Hosting question

[Nefrit]

This is aimed more at the site admin,

how is this site hosted? is it shared or dedicated?

i run a VB forum and im about to move it to a VPS, should speed things up no end.

do you have plans in place now for the site getting busier?

[ryanhellyer]

I've looked into forum hosting on shared plans. The reports I'm hearing are that Hostgator (which this site is hosted on) can handle up to approximately 200 users online at the same time without any hassles on their shared plans. Presumably their semi-dedicated/VPS plans (available on request) can handle a LOT more users online than that.

These things are obviously reliant on many factors though, including how many pages those online visitors are using, how much they're posting, what software you are using etc. etc.

I think it's a good idea to go with a host which offers easy upgrade plans in case you need to expand at a later date. Hostgator offers many different plans right the way through to dedicated servers and the upgrade is (in theory) seamless, your entire account will be transferred for you with no extra work required on your part.

cheers,
Ryan

PS: I'm in no way connected with Hostgator, they're just my web host and I've had nothing but good experiences with them feel confident in promoting them.

[Ducani]

Hi Nefrit, we are on a dedicated server with HostGator and have had no issues thus far. We are working on ways to increase the activity on the forum in particular as the site already receives a high volume of traffic.

[BigAlReturns]

I've never run a forum myself, but I do have experience with heavily database driven sites, with several, sometimes complex queries run for each page. At the peak of it's promotion it was getting up to 4000 uniques/day, and I never had a problem even with very very cheap (£2($4)/month) hosting.

[ryanhellyer]

BigAlReturns, that's interesting information to know. It's often tricky finding data on what shared hosting plans can handle. It took me quite a lot of searching to find out what the approximate limits were on the Hostgator shared plans.