Forum Moderators: rogerd
Which type of forum (e.g. IPB, vBulletin, SMF, phpBB do you use) and why?
I use SMF (simple machines forum) because it is free.
It has all the features of phpBB and most of the features from IPB and VB. It is also fast and secure.
Has anyone tried Community Server?
[communityserver.org...]
This is a classic argument for buying high volume commercialware vs. self-development. It's almost impossible to identify in advance all the features you'll need or could find useful in a piece of software. If you buy a mature program that has had a good development team and large userbase, you'll find that when you realize there's a feature you need that it's already been put there.
for example, i have different areas of Thailand but they all follow the same format, building supplier information in different parts of the country. any ideas how to duplicate when creating?
thx steve
[edited by: rogerd at 2:13 pm (utc) on Jan. 30, 2006]
[edit reason] no URLs, please [/edit]
If you don't expect tons of users, you are probably fine on a reasonable shared hosting server. If you are looking at hundreds of users online at once, you'll almost certainly be needing a decent dedicated server. Over a thousand simultaneous users, and you'll need at least a high-end dedicated server and probably a database server, too. Most forums don't get that busy, though.
People do run vBB with less hardware, but either they tolerate lower performance or are better than the vBB experts at tuning servers.
The key factors for fast page delivery in vBB, IMO, are to keep the pages light and minimize the queries needed for the frequently accessed page types. It can be as quick as any other software if you do that.
I think vBB is a good choice for most forums - probably the only dicey applications would be very busy forums with no revenue (or insufficient revenue) to defray the server cost. In that case, you might want to choose a board with fewer features that won't be as resource-hungry.
I don't have any inside info, but I don't think a release is imminent.
My biggest and really only gripe with Discus is the clunky auto-archiving scheme it uses. Would much prefer the much more elegant method used by most other discussion boards (simple small unobtusive numeric links). Discus puts a new subtopic on the thread being archived when it starts a new page.
Supposedly version 5, which should be out soon, will address that issue. If not, I will be switching to Vbb.
[edited by: rogerd at 4:12 pm (utc) on Feb. 21, 2006]
[edit reason] no specifics or URLs, please [/edit]
There is a short-ish code hack that can achieve this result, but yes, it's a lot of trouble :)
For example, I currently use Smartor's (smartor.is-root.com) ezPortal and Photo Album, phpCA (www.phpca.net) for Classified Ads and phpBB for my forum.
Pete
our forum has between 50 and 100 simultaneous users and runs on RHEL, Xeon 2.8 GHZ + 2 GB Ram. the load average is often up over 3 and page loads are slow.
i have now taken off the who's online (in spite of the clammer of our members) and will see how this goes.
i love VB's functionality, but it is quite sluggish.
on the same server with 1 GB RAM, phpbb ran much quicker.
however, the customisations possible with VB's new plugin system have made the change more than worthwhile.
I have contacts available to reach and attract many new members, but I'm nervous to do so because of the expanding hosting costs. (Membership is free, but some members make voluntary donations, plus I have a small amount of advertising revenue.)
Although I have web development skills, this site is currently a part-time hobby for me so I don't want to be stuck with a lot of tech support chores myself. Can you suggest robust but affordable hosting provider for the following useage levels:
+ 7,000+ registered members, about 1,000 active per month
+ total online at a time is often about 50 members and 100 guests - the guests may be unregistered, or may be members who are browsing without signing in
+ approximately 1 million page views per month
+ bandwidth of 60 GB per month and growing
+ disk space of 400 MB and growing
I am looking for very stable and dependable forum hosting, easy for me to configure and customize, and an easy transition from Groupee. I don't mind paying $200 or so per month, but want to be able to attract new members without seeing my costs rise to $400, $500, etc.
+ I mentioned 1 million page views per month but the latest number is 1.3 million per month
+ 8,000 hours of forum usage per month
+ 1,000 new topics started per month by members - some topics get just a few replies, some get 100+, the average must be 10 to 20 replies per topic - we probably average 300 to 500 posts per day
Thanks!
I recommend you post at Web hosting talk (Google it!) :D
Or a few hours of time from a senior server admin. The problem with inexpensive dedicated servers is that they generally have very little server management built into the cost and probably zero application support.
If Justmom is a Linux/Apache pro, of course, a cheap dedicated box might work. If not, some admin and app support time will need to be figured into the cost.
8 Users
...yes folks, we have a clear leader :o
though I would probably swap to this as the top 3
PhpBB
vBulletin
Invision
in that order
I use it because it's feature rich, is fully customisable, and has a great back end. The front end ain't bad either. Admin features are plentyful, suport from the producers as well as contributors is great, it's SEO friendly and I just love it.
