Okay, first off, I made a big mistake going with *****, especially since I have a huge UBB.

Their deal was too good to pass up (or at least I thought it was good), unlimited bandwidth and 3gigs of space for $300/year.

But they shut my UBB down, which pretty much makes up most of my site.

So anyhow.

I'm looking for a GOOD host, one that will tolerate a large ubb (300,000+ posts, 8000 members). I need lots 'o bandwidth. In just this month of May I've already attracted 7.5 gigs of traffic. I need about 650MB to 1 gig+ of space. I get about 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 pageviews per month.

I have only about $25-30 to spend per month.

Ask me if you need more info.
But I need help making a good decision soon. My money back policy thing at ***** ends in 10 days!

Thanks!

You need a dedicated for 200 to 300 a month for that amount of traffic.

Well that's just my problem. I can't afford a dedicated server.

I moved to ***** FROM a dedicated server because I couldn't front the $300 bucks a month anymore.

We had a few clients in that situtation, they asked for donations via paypal to keep the board running, they raised a few thousand dollars. I believe you can prolly do the same thing.

Yeah, I did that. I only raised $600.

I used $300 to keep my site on the dedicated server for 1 month. Then used the remaining $300 to purchase hosting at *****.

I would suggest trying to contact a few hosts and see if you can get discounted or free hosting in exchange for advertising.

Which hosts would you recommend?

Aloha,
1.5 mil hits aren't you making money advertising ???
you should be making at least $1000 a month min with those numbers active on a board

I brought in a co with 2.5 mil hits over $8000 a month in ads
they had a killer market (aviation pilots etc..)

8000 members at 15 cents each per month for direct advertising to teh correct niche market at least ??
= $1200 bucks
that is where I get my figures from

the idea would be to get your niche and go to soem advertisers you know save em from doing a mailer each month
do you get these people on a mailing list ???????
you should be sending out a letter at least once a month with advertising on it.
can you tell me the url and what it is you have on your UBB
is it sellable if not
disregard all I said ;)

but serious you should be getting some advertising to afford a server
let me know see if I can get ya some links to help ya out
might work
since ya can not afford my consult fees ;)
maybe we can swing a deal if I can get ya some ads ????

I'm actually hosting 4 sites all on the same web space.

EpisodeII.com, EpisodeIII.com, ComicCollector.com, Nightly.net.

www.nightly.net is the main site. The other domains all redirect to nightly.net. I had to do this because I couldn't afford the extra $25 per domain for separate hosting at *****. When we were on the dedicated server, each site had its own separate "identity."

Anyhow, the sites include a large range of topics, the two biggest being Star Wars and Comics. Unfortunately you can't view the Nightly.net UBB because ***** has disabled it.

But it has forums ranging from Star Wars, Movies, and Television, to Music, Writing, Science, etc.

I never realized it was such a resource hog! I can't believe how much disk space it takes up. Do all perl type forums have this kind of overhead?

Have you considered writing up a business proposal and seeking out an investor for this project? Someone agreeable to putting up enough capital to get you a dedicated server and some operating funds, and in theory, you could make the investors return through means of an advertising plan or by selling some "impulse" doodad from the site.

bryan868,

Have you tried to get any advertising? You should be able to get some with that kind of traffic.

Bryan868, you might want to consider posting this in the advertising forum as well, and see if there are any web hosting companies interested in hosting your UBB web site. It's worth a try.

I notice nightly is back on the air. What happened?

Say Bryan, I am same situation as you in that I have a popular site with 1M-2M page hits per month and 30Gig+ transfer. plus I use SQL SERVER. I got away with it for 6 months with previous host and then they politely asked me to move up accounts.

Like you I'd love to have a dedicated server with unlimited transfer rates but can't afford it to start with.
I have this idea in my head to get 6 other web site owners together and rent a dedicated machine with unlimited transfer rates. In my case I would need NT/Windows 2000 OS.

By the way you can get 7.5Gig at crystaltech for that amount but you may be pushed on the disk space. but if you grow then the price soon doubles.

I suspect you were shut down for excessive cpu usage.
UBB is a notorious resource hog. You might want to think about upgrading to a more efficient program like VBulletin or other look alikes. Most can import UBB discussions so you won't lose past ones. There are also features that UBB lacks that your visitors will enjoy.

Bryan868,

www.vhforums.com is on hosting4less.com US25 for 600MB & 25GB per month. I heard that vhforums.com is having 500-1000 new post per day & close to 1 million page views per month.

You might try this with the existing 300 dollars you have.

You have 2 UBB. one on CC & one on nightly.net. What i suggest is that you sign up for 2 account and host CC & nightly.net seperately. That you cost you US50 rather than few hundred a month. The other 2 domain, you just point to the lower bandwidth usage account.

Originally posted by bryan868
I'm actually hosting 4 sites all on the same web space.

EpisodeII.com, EpisodeIII.com, ComicCollector.com, Nightly.net.

www.nightly.net is the main site. The other domains all redirect to nightly.net. I had to do this because I couldn't afford the extra $25 per domain for separate hosting at *****. When we were on the dedicated server, each site had its own separate "identity."

Anyhow, the sites include a large range of topics, the two biggest being Star Wars and Comics. Unfortunately you can't view the Nightly.net UBB because ***** has disabled it.

But it has forums ranging from Star Wars, Movies, and Television, to Music, Writing, Science, etc. oh hiiiiiiiya Bryan thought the nick looked familiar ...... it's me theprequels/George - Australian Star Wars Prequels guy hehe

i thought Chris sherman was taking care of your hosting and you were only working on his sites ?

looooooong time no see :wavey:

i think a dedicated server is definitely needed for your sites... my vbulletin forum has

2,600+ members
17500 threads
266,000+ posts at up to 2,200 new posts/day
45,000 - 75,000 pageviews/day
and consumes

1.8gb/day uncompressed pages of bandwidth
0.7gb/day compressed gzipped pages of bandwidth

to save on bandwidth i recommend installing mod_gzip on your server - i wrote a guide up at http://i4net.tv/marticle/get.php?action=getarticle&articleid=12