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Thread: To Host a forum

  1. #1

    Question To Host a forum

    Hi...

    I am new in here and would like to hear some advice from you.

    I want to host a simple forum for language study. The forum is created simply by using phpBB. The audience most likely will be from malaysia and indonesia.

    Well I have no idea what is the space and bandwith requirement for this kind of forum. But I do want to ensure that the host is secure, free of advertisement, and have a good up time. And also the customer support...And also cheap is required. Not want to kill the mosquito with grenade or machine gun.

    Please kindly help me out of this.

    NB: I have tried to search the forum to look for the question like this.. But cannot find any information exactly like I needed.

    Thank you... ^^

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    34
    Look for a plan with like 10 MB space, FTP access, one mySQL database and with 1 to 5 GB traffic.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2006
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    560
    Quote Originally Posted by LoneWolfJack
    Look for a plan with like 10 MB space, FTP access, one mySQL database and with 1 to 5 GB traffic.
    Maybe a little more HDD space as you expand, and you probably will! A shared host would be the right choice for you now. If your site grows and expands into something much larger you might be forced into buying a VPS or even a dedicated (VPS usually works best)

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    34
    I was talking about the minimum requirements. ;-)

  5. #5
    it would probably take a bit more than 10mb space and especially 1gb bandwidth,i can use 1gb bandwidth in a couple of days

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    34
    Well, most hosts do not offer much less than 100 MB nowadays anyway; however, a forum that has say 100 active members will not go anywhere near 5 GB traffic a month unless you start uploading images all over the place.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    560
    Quote Originally Posted by torrent-kingdom
    it would probably take a bit more than 10mb space and especially 1gb bandwidth,i can use 1gb bandwidth in a couple of days

    I don't think the forum would go past 1GB in a month... It might, if it becomes very popular. Just to be safe though you should look for something with a 15GB a month limit or such. I can't find any information on how much hdd space phpbb will require but I did download it and extract it and with it extracted it consumes 2.1MB. That would seem fine with your 10MB minimum BUT you also have user uploaded files, uploaded avatars, add on themes, the usual sort of stuff like that to think about.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    34
    Just remembered I have a test installation of phpbb3 on my machine... takes like 4,5 MB disk space, however, due to the number of small files, this is boasted to almost 14 MB on the drive. So if you are planning to use phpbb3 instead of phpbb2, you will want about 20 MB instead. At least.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    43
    Are you considering an Asian host? US-Asia bandwidth generally isn't very good, asian servers would be far more responsive for Malaysian users.
    Blackcurrant Hosting - Ruby on Rails (Mongrel) Hosting. Watch us fly by standard rails hosting!

  10. #10
    Thank you all.

    In case of forum like this (webhostingtalk) how is the requirement? This webhostingtalk is very populated and active forum, I would take this as the worst case (Actually I mean the best case). Especially you know that the settlement usually in term of 1 and 2 years (monthly is expensive). and i think that moving out in the 6th month to another hosting is not a good idea.

    Hmm.. now i get some idea about the space and bandwith requirement.

    But how about the basic OS.. From what i know either Linux or Windows should not have any differences.

    9212, thanks for the extra effort you do for me (getting phpBB size).

    I would like to know that my audience is in Malaysia and Indonesia is that fact should be account to my consideration or would not have big impact?. and I would like a cheap one.. how cheap it can be? I hv looked in dot5, everything sounds good. but when i read few article about them. i freak out. Actually the price is very cheap.

    I wish there is more information to come.. I want to gather the information required before finally set my foot down. To torrent kingdom, thank you, but cannot make fast decision yet.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Boston
    Posts
    817
    Webhosting talk runs on a dedicated server or cluster of servers. For a forum this popular you would need a dedicated server, although for a small to mid sized forum shared hosting would be fine. But keep in mind the bigger the forum's popularity the more cpu usage it will use.
    Dimension Servers / Toll-Free: 1-888-750-6942
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  12. #12
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    34
    Of course a host in your area is to be preferred. However, on a small forum, it will barely matter whether the user has to wait 0,2 or 0,5 seconds until the page starts to be delivered.

    Perhaps some WHT people can answer your question about the hardware requirements for their forum, but they certainly have their own server(s).

    Moving phpbb is very easy so I would not worry about that for now.
    Last edited by LoneWolfJack; 09-06-2006 at 02:57 AM.

  13. #13
    Well Robert Duncan, I kind of thinking that the Asian server is less reliable and more expensive. Is that true?

    I am now in korea. The internet speed is fast. But for Indonesian and Malaysian I am not sure.

    Is it not allowed in here to recommend frankly a few (not one) link to the hosting site . ?? I mean will be helpful for me to compare the price and service. However if it is really not possible, ignore this request please.

    Really thank you to you all. I would also when i host my site give review back about it.. ^^ Very helpful and fair way to protect the customer. ^^

  14. #14
    Its allways different for a phpbb forum probably around 20mb/ and make sure to have alot of mysql space! Always ask for that

  15. #15
    It all depends!

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    EU - east side
    Posts
    21,920
    In case of forum like this (webhostingtalk) how is the requirement?
    A small cluster of servers would probably be necessary to host it. iNET's new policy is to not divulge the exact configurations they use, so we can only really speculate at this point.

    For most new forums, a couple hundred MB of space and 10Gb of data transfer will be enough for quite a few months.

    Is it not allowed in here to recommend frankly a few (not one) link to the hosting site . ?? I mean will be helpful for me to compare the price and service.
    You may received hosting recommendations, but hosts may not make you offers.

    Not want to kill the mosquito with grenade or machine gun.
    Even if you get a hosting acount that promises 200Gb of data transfer, if you're paying say $8 for it, don't expect to be able to use the whole 200GB with a forum. Forums use relatively high amounts of CPU resources, and when you're paying only $8, for reasons that are easy to suspect only so much of them can be provided. What will happen is that your website will be suspended at some point, when the host determines that it is a heavy user, and you'll be asked to eitherupgrade, move to a VPS or dedicated server, or to another provider.

  17. #17
    Ok ... I see. It means that if it is too good to be true, then it is not true.

    Since it is possible, I will want to hear the recommendation: which hosting provider i should consider.

    Since I already see the possible price ranging from 4 dolars I will want to hear of any good enough hosting provider that costs 5 dolars/month (for package of 12 months).

    Thank you very much. Looking forward to hear from you.

  18. #18
    Hi, I am back.

    Finally, i decided to use the host in indonesia.

  19. #19

    Keep my promise

    And to keep my promise:

    Really thank you to you all. I would also when i host my site give review back about it.. ^^ Very helpful and fair way to protect the customer. ^^
    And i will give review about them from time to time in webhostingtalk.

    The hosting company name master web, claim that they also have server in US.

    I start to host in there and it costs me about Rp.522.000 or US$ 50 for one year.

    But the quota is 400MB and the maximum bandwith is 5GB. Is it big for a forum?

    Never experienced server down yet (hope it never happened).

    I am now in korea, and I found that access from korea to my site is very very slow. Quite often it is just time out and nothing displayed while the left bottom corner of the internet explorer said DONE. Is it because of the server?

    Can anyone try to check it out for me? to access it from another location and let me know the speed and whether it time out or not.

    http://www.indohanguk.net

    Thank you very much.

  20. #20
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    The Left Coast
    Posts
    60
    I'm in California, and it took about five seconds to load.

  21. #21
    Five seconds, yes and from here about either 3 seconds or time out..
    But you never experience time out i guess.. hm..
    how about from other places if someone will try it for me..

    thank you Xanadu.

    Do you know something about double server? i know this is too much for starter but i think better to ask about that earlier. if i have one domain, is that possible to let the user chooose the server location to work with?

    Thank you all..

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