[Sapo84]

Hi,
I'm currently in search of an host for a Invision board community.
My current host (one of the unlimited everything kind of mentality) is a bit slow and we think we are better off with something more dependable.

My question are:
- Is the shared hosting account enough for a community which usually see 30/40 users online together in the peak hours? (130.000 posts, 1GB of attachments/galleries)
Give the fact that you are using IP.Board as a community forum you may have a better idea than me.
- Invision asks for a 128M memory limit within php, otherwise the gallery will fail with large images (10mpx or something like that), in your shared hosting is it possible to set the php in that way or you have a lower hard limit?
- Which plan do you think suits best our needs? I was thinking Intermediate Plan shoud be enough (just to be on the safe side with the Bandwidth).
Are there any other differences between the three, maybe more cpu or memory usage?

[MikeDVB]

Sapo84, on 19 November 2010 - 08:50 PM, said:

- Is the shared hosting account enough for a community which usually see 30/40 users online together in the peak hours? (130.000 posts, 1GB of attachments/galleries)

Shouldn't be an issue - standard shared should be good for up to around 100(ish) simultaneous users or maybe more depending on what plugins you're running on your forum.

Sapo84, on 19 November 2010 - 08:50 PM, said:

Give the fact that you are using IP.Board as a community forum you may have a better idea than me.

IPB is an excellent piece of forum software imho

Sapo84, on 19 November 2010 - 08:50 PM, said:

- Invision asks for a 128M memory limit within php, otherwise the gallery will fail with large images (10mpx or something like that), in your shared hosting is it possible to set the php in that way or you have a lower hard limit?

We have it set to 128M by default however you can increase it as needed in your .htaccess file with this line:

php_value memory_limit 256M

.

Sapo84, on 19 November 2010 - 08:50 PM, said:

- Which plan do you think suits best our needs? I was thinking Intermediate Plan shoud be enough (just to be on the safe side with the Bandwidth).
Are there any other differences between the three, maybe more cpu or memory usage?

Disk/Transfer are really the only differences besides the price. You could start on the smallest one as you can always upgrade at any time seamlessly... No sense in spending more than you have to because you might use something in the future - you can always upgrade if you need more space or transfer.

[Sapo84]

MikeDVB, on 19 November 2010 - 09:06 PM, said:

Shouldn't be an issue - standard shared should be good for up to around 100(ish) simultaneous users or maybe more depending on what plugins you're running on your forum.

Just the standard package (forum + blog + gallery) plus a semi-desert shoutbox (which shouldn't be very SQL-heavy).
Anyway that's reassuring, and if by chance we will get that big we will probably go dedicated, 100 simultaneos users are really a lot.

MikeDVB, on 19 November 2010 - 09:06 PM, said:

IPB is an excellent piece of forum software imho

Think so too, even if 3.0.0 was buggy as ******.
3.1 on the contrary is quite nice and bug-free.

MikeDVB, on 19 November 2010 - 09:06 PM, said:

We have it set to 128M by default however you can increase it as needed in your .htaccess file with this line:

php_value memory_limit 256M

.

That's awesome!
Anyway 128M should be plenty, if a forum script needs more... it should be optimized ^^

MikeDVB, on 19 November 2010 - 09:06 PM, said:

Disk/Transfer are really the only differences besides the price. You could start on the smallest one as you can always upgrade at any time seamlessly... No sense in spending more than you have to because you might use something in the future - you can always upgrade if you need more space or transfer.

Well, fact is bandwidth usage in the old host was very erratic, sometime low, sometime very high (hundreds of GB per mounth), I actually think that the server was hacked 1 mounth ago, because suddendly every folder had 777 permission (and that caused a big downtime, because php scripts weren't executed when inside a 777 folder).
Anyway I would still feel safer starting with the intermediate plan, and besides if the service is as awesome as it seems you actually deserve all the money.

[stocktrader]

Sapo84, on 19 November 2010 - 09:34 PM, said:

if by chance we will get that big we will probably go dedicated, 100 simultaneos users are really a lot.

If you outgrow shared hosting, keep semi-dedicated hosting in mind as an upgrade option. Going from shared to dedicated sometimes is overkill with regards to both capacity and price.

[MikeDVB]

Sounds good Do keep in mind that we're trying to develop these forums as peer to peer support so if you have an important support issue the fastest way to get support (unless this forum gets busy suddenly) is to open a ticket