Forum scripts and resources problem in shared hosting!

[setareh]

I have a website with a lot of visitors, I run my website in a shared hosting,
I've built a bulletin board with phpbb, but after some days, my hosting company emailed me and said that your bulletin board takes a lot of resources and you must change or remove that!

Is there any chart or reference to compare Forum softwares, especially in their resources usage?

[Casethejoint]

Hi Setareh - I have not seen such a chart, which is a shame. I'm pretty sure that users of a board's support forum will be able to chew the fat about their system setups and the resource demands of each board. Good luck!

[rogerd]

I've never seen such a chart, but chances are, a forum like Discusware that generates static pages using Perl scripts will be less resource-intensive than a forum that generates every page dynamically using PHP or ASP.

The phpBB forum has information on cutting the resource usage for busy boards, but chances are you just need a better hosting setup.

[Casethejoint]

Most ISPs cap the amount of memory available for scripting on their hosted accounts (but some don't tell you that in their sales material), making it quite hard to run some larger PHP apps efficiently.

[PeteM]

How much traffic are you getting (members/posts)?

[dvduval]

Some hosts are more likely to allow busy bulletin boards than others. I run one forum that does about 2500 posts per week, and typically has about 50-75 users online (10-20 registered) at the same time and it is on a shared hosting plan.

I actually moved it off of a dedicated server about 3 months ago, and I have no complaints. It actually runs better now.

[viggen]

@setareh

If you can afford it go dedicated... or try VPS, i changed recently one relatively busy forum from shared hosting to a VPS, for me and the members that was already much better...

cheers
viggen

[setareh]

rogerd
Is there any software for converting my DB to Discusware?

PeteMp
I had 6500 users and about 36000 posts in last 5 months (since I start my forum),

dvduval
viggen
I don't earn anything from my forum, So I prefer continue in shared hosting. If you know a good shared hosting company please pm me ;)

Thank you all ;)

[rogerd]

You'd have to check the Discusware site for converters. In truth, most people who convert are probably going in the other direction (i.e., moving away from Discusware). There are other Perl-based forums, too - maybe someone can suggest one or two.

Changing hosting would almost certainly be easier than changing your whole forum software and setup.

[viggen]

@setareh

you got mail, and btw dont you like the idea of making money with your visitors or you did try but you havent had any success with it?

cheers
viggen

[setareh]

viggen
I can't make money because my forum is not in english and only 12% of my visitors are from US :(
Thank you all for your time and answers ;)

[rogerd]

In this thread, Grelmar mentions CGI/Perl-based YaBB: [webmasterworld.com...]

[encyclo]

YaBB is a very nice forum script, but it is less popular than alternatives such as phpBB as it is written in Perl rather than PHP. It is not just the programming language used which makes the difference, however.

It is possible to significantly reduce the resources used by phpBB by implementing template caching - it reduces the number of calls to the database by storing much of the template in the file system instead.

If you check the contrib directory in your phpBB installation package, there are two files and a full explanation file for making your choice. Try the file for template caching for the filesystem, rename it as template.php and replace the usual template.php file. You will need to give the appropriate write permissions to your cache ditrectory.

There is no easy solution once your forum gets a significant amount of traffic - you will need to find a hosting company which doesn't restrict the server resources so much. If your forum is worth it you your users, try asking for a small contribution for a members' only area which can help pay for the server. :)

[Rosalind]

I find most popular forums to be quite resource-intensive, but exactly how many of the extra features do you really need? A lot of forums feature sigs, avatars, smileys, dancing bananas, custom skins, and a whole host of superfluous information that distracts most people. Ask your members what they would rather do without, and you might be able to cut down on resource hogging that way.

What I would really like to see is a release of BestBBS.

[Endurer]

Hello everyone, This is my first post to the webmasterworld.

I do run a phpBB forum which recently became server intensive on a shared-hosting environment. My host is working on a VPS solution which they are about to launch soon.

I'll very much agree with the post made by a member earlier in this topic. Yes, one needs to take off all that cosmetic stuff which is not required. I recently removed extra images, closed the chat room (it wasn't required) so that I may keep things on the safer side.

My forum traffic comes mainly (80%) from the United states.

Setareh why don't you try Adsense? I'm certain that you can make enough to cut down / cover on your website's hosting expenses.

[setareh]

I converted my forum from phpbb to minibb!
That was hard but one of my forum users did it for me ;)
My web hosting company give me just 60Min/day recourses and told me my current usage is about 475 cpu/min!
I don't know is this normal or not?

So I don't know converting of my forum solve this problem or not,
I'm waiting for tomorrow stats results! :-)

encyclo , rogerd thanks for you useful comments,
Rosalind In minibb I don't use any feature like avatars, private messaging, who is online and ...
Endurer I can not use adsense because of my website primary language ;)

[rogerd]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Endurer.

I agree that there's nothing magic about the language used. Most PHP/ASP forums, though, tend to generate pages on the fly, which can start burdening a server when a lot of people are reading pages. If the pages have been saved as static pages, like some software does, then server utilization can go down. (Oddly, these solutions often have features that increase bandwidth, e.g., not very good breaking of long threads, etc.)

[Endurer]

Thank you Rogerd.

Setareh, try hunting local advertisers from your region. It is difficult, but worth the hard work.

I'm using the templace cache system that comes with the original phpBB package.

I need an advice from all of you. What should I ask from my host to setup for me (VPS solution) with 6650 registered members, 2500 uniques a day and 15-20 members active at the same time? I'm using a modified version of phpBB.