I was looking around and I started to think: "general Web hosts are oversaturating the market". Then I thought about starting a host which specializes in bulletin board hosting.

Which leads me to my question: how are these kinds of hosts doing? Are they getting a fair amount of business?

I would say that you would have to charge a good amount, because you will need to be careful adding to many "board" sites to one server. You add a lot to a server and you are going to bang the resources very quickly, esp. if the boards you host are active.

Just an example, WHT would never work with shared hosting, it needs a server (or more) to run by itself.

But not every board is as large as WHT.

Just something to think about.

Well, it's been a rough month. I would like to start out by apologizing to
everyone for the down time and unreliability that vBulletinHosting.com has
been having of late. Unfortunately, we have been unable to provide the
level of service that all of you deserve. vBulletinHosting.com is a great
idea and I know there is a market for the service we have been providing
but unfortunately, we can no longer provide it.

Effective August 15, 2002, vBulletinHosting.com will be shutting down. It
was not an easy decision and of course, you will not be billed for 15 days
we will be up in August, the last invoice or receipt you received is the
last one we will issue you for this service. If you need help retrieving
your database between now and then, please send an email to
support@vbulletinhosting.com.

If you are an ASP customer and want to keep your board and move it to
another host, you will need to purchase a license from vBulletin for the
software. You can find the details for this at
http://www.vbulletinhosting.com/vbulletin.html

It is with sincere regret that we are having to close this service and we
wish you all the best in building your communities. If you have any
questions, don't hesitate to email us.

Thanks
Brian



Brian Welch
vBulletin Hosting
http://www.vbulletinhosting.com

I guess board hosts are doing bad :(

There is a demand for such kind of hosting but this will be no easy task.
Just look at vbulletinhosting, they had the best start as they had an alliance with vbulletin and get much free marketing. But they failed.
As ljprevo said, you will have to charge a good amount as even a small board will put more load on the server than a usual small HTML only site...

especially be aware of board softwares which run on Perl/Cgi softwares i think .. they are the most Resource Hogs

perhaps hosting weblogs (blogs) will be a good idea...

I think that if you are only hosting boards, you're going to have to charge more for the exact same features that the other hosts. The reason for that being that a normal host has both regular HTML sites and boards and they kind of balance each other out.

Personally, I don't think that this is the niche that you would want to start off with.

Boris

I am curious why money cannot be made on vbulletin or other bbs hosting. I was looking starting a remote bbs for local job seekers and recruiters. I prefer a remote host.

I doubt most forums need a dedicated server like WHT.

Vbulletin costs: First Time install - $135 plus yearly fee $85 just to get vbulletin running. If someone could install it they wouldn't need the remote service. That's $220 a yr up front setup costs.

Then add a standard reseller account at $20 a month .

Thats $40 a month for probably 1gig space and 30g quality bandwidth.

No host can do that and support vbulletin or other bbs?


Note: I'm not buying one just yet or I will ask in requests.

Money can of course be made...

Its just, you can't fit as many clients on one server as you would with normal hosting..

vBHosting was doomed from the start, just how it was started, what Jelsoft did on the forums, and how it died...

If someone knew what they were doing, had some extra funds, it would prolly be a very easy and profitable business, its all knowledge and cash...

Originally posted by markcw
I am curious why money cannot be made on vbulletin or other bbs hosting. I was looking starting a remote bbs for local job seekers and recruiters. I prefer a remote host.

I doubt most forums need a dedicated server like WHT.

Vbulletin costs: First Time install - $135 plus yearly fee $85 just to get vbulletin running. If someone could install it they wouldn't need the remote service. That's $220 a yr up front setup costs.

Then add a standard reseller account at $20 a month .

Thats $40 a month for probably 1gig space and 30g quality bandwidth.

No host can do that and support vbulletin or other bbs?


Note: I'm not buying one just yet or I will ask in requests.

It has nothing to do with space and bandwidth, it has everything to do with server resources, i.e. memory and the speed of the CPU.

You can have all the bandwidth and space in the world, its "resources"!!!

Go ahead and set up 50 boards on 1 server, If you have one that is even half a busy as WHT, you are in trouble.

I see that resources would be a problem, but then a standard reseller account would also be a problem?

Any reseller could install multiple bbs systems up to their account limit on any host today? You would have to load balance that account too?



it just seems like a good value added service to support a bbs .

Originally posted by markcw
I see that resources would be a problem, but then a standard reseller account would also be a problem?

Any reseller could install multiple bbs systems up to their account limit on any host today? You would have to load balance that account too?



it just seems like a good value added service to support a bbs .

That is correct, I would not try board hosting on a reseller account. All most reseller accounts are a "big" shared hosting account, you should use dedicated servers to be an effective board host.

I suppose I could buy two colocation boxes (1 for MySQL and 1 for PHP/Apache/mail) and optimize both for their intended tasks. That'd help with the resources issue but that would cost quite a bit of money.

You are right - to host this type of setup you would need to allocate one or two bbs accounts per server along with other accounts.

I don't think WHS statred out using a dedicated server the first 6 months?

I was thinking since I have a reseller account, I could host many bbs systems today under that accopunt which would cause the same problem to my host's server as having adult web sites under my reseller account.

p.s. i have just registered chicagojobtalk and forum, chicagocareertalk and forum. I will be serious about this project after the weekend. Off for a long restful weekend tomorrow at 3pm!

Hopefully some host will consider supporting at least 1 bbs in a reseller plan. I will be making a request soon.

Originally posted by mind21_98
I suppose I could buy two colocation boxes (1 for MySQL and 1 for PHP/Apache/mail) and optimize both for their intended tasks. That'd help with the resources issue but that would cost quite a bit of money.


To start a decent business up, its going to always cost a bit of money...

If you do it right, you could spend up to a few thousand bucks to just get started, and thats considered cheap in the business world :D

Colocating boxes is a smart idea, and have a private network between them for SQL traffic.. Don't even put the sql box on the outgoing network, just the webserver :D

Upto a few thousand?! heh :)

I started small and I spent almost 30g :)

Originally posted by DanielP
Upto a few thousand?! heh :)

I started small and I spent almost 30g :)

30g?! This isn't the .com era, we have to be frugal! :D

Originally posted by mind21_98


30g?! This isn't the .com era, we have to be frugal! :D

30g is still cheap for starting a business... You don't have to pay for offices, cars, etc...

A few thousand was the bottom line package :D

mind21_98

it does seem like to start with hosting bbs systmes as a business plan would fail.

But the hosts that already are running at less than full capacity, this should be an easy value added.

Originally posted by The Prohacker


30g is still cheap for starting a business... You don't have to pay for offices, cars, etc...

A few thousand was the bottom line package :D

I did some research (when I was thinking about starting a regular host), and I came up with $3500 or so (how much is needed for one server for one year plus other expenses like the phone line and taxes). Pretty close to your estimate. :D

Our company is actually doing very well. We host YaBBSE boards which are PHP and MySQL. In about 2.5 months we have had 2000 signups for the free boards and we plan to introduce paid hosting very soon. We average over 21 new boards a day. As for server load, in the begginning it was awful but once we tuned Apache and MySQL we have had no problems and the server load is rarly over 1.

boardnation.com

So daveman...just out of curiosity, how are you making money? Just advertising? Does that cover costs?

Also, just curious how you obtained such fast growth...just SE?

It's not that difficult to gain customers with a free service... :)

Originally posted by daveman
Our company is actually doing very well. We host YaBBSE boards which are PHP and MySQL. In about 2.5 months we have had 2000 signups for the free boards and we plan to introduce paid hosting very soon. We average over 21 new boards a day. As for server load, in the begginning it was awful but once we tuned Apache and MySQL we have had no problems and the server load is rarly over 1.

http://www.boardnation.com

You have 2000 boards on one server? May I ask what the server specs are?

Originally posted by daveman
We host YaBBSE boards which are PHP and MySQL

I thought YaBB was a Perl-based board. If it's Perl-based, you shouldn't be able to host that many boards on one box. :eek:

Originally posted by mind21_98


I thought YaBB was a Perl-based board. If it's Perl-based, you shouldn't be able to host that many boards on one box. :eek:

They have a PHP/mySQL version now called YaBB SE

http://www.yabb.info/

Originally posted by ljprevo
You have 2000 boards on one server? May I ask what the server specs are?

He didn't state they are on one server :)

It's not that difficult to gain customers with a free service... :)

No, but it can be hard to make money when they are free...that's why I was curious...

Exactly what I meant :)

We have no advertising on the public parts of the board. Rather we limit the size of the database. A free board gets 3mb of space which is plenty for a small to medium sized board. Then the paid plans will allow for more space as well as other things such as attachments. As for the server, yes one server, it is a PIII 1.6 GHZ with 512mb of ram. We host one site (http://yapp.phpworld.net) on it besides the board. As I said before, it took some tuning to get the server to work well.

Originally posted by daveman
We have no advertising on the public parts of the board. Rather we limit the size of the database. A free board gets 3mb of space which is plenty for a small to medium sized board. Then the paid plans will allow for more space as well as other things such as attachments. As for the server, yes one server, it is a PIII 1.6 GHZ with 512mb of ram.

Isn't that what ezboard (http://www.ezboard.com/) does? There was a failure on one of the servers which hosted my class' board and took it out for at least a day. Are you prepared to handle the strain free boards bring? Even if you're profitable, you risk bringing the server down. It's just like "unlimited".

Daveman, good luck with your venture, I think you will need it.
2000 board sites on one server? Even if they are small ones? :eek:

Hmm. I could diversify and target my hosting to anyone who needs dynamic PHP capabilities. That way I'd be able to get more clients. :D