Hello all,

I am currently looking for a good host that would not be averse to letting me have my own UBB message board. My previous provider (a local company granted) would not allow it. The explanation they gave was system resources and I do not wish to argue with them about it.

So, anyone have any good ideas?

Inglix the Mad

Yes, that sounds familiar!!
Do you have any specs on your board??
how much space and bandwidth are you currently using?

It probably depends on how busy the forum is. Smaller boards probably won't be that big a deal, even with UBB's resource issues. But if you get two or three heavy use forums on a single server, you might find that performance suffers. Your best bet is to first narrow it down to a couple of hosts that have the space and pricing you need, and then ask them about hosting the UBB.

You might also want to consider one of the PHP/mySQL UBB clones like vBulletin (http://vBulletin.com/) or tForum (http://titan.spaceports.com/~typus/tforum/), which are less resource intensive than UBB.

Even though I use neither, I would advise a program like vBulletin instead. One of the forums I frequent has some long discussions and it not only takes increasingly longer for the page to load, but it gets tiresome having to scroll down to the bottom of an incresingly longer page.

When discussions get longer here, the pages are split into multiple pages and you can access the last one, skipping all the previous messages you read already.

Consider this: the interface is the same. a vBulletin forum can look virtually identical to a UBB one, vBulletin has more features, including more convenience, and it uses less system resources.

Why would you want to use UBB?

If you are still determined, you can probably find one through scriptkeeper.com It's the only thing I think they are good for.

A php/mysql board would indeed be a better choice for both you and your host :)
If you don't have a huge board, try phpBB. We use it and find it to be a great alternative to vBulletin. It doesn't have as many features as vBulletin, but it is perfect for our needs. And, it's currently free.

http://www.phpbb.com

Good Luck!

Hello
I used to run a big UBB installation and I found it to be a very slow program even on a good server.

I really regretted putting so much time and effort into it when the underlying programmes were so flaky.
At the time UBB was very good but there are a lot better ones out there.

So go for one of the alternatives if at all possible.

Gordon

Honestly I am rather new at the board angle of things. So thank you for your alternatives I will check them out. Do as many hosts object to these two?

No they don't. ;)