Which web hosting service to use for a forum similar in activity to Parallax's?

W9GFO

I've been searching for a while now, trying to find reviews of web hosting services to put a forum on.

I'm looking for something that can handle a couple hundred to a few hundred users at a time, similar in activity to this forum.

Any recommendations?

xanadu

Did you have forum software picked out already?

vBulletin is awesome and worth paying for. Then go here for info on where to host it and what to look for - https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forumdisplay.php/11-vBulletin-Hosting-Options

icepuck

http://www.squarespace.com

use to have a two week free trial

http://www.hostgator.com/

powered by environmentally friendly sources.
-dan

W9GFO

Yes, I plan to vBulletin.

UrlJet seems to be well liked.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Rich,

My web host is FutureQuest. I highly recommend them as a hosting service. They're inexpensive, reliable, and responsive to inquiries. (I was going to say that they're responsive to complaints, but I've never had any.) From what I gather from a cursory Google search, they can host vBulletin forums. In fact, their own forum is done with vBulletin.

-Phil

W9GFO

Thanks for the suggestions.

Can anyone estimate what kind of package would be required to support a forum like this? I really have no idea.

GordonMcComb

By "package" do you mean level of support from the Web host? Most any host running Apache and an SQL server will handle it -- and that's about 80% of the hosts out there. I use Amerinoc, which offers managed accounts starting at pretty low monthly fees. Something like vBull they'll typically install for free (you still pay for the vBulletin license, of course). You then go in and customize it. Or, you can use a freebie forum like phpBB or Simple Machines. Just be sure to keep it up-to-date, for security reasons. They have an administration panel that installs these with a couple of clicks.

Cheap hosting means you share your domains on a server with others. There's security between the accounts, but an extremely heavy load on one domain can affect the others. To avoid this go with a managed VPS account. These are isolated in a way that one account cannot affect the others.

Hostgator has this feature, and it's pretty good at keeping your site humming. But woe to you if your site becomes popular and starts to consume too many resources. They'll shut it off and require you to either upgrade, or leave. Your description of the user base suggests this will never be a problem. A few hundred users hardly causes a blip. But make note of the type(s) of files and traffic you think you might have. Compare plans based on transfer and disk space. Avoid a host that offers these "unlimited."

-- Gordon

W9GFO

The previous account had to be upgraded due to very slow forum response, there was a max of 500 users. I do not have any details on that account other than they are paying $1,600 for two years.

GordonMcComb

The slow forum response could have been too little RAM in the server, throttling to keep resources down because of complaints from other account users, corrupted SQL tables, really anything. Most forums do not have 500 concurrent users -- that would require a dedicated server on a reasonably fast switch to keep it running smoothly. So I assume it's 500 registered users, and maybe no more than 50 at a time.

$1,600 for two years is in the $65/mo range, which definitely gets you a nice managed VPS account on an undersold server. A forum of that size should run adequately on such a server. When you contract for a VPS you specify how much RAM, drive space, number of cores, and bandwidth you need.

-- Gordon

W9GFO

There has been 400+ online at peak times.

At this instant there are 424 users on the Parallax forum.

Knowing how much RAM, drive space, cores and bandwidth is the information that I am lacking.

jvrproductions

We do several websites, cms, etc on our company jvr productions. We use hostmoster.com and its pretty good. hostmostwr its hosting 2 vb on one of our accounts with no problems. The customer support are pretty good too

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Is that hostmaster.com or hostmonster.com? Both are hosting services, but there is no hostmoster.com.

-Phil

Peter KG6LSE

call me nuts I run my main on yahoo as a Biz and the ,Net on my Home with Dyn DNS.

both run PHPBB forum as a Blog . no complaints here exctp me borking the SQL one day .. OPPS

I Run Yahoo as I started with them in 01. so yea . longgg time ago ..
Peter

GordonMcComb

W9GFO wrote: »

There has been 400+ online at peak times.

At this instant there are 424 users on the Parallax forum.

Knowing how much RAM, drive space, cores and bandwidth is the information that I am lacking.

You can't go by the stats on the bottom of the forum page. Unless a user specifically logs out the name will stay for perhaps several hours. The forum has no idea when you leave the page.

You need to look at the *server stats* in real time. This will require access to real-time logs, some kind of control panel software that shows you resource usage, and/or root access to the server to look at the metrics. That will tell you if the current server is underpowered. The Web host should be able to provide some details, or explain how to find it, especially if the account has a control panel so you don't need SSH or root-level access.

-- Gordon

jvrproductions

Sorry. http://www.hostmonster.com/

idbruce

W9GFO

Several years ago, I purchased web hosting service from Hostway (http://www.hostway.com/). The service and products that were available from them were truly OUTSTANDING. They had a wide variety of scripts for many types of service, and they even allowed you to run daemons. I was always very highly impressed with this company. However, back then I had financial funding.

These days I am own my own and cannot afford Hostway services, and have settled into AT&T.

The difference between these two companies, is like comparing grapes to a watermellon.

Bruce

davejames

idbruce wrote: »

...is like comparing grapes to a watermellon.

...well - hey! They both come from a vine!

davejames

W9GFO - I use Network Solutions for my fledgling site.

xanadu

Three steps to it not mattering as much-

1. Know how to backup and migrate your entire site and database
2. Become proficient and backing up and migrating your site
3. Keep your domain and DNS at the cheapest host you can find and point them at your VPS

If you do the above, you can start with any host, and end up with any host.

Personally I'd go for a CentOS Enterprise Linux, Version 5 host, since that is what everyone else uses.

Gadgetman

GordonMcComb wrote: »

You can't go by the stats on the bottom of the forum page. Unless a user specifically logs out the name will stay for perhaps several hours. The forum has no idea when you leave the page.

Agreed.
'Active users' is usually 'how many users accessed a page on the forum in the last XX minutes'.
It's common to see 'low popularity' forums setting the time period to a higher number so that the count inflates a bit, just to make themselves look more popular.
I don't know about vBulletin, but PHPBB3 is default set up with 'user accounts' for most search robots, so that you can limit which pages each robot can traverse. (Blocking out parts of a forum for some robots can reduce bandwidth usage quite a lot. Especially the Bing robot has been known to 'go bananas' sometimes and rescan a site every few minutes. Maybe that has changed now? I blocked it ages ago, so wouldn't know)