Over the past few days I've been looking into moving my forum but the issue with it is that there is just so much to sort out before it's a go. Come to find out shared hosting wouldn't even tolerate my board's bandwidth usage, now looking at my options with private servers, researching that, trying to figure out SMF and how it works {I finally committed to SMF and will stick with them}, and talking to my staff one by one to make sure they're on board with it. Only when I know it's a go will I then purchase a domain in preparation. I also want to prep a new skin for the board, custom made, and learning how to do that will be a real job too. It's looking like late April or May when the move if it goes through will take place.
Am I just taking too much time to do all this? People seem to move much faster than I am here on this forum with their boards. I feel like a slowpoke who just worries too much 😛
How much bandwidth do you think you use, per month? You may be ablwe to fit it onto a shared host, as plans do vary quite a bit. Forumpromotion is on shared, I believe.
No way to truly know my bandwidth, but I know I get around 25,000 pageloads and 2,000 posts total a day now. The stats of unique visitors on Forum topsites has interestingly not changed, or it has even gone down a bit but the rest of my stats internally are up.
I would multiply the total size of all pages (including graphics) by the amount of visitors you recieve each month. For example, your total page size is 50 MB and you recieve 10,000 visitors per month, you would need 500K MB per month. Not really accurate, but gives you a close bet.
With a site your size you could still use shared hosting you would have to find a package that fits your needs, most hosts are willing to negotiate a price with you if you want to ask them to increase your bandwidth cap.
Shared hosting has become dirt cheap and the plans seem to be always increasing. Are there any particular companies you have looked at for hosting? My personal favourite is HostGator.
Interesting talk! And I had become sure I couldn't fit it onto a shaerd host. I was steered away from Hostgator though because I heard they oversell and shut you down if you go over.
As for MB I just don't know.
Edit: I've decided to try a VPS anyway...because I want to eliminate the risk of having malicious attackers shut my forum down for overage by deliberately exploiting the bandwidth.
Could that be done by evil use of Iframes or something on another site? Sorry...I'm just paranoid and trying to check every possible way someone can sabotage me.
