Hosting for a large forum

DiscoKandy · 17 Jun 2006 at 12:53

Hi,
I'm looking to get a Vbulletin forum hosted, what kind of hosting would i need? It wouldn't be a hugely active forum but have potentially upto 2000 hits per day.

What kind of hardware bandwidth should I be looking for from a hosting company?

Mark

DiscoKandy · 17 Jun 2006 at 17:03

Thanks for your help guys, i've been looking at renting a dedicated server (Single Core Xeon 3.0Ghz) through www.register1.net

I'm not sure quite what you mean by concurrent or unique users, but it is designed to be a members only forum, were you must register first before viewing threads.

It is not a conventional forum as we know it, users cannot reply to threads only view them. They can however post their own threads. A discussion forum may however be created to allow free discussion, however this is not expected to be heavily used. So in short the forum is heavily focused on viewing threads rather than posting replies and threads. It would also be regualry pruned to remove out of date threads.

It is also necessary that attachments can be uploaded through the forum, though these will be limited to 50KB jpeg.

I want to build it at minimum cost to begin with, as it could turn out to be a complete flop, but also could potentially be quite successful, at which point I would have the funds to upgrade the hardware.

Would a entry level dedicated server be suitable?

DiscoKandy · 17 Jun 2006 at 18:41

its more like to be 2000 unique users in that case, though they are likely to check the forum at regular intervals in the day.

Would it be feasible to start off with say a register1.net VDS to start with and then migrate to a dedicated server when demand required it ?

Thanks for you detailed replies by the way, much appreciated.

DiscoKandy · 18 Jun 2006 at 12:15

Would your advanced package from www.vidahost.com be suitable for a starting ground for the forum beansprout ? I pressume its a VDS/VPS type package?

Thanks for your help

DiscoKandy · 18 Jun 2006 at 18:45

robmiller said:
A VDS/VPS won't really be useful in this instance, since a VDS is still shared hosting - it just has the flexibility of a dedicated server, meaning you can log in as root, install things, do whatever you like without affecting the other people on the physical machine.

The consideration that makes shared hosting unsuitable for large forums - performance - is still applicable to VDS/VPS hosting.

I would just be looking at shared hosting as a way of keeping the initial cost down until enough users and revenue had been generated to justify a dedicated server.

DiscoKandy · 18 Jun 2006 at 18:59

robmiller said:
In which case you don't need the flexibility of a VDS, so just go with regular shared hosting until you can justify a dedicated server

Will do, cheers for the advice guys.