Chapter 2

•How often posts are read. (Remember, a post can be read once or many times by the same person.)

•How often a post is re-read. (Re-reading a post contributes to the bandwidth used.)

•How many posts are displayed on a page.

•How many graphics are on the site.

•How often people carry out searches.

Even a small a forum can generate a lot of activity and therefore consume a lot of bandwidth. Shop around and you'll find some good deals.

As a general rule, it's probably better that you don't go for any plan that offers you less that 20 Gb a month. If you go over your allocated bandwidth, you'll end up paying over the odds for additional bandwidth, so it pays to have more than you need.

Many hosts also allow you to roll over unused bandwidth, which means that what you don't use this month you have available the next month.

Flexibility

Try to find a host that is flexible—you might not know how your forum will develop over a year or two, so try to find a host that will allow you to upgrade in mid-contract.

System Resources

The bigger your discussion board is, the more system resources it is going to need from the server that it is being hosted on. (By big, we mean how busy it is, which can be measured by how many people are on it at any one time and how many posts are being made over a period of time.)

There are three types of hosting solution available to you.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is sometimes called virtual hosting.

If your board is small (say under 200 posts a day and about 20 people online simultaneously), then you should find that this forum could be run on hosting known as shared hosting, where your website lives on a computer with many other websites.

Shared hosting facts

On a shared hosting plan you can be sharing the server with over 200 other sites. This means that the server power available to you is only a fraction of what the server has to offer. If your site is big and busy, then this can affect others on the server. This is why shared hosting is only viable for small discussion boards.

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Installing and Configuring vBulletin

Shared hosting is by far the cheapest option open to you because you share the cost of the server with others, but be aware that you get what you pay for. Don't expect a shared server solution that costs $100 a year to offer you the same power and flexibility as a hosting solution costing $100 a month would offer you.

Semi-Dedicated Hosting

One rung up from shared hosting comes semi-dedicated hosting. This is similar to shared hosting, but you share the server with fewer other sites. This means that more server power is available to you and your site. The more power that you have, the more users can use your site at any given time and the faster your site appears to them (although ultimately the speed of their Internet connection also plays a big part).

There are benefits to semi-dedicated hosting—the main one being a lot more power for only a little more money—but be careful and make sure that you are clear about what you are getting. Find out up-front how many people will be sharing the server and what is the maximum allowed on a single semi-dedicated server. A good host will give you this information freely. If they don't, look elsewhere.

Not all semi-dedicated servers were made equal

It's all in the numbers. Some hosting companies only allow a semi-dedicated server to host 4 or 5 sites, while others will allow 20 or more. What you are looking for is the best deal based on your budget.

Dedicated Hosting

A dedicated hosting solution is where you get a server all to yourself. This gives you the best in terms of power and flexibility, but at a price. Remember too that dedicated hosting is a term not a standard—a package (or packages) offered by one company is likely to be different from what's on offer from another company.

There are many variables when it comes to dedicated hosting—connection speed, server specification, support packages, add-ons. Be careful and shop around for the best deals.

Get advice!

If you are unsure about what you want, then you can get good advice, recommendations and feedback on good deals on the vBulletin community forums:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum

Also, you need to factor in issues like support and downtime. Check out the guarantees offered by the host.

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