Anyone run a forum here?

enigma27 · 8 Feb 2011 at 19:51

Hi All.

My friend is starting up a forum around poker and has asked me to sort out the hosting for him.

What im trying to work out is what kind of monthly bandwith package to set-up.. all i know so far is the avergae amount of posts will be around 200 a month...

I was thinking either 5gb or maybe to be safe 20gb?

anyone got any suggestions.

atmax1 · 8 Feb 2011 at 20:56

Depends what is on it and how many people view it etc... my friend has a busy arsenal wordpress blog that I host for him on my server and he seems to only use around 10gb.. there are loads of hosts out there who allow unlimited bandwidth or 50 - 100gb plus for cheap..

jongeeone · 8 Feb 2011 at 22:42

I would recommend SWBroadband. They have good packages for this sort of thing with decent uptime and features.

http://www.swbroadband.co.uk/uk-webhosting-cornwall.html

If your looking to install PHPbb then it has the script already in the cPanel ready to use, along with many other scripts.

enigma27 · 8 Feb 2011 at 23:17

Thanks guys.

I can get 20 gig bandwith for 34 quid a year so sounds like the best option then increase if required.

Kevin Clark · 9 Feb 2011 at 10:22

Guessing how many posts you'll get is wishful thinking. It's extremely hard to get a forum going. If it's brand new you want to start off with a few forums as you can. Less is more. Too many people make dozens of sections and it just ends up looking deserted. He's also starting a forum on an already established subject so that makes it doubly hard.

It's better to start with a cheap, low bandwidth deal and increase it when the time comes. It's not an exact science but 20Gb/m will be good for 50+ posts and 1500 visitors a day.

Kevin Clark · 9 Feb 2011 at 10:23

jongeeone said:
If your looking to install PHPbb then it has the script already in the cPanel ready to use, along with many other scripts.

Just be aware that fantastico/simplescripts cpanel installations of phpBB have some inherent problems that are not easy to fix.

jongeeone · 10 Feb 2011 at 14:04

Was unaware of that myself, thanks!

I don't mind installing it manualy

Beansprout · 10 Feb 2011 at 16:24

Kevin Clark said:
Just be aware that fantastico/simplescripts cpanel installations of phpBB have some inherent problems that are not easy to fix.

What would those be?

(Not that anyone should use those anymore - Softaculous is fantastic!)

Kevin Clark · 10 Feb 2011 at 16:38

There's a big issue with table collation being all Latin so if anyone uses a non ascii character in a topic title or username you can't remove it. So for instance Russian letters in the titles of spam topics mean those can't easily be deleted. It's fixable but it's not easy sometimes.

There are also simpler issues like admin password on installation not working if they have any upper case characters in them.

It's better just to use the proper files from phpBB.