host - because for the most part hosting is a fairly thankless job. You have to love the game and love showing people the game to be a host. Good luck and I hope AutoTroll will make your job easier and your player's experience on your site fun.
Red Troll
