If I sound ignorant and naive its because i know nothing of running a forum style web site if that is even the right terminology for it. i have my own web site but that is just a basic site for my business.
Thinking of starting up a web site for forum discussions and know nothing about what to do. I am on a web site that most on it are ready to jump ship and start a new site but have no direction on how to do it. Some have a rough idea on the software, and I agreed to look after the hardware end. What suggestions do you have to help me out?
The web site will be similar in looks to ehmac but there is no similarities in content nor any competition so i want to clear up any conflict right away. It is currently running vbulliten and the mods seem to think it has too many problems. What other software would be available or in common use?
I take it this is what the xserves, mini servers or the mac pros are built for right? they are for web hosting? what would i need bare minimum to get it up and running in case it doesn't fly and then also what would you suggest for a care free setup that will not need upgrading for a good long time. I thank you for any assistance I can get.

You really need to make a decision on your "software" before you can start considering hardware solutions, however, if you are looking at PHP/MySQL solutions (such as vBulletin, phpBB, etc...) you really want to be looking at a Linux setup.

Are you thinking of hosting this thing at home? Do you have the up/down bandwidth as well as bandwidth speed to support the load a forum site could generate? If you are only just venturing into this endeavour, you might want to consider shared Linux hosting, even a years worth of VDS would be significantly less than any of the Mac hardware solutions you were thinking of.

I have set up/run lots of forums (punBB, SMF, phpBB) - if I was starting from scratch now, I would have a good look at Vanilla2 forums - they look nice, are admin friendly and they have service and hosting plans from free to not free to get you going so you can decide to DIY once you get the hang of it...

thanks guys! I have just been informed by the mods that with the absence of the owner and of the IT guy, and the fact that the site is not being maintained, we are looking at approaching the owner of the site to just try to make a business deal and offer to take it off his hands for, I guess, a mutually agreed purchase price if he is willing. Hopefully he is, making it easier in the end. Not sure what kind of value would be place on it though. Web site software purchased, domain name, no advertisement on the site..., any guesses?

I would guess the value to be between $0.00 and $1,000,000. I hope this helps.

you know jef, thats what i told them when i was asked, i'm glad i'm at least in the right ballpark. we probably have a better financial chance of a purchase on the lower end of our guess.

depends on the number of users at one time. Shared hosting, generally will only allow something like 10-20 concurrent connections to the database. If your traffic suddenly spikes you'll get the dreaded too many users mySQL error.

i believe it would probably be under 10 on any given minute, maybe closing in at 15-20 during a spike in users. I am still trying to find out how the current owner is running the site - I have a feeling it is most likely hosted and not on a home based computer.

People often don't understand that you need a decent 'pipe' to run a home based server. You're much better off getting a managed VPS at a decent hosting company like say liquidweb or similar. I think that's what this site is on, not sure.

depends on the number of users at one time. Shared hosting, generally will only allow something like 10-20 concurrent connections to the database. If your traffic suddenly spikes you'll get the dreaded too many users mySQL error.

I have shared (as well as VPS and VDS) hosting running with a US based service, my shared hosting account there allows for unlimited MySQL connections, but, they use dedicated MySQL servers, as opposed to the web server localhost running MySQL as well.

hmmm. Have you put this to the test? Are they using something like megawebservers or something?

I've had a few clients on those unlimited sql connection promises, and while it allowed more connections the performance was atrocious. Or the grid/cloud services which was a total disaster. If you have something at the shared server price point with something "unlimited" that actually performs, you're lucky.n It's been my experience in the world of hosting, generally, you get what you pay for. (with some over-priced exceptions of course)

hmmm. Have you put this to the test? Are they using something like megawebservers or something?


Ugh, meganame/megawebservers/hostplus... what a horror. Everything about them sucks.

I rescued a couple clients off of that disaster of a mySQL server, after people telling them how great it was. Don't even get me started on that horrendous service.

I rescued a couple clients off of that disaster of a mySQL server, after people telling them how great it was. Don't even get me started on that horrendous service.

Same here. The control panel interface is possibly the worst I've seen, yet the service is resold by Bell, Rogers, AllStream and others.

yep. Bell was the one I had to deal with, one of the worst hosting companies, ever.

They erased the site and database at one point, and tried to blame it on me. They didn't seem to have their stuff together to be able to restore it. thank god for backups.

VPS hosting from Slhost is excellend, managed and great support for the dollar.
I like mybb for my forums.

thanks guys, not sure of the first step, but I think i need to find out more about the site's properties

Most sites have a net value of $0. Occasionally the domain name has a hostage value.

Hi guys, thanks for all the info to digest, sent off and email to the existing owner of the domain/forum and offered to take over as he is probably wanting to drop it not being around for a while. He is all for it, but has to talk to his partner who is the web tech taking care of the site( who is also very absent). The site is web hosted and powered by vbulletin 3. something and the 4.0 upgrade was purchased but never set up/used. If I am going to lose much of the site due to the upgrade, I might as well start fresh and find something user friendly, and this is where I come back for some advice.
The forum is growing and currently has 605 members, 75 active members, 10,172threads with 1,001,690 posts.
The average number of members on at one time is 10-12 and average peak is 18-20.
If you were going to take this site and run with it what hosting would you look at? What would you use - Vanilla2? Anything else that I should be aware of? Thanks again for all the support!

Thanks for sharing this informative thread with us.

any suggestions?

well we decided to start our own and ignore the existing.

Just thought I would update this thread and ask a few more questions too. We have been up and running since April last year, we have had many members join in that time and many are on at once. We took a few months to build it and perfect it and now seem to be having a few difficulties. The web host is Invision Power, recommended by the third owner who has put the site together but we have had many instances where the site is coming up 'Failed to open page'. This is discouraging and we have also had members using firefox who have had trouble as well. What is involved with relocating to a different host and who would you recommend? I saw Liquidweb transfers for free and is a few dollars a month cheaper. Thanks.

check for iweb technologies, based in Montreal. I find them pretty reliable.

I'm an administrator at techsurvivors.net (another Mac forum - one based in the US) and we're hosted at A Small Orange: Homegrown Hosting (http://www.asmallorange.com) .

We're running a rather out of date version of Invision Power Board - which has worked pretty well for us. (We should update it, but nobody has had the time...) There are 24 people viewing right now, though certainly not all posting! Most appear to be guests - who cannot post. If you in fact have 15 members online and posting at the same time, your requirements would be somewhat greater than ours.

We've been pretty happy with ASO - their tech support is excellent. They had a few hiccups a few years ago and we considered moving, but since then, it's been smooth sailing and we're staying put.

The first thing you need to do is figure out what features you need, and what bells and whistles you want on your forum. Then start looking at the various forum software for the one(s) that provide all the things you want. If you ask 50 people for opinions on software, you'll get 50 different answers. Better to check them out yourself.

The usual suspects:

Paid software includes

VBulletin
Xenforo
IPB


Popular free software includes

MyBB
phpBB
SMF


There are tonnes of others. Most of the paid ones offer live demos you can try, and the free ones you can install yourself and try out. I suggest you spend some time playing with them because you will be living with your decision for quite some time.

Unless you are hosting downloads or lots of images, a decent shared hosting account will do you for a while. There are very active forums with 10,000+ members on shared hosting.

Starting a new forum isn't as easy as it used to be. Just because there were members on the old one, doesn't mean they will come to a new one. You can expect to spend many many hours building a body of content for the site in order to attract a few members. As long as you have realistic expectations about the workload and growth (or lack thereof) of your forum, you'll do fine.

One of the important things to remember is that a web site hosting business isn't a part time affair, and it requires full time attention, as well as lot of patience.