Looking for forum host and domain (New to all this, can anyone help)

Colshy · Share | #1 (**permalink**) 08-26-2007, 09:32 PM

Hi everyone

I hope I've asked in the right place for help getting hosting and a domain

I'm really new to this but me and my sister are really good at running a forum

We set up a forum less than 2 months ago with a free forum service and our statistics are already

Quote:

Our users have posted a total of 9894 articles
We have 6777 registered users
The newest registered user is ashwinox

The problem is the free providers are very unreliable and slow most of the time and we need to get our own paid for forum and domain but we don't know how to go about it.

We are thinking of going with go daddy as thats been recommended but cant get much info from the site

any help would be great

Were in the UK and so far godaddy looks like the best choice

We rang earlier but had to hang up as we were on hold for a while and the phone call was expensive so thought we would try and get advice and help from people more experienced in this kind of help

Colshy · #2 (**permalink**) 08-26-2007, 09:53 PM

For more info what we have now is a free forum

What we want is a webhost that isnt too expensive so we can run a forum on it, nothing else.

Also we need a domain name, we looked at available ones on godaddy and like forumflicks.com which is available

So we know what we want but we just dont know how to get it and would also like to transfer everything on our existing forum if possible.

gate2vn · #3 (**permalink**) 08-28-2007, 06:16 PM

I am not sure if godaddy can be hosted for forums. Usually, the hosts oversell much will limit many in CPU, RAM... so if your forums is a bit busy, it will went down, or they will suspend your account

Before we can name some vendors, can you let us know
- the name of your forums: ibp, vBulletin, snitz....
- how many members online at the same time?
- how much do you think it's expensive?
- how many MB (or GB) of space, bandwidth do you need?

kinggomez · #4 (**permalink**) 08-29-2007, 04:06 PM

i originally started my website with godaddy, it wasnt bad but and they sorted me out prett well, i just didnt really like how the user controlled everything, i prefer a proper control panel. i read lots of posts saying the support is bad but i havnt had that problem, usually answered me pretty well.

I am from the UK to and i now use stebtech , they have a data centre in the UK too and it seems very reliable to me. i think at the mo they are giving away a free domain with every deal for the launch of their new site,

too bad it happeded after i joined.

iHubNet-Matt · #5 (**permalink**) 08-31-2007, 07:34 AM

Also, how much disk space and bandwidth you will need?
I suggest you not to go for cheap overselling hosts as when more users come online, it will use more resources and you may get killed.
By theway what is your budget?

Colshy · #6 (**permalink**) 08-31-2007, 09:00 AM

Well if you look at my profile you will see my forum (movieforums) there.

It's with a free host called informe who aren't very reliable.

Me and my sister started it 2 months ago and already have these statistics...

Quote:

Our users have posted a total of 12146 articles
We have 7574 registered users
The newest registered user is wade
In total there are 64 users online :: 60 Registered, 2 Hidden and 2 Guests [ Administrator ] [ Moderator ]
Most users ever online was 187 on Thu Aug 09, 2007 4:49 pm

So we can see it being really popular in a few months time.

Its also not secure as the free forum hosts don't offer any support and people have been asking them to delete the forum which they could do any time if they wanted because we link to videos on you tube and daily motion etc

Colshy · #7 (**permalink**) 08-31-2007, 09:01 AM

Our budget is about $200 or £100 ish

iHubNet-Matt · #8 (**permalink**) 09-01-2007, 02:52 AM

You will be able to find a good one with this budget

damien_ls · #9 (**permalink**) 09-01-2007, 09:55 AM

With this number of users I would strongly recommend taking a VPS rather than shared hosting - it sounds like this would be within your budget too... assuming that the figures quoted are monthly?

A VPS will provide the level of resources that you need to run a VPS of this size, but particularly relevant here is that a VPS will be most suitable for supporting your expected growth. Check with your intended provider, but technically speaking your VPS should be able to grow as required without any downtime or any other potential inconvenience (e.g. no migrations causing a changing in hosting environment, and the potential problems which can occur as a result of that such as different versions/settings in PHP etc.).

Also worth considering in your case is the upgrade path to a dedicated server; you should be able to upgrade from your VPS to a dedicated server. Check that this is also possible with your provider, and certainly make sure that you have some plans as to how this might happen if/when the time comes.

I noticed that informe.com are using phpBB - that's very good for you, as it means that you can easily backup your database (via the phpBB admin panel) and export your forum onto a clean install of phpBB on another hosting service.

I've already encountered various examples of what you mean regarding the speed of their servers!

If you need any more assistance with this then please feel free to PM me. I'd be happy to talk through it all in more detail, but I have a bad habbit of creating long posts... no point me explaining it all if you're already sorted out

T0d · #10 (**permalink**) 09-01-2007, 11:31 AM

All the major hosting providers offer something that will work for you. enom, godaddy, site5, hostgator, etc.

I've learned not one host is perfect.

Colshy · #11 (**permalink**) 09-16-2007, 05:44 AM

Thanks everyone, were all sorted now with our new host and the domains forumflicks.net and forumflicks.com

Thanks also to everyone who PM'd me with help

iHubNet-Matt · #12 (**permalink**) 09-18-2007, 01:28 PM

Glad to hear you were able to sort out thing.
Do bother to give a review on your new host after a month or so so that it will be helpful for others.

Colshy · #13 (**permalink**) 03-17-2008, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iHubNet-Matt

Glad to hear you were able to sort out thing.
Do bother to give a review on your new host after a month or so so that it will be helpful for others.

We went with Siteground, at first they seemed OK but when our site became popular they restricted service and were hard to speak to.

After we got busy, support and help tickets were never answered with problems (they were answered within 24hrs initially) and eventually we decided to cancel hosting with them.

We've just sold both the forumflicks domains now