Whats the cheapest way to host a forum with about 400 frequent users?

Ross1234

Ross1234

Ross1234

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As title:

Whats the cheapest way to host a forum with about 400 frequent users?

I think it will work out quite expensive?

Any ideas?

Its for an already existing comminity after a new forum.
 
Look for a decent host for forum users, if you get downtime you won't hear the end of it!

Look at Vidahost or TSOHost in this forum, recommended by a lot of people and would cost around 20 quid for a year.

Are you starting afresh or moving the forum across?
 
I have a vidahost hosting account with 25000 MB bandwidth and 1gb disk space.

Would that be enough? If not how much should I up my hosting by.

Its a new forum.
 
Up to 30 on at one time with around 300 using it regularly and about 800 registered probably.

This is my estimate of what it will be once it is up and running smoothly.
 
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Thegoon84 said:
I was always told to work out the bandwidth you should work it out at:

500mb per user ?????
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It will be 500MB per user if every user downloads 500MB worth of data from your website.

Otherwise... it will be some other number. :p
 
I run a small forum and I would have been shot by my hosts if I used that much bandwidth :P I'll log in later and see just how much is being used but its nowhere near 500mb per user!
 
500MB "per user" doesn't mean anything - what time frame is that supposed to measure? Per day, month, year? And what's a "user"? A regular who reads and replies to every topic on your forum twice a day, or a registered member who registered once but never visits?
 
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AJK said:
500MB "per user" doesn't mean anything - what time frame is that supposed to measure? Per day, month, year? And what's a "user"? A regular who reads and replies to every topic on your forum twice a day, or a registered member who registered once but never visits?
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Bandwidth is measured in months in forum hosting.
 
Ross1234 said:
Bandwidth is measured in months in forum hosting.
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How many months in bandwidth do you expect to consume every month? :rolleyes:

The amount of bandwidth your forum uses on a monthly basis will depend on a whole host of factors - you're not going to get anywhere using "500Mb" per user.

A couple of things you should be thinking about:

  • Which board software are you going to use? Does it support compression.
  • Are you going to allow Guests to view your board?
  • Are you going to allow people to post pictures and other media in topics?
  • Will users be allowed to have signatures that are 1000 x 1000 pixels in size?
If your board's going to be dedicated to Des O'Connor's sex life then you're not going to get many guests (or have many users I imagine), ergo you're not going to be consuming much bandwidth...
 
wozencl said:
  • Are you going to allow people to post pictures and other media in topics?
  • Will users be allowed to have signatures that are 1000 x 1000 pixels in size?
Click to expand...

Those two would only matter if:
1. The media is being hosted on the forums themselves. If stuff is linked to offsite, it doesn't count at all.
2. The media will bring in a mass of additional users.
 
steve-h said:
It would be interesting if anyone knew some accurate figures for calculating bandwidth for a forum.
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From a host's point of view, to do any sort of significant amount of bandwidth (>20Gb) you need a lot of visitors, but it completely depends on your traffic pattern, media you allow visitors to upload/download, etc.
 
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