Understanding my hosting package and MySQL

Why just 10 MB?

[anallawalla]

I am trying to dabble in forum software and noticed that my host only allows me 10 MB of free space for MySQL. Isn't that an unrealistic figure for hosting a forum, or is the space taken by the db very small, i.e. posts are not counted in that figure?

[Dreamquick]

10mb is a perfectly good amount for doing small db-driven projects or small low-activity forums.

Looking at it another way - assume that the average forum post is 2k worth of text (2000 characters, a pretty lengthy post!). From a pure maths perspective you should be able to fit close to 5,000 such posts into a 10mb database before it fills up!

(In comparison, this post is no more than 1k worth of text)

If you want to get serious about databases then you'll find that most serious hosting companies will give you extra db space in return for extra $$, in the same way they do with disk space and bandwidth.

In reality the problem for hosts isn't diskspace (which is stupidly cheap at the moment) but rather that people who want large databases will normally want to use their data online and it's very easy to consume a lot of server resources by querying a larger database when either the query or database isn't optimised.

- Tony