phpBB forum

[smudge04]

Hi,

I am currently Admin for a forum which is growing nicely (700 members, 33,000 posts). Its been going for just over a year and is currently hosted on a "free" forum hosting site. Over the last 4-5 months we have had consistent outages and errors due to the host's SQL server etc resulting in the forum being regularly very slow to access or unavailable with various SQL errors.

I started the forum due to another one closing and although I'm pretty technically savvy I thought going down the route I went down would be ideal, i.e. someone else would worry about the installation, upgrades, added features etc all I have to do is keep the members behaving nicely!

I am now considering moving the forum away from my current provider due to the consistent faults and lack of service/information but need to find out a few things to make sure I am fully aware of what I'd be walking into should I move it to a company such as WHUK.

1. My current forum is hosted on phpBB3 but I'm not sure exactly which version although I know its not the very latest patch/update from phpBB. The forum has a number of standard modifications installed too (nothing very fancy). I can get a backup file (myforum.sql) for my forum easily too. I have installed phpBB3 myself a while ago to test if I could restore a backup but did not manage it. This is key that I would be able to migrate my existing forum/posts/members to a new site. What support could you offer to help this process and how long would you expect it to take?

2. I have no idea how much bandwidth/storage I need but this forum is only a hobby type of forum and bar a few donations from members I would be funding it out of my own pocket. We have had days of very slow speeds with our current hosts too and I would like to know what hosting plans would suit and provide a reliable & quick platform to run my forum from?

3. Support. I have not experienced any forums with problems like we have at the moment before but I'm now paranoid that I will end up having to fix errors/corruptions in the database or phpBB software. I have absolutely no knowledge of what if any maintenance I would need to do and what level of support could I expect from WHUK on this front? i.e would you help in fixing a problem with a forum hosted on your plans? Do you assist in installing updates/add-ons to the phpBB code or assist in fixing botched attempts!! What amount of self-checking/fixing is available on the SQL servers if its needed?

4. Would it be possible to test/prove the migration before committing to a year's worth of hosting?

5. I run it in my spare time and don't want to spend that time constantly looking after the software/database side of the forum. How much user intervention is typically required once the forum is set up and running?

Kind regards,

Iain

[Pumazooma]

Originally Posted by smudge04

1. My current forum is hosted on phpBB3 but I'm not sure exactly which version although I know its not the very latest patch/update from phpBB.

It's not hosted on phpBB3.
It's running phpBB3. phpBB.com themselves don't host any boards.

I can get a backup file (myforum.sql) for my forum easily too. I have installed phpBB3 myself a while ago to test if I could restore a backup but did not manage it. This is key that I would be able to migrate my existing forum/posts/members to a new site. What support could you offer to help this process and how long would you expect it to take?

How did you try to restore it? If you just tried to load the query in to phpmyadmin that won't work if the database is bigger than about 2Mb.
Instead you would need to either use something like bigdump (just google it) or open the SQL file in a text editor and past in the queries in smaller blocks.

Note that unless you add the code for the MODs to the files themselves, you will lose all of the MODs as they will not be queried in the database.

2. I have no idea how much bandwidth/storage I need but this forum is only a hobby type of forum and bar a few donations from members I would be funding it out of my own pocket. We have had days of very slow speeds with our current hosts too and I would like to know what hosting plans would suit and provide a reliable & quick platform to run my forum from?

That's very hard to judge as it depends how much the users visit and how much and what they post.
I would think you'd need at least a 10Gb/month deal. I have a board that does 100 posts/day and uses about 20Gb/month.

3. Support. I have not experienced any forums with problems like we have at the moment before but I'm now paranoid that I will end up having to fix errors/corruptions in the database or phpBB software. I have absolutely no knowledge of what if any maintenance I would need to do and what level of support could I expect from WHUK on this front? i.e would you help in fixing a problem with a forum hosted on your plans? Do you assist in installing updates/add-ons to the phpBB code or assist in fixing botched attempts!! What amount of self-checking/fixing is available on the SQL servers if its needed?

phpBB have their own extremely comprehensive support forums. The problems you describe sound like typical free host database issues. It's probably things like 'too many user' connections problems and databases running out of space. These do not often appear on paid hosting accounts. Any other issues such as crashed tables can easily be repaired in the domain controls just by clicking 'repair'. Files should not corrupt. Updates will only involve you uploading new files (if you keep it MOD free).

4. Would it be possible to test/prove the migration before committing to a year's worth of hosting?

You can try it out on your own computer with a package like XAMPP. This is a 1click installer of all the parts you will have on a paid account such as php, apache, mysql and phpmyadmin. If you can restore it on there, you can do it on a server.

5. I run it in my spare time and don't want to spend that time constantly looking after the software/database side of the forum. How much user intervention is typically required once the forum is set up and running?

Not a lot.
You'll need to keep the software up to date and that's about it. The updates come out when needed and are something like once a year. You can use the new antispam measures to stop spambots signing up and just check the database integrity once in a while and run a repair if necessary.

Kevin

[smudge04]

Hi Kevin,

Many thanks for the detailed, informative & positive reply. I will re-read & digest!

Iain

[digg1980]

I have a PHPBB3 forum that is killed with spam. I have even got as far as blocking all contribution lately. Any idea on how to resolve this.

Thanks,
VirtualizationMaster

[Dan]

If you require a large database import, Livesupport will be more than happy to assist you with this.

[Pumazooma]

Originally Posted by digg1980

I have a PHPBB3 forum that is killed with spam. I have even got as far as blocking all contribution lately. Any idea on how to resolve this.

Thanks,
VirtualizationMaster

What version are you running?
The latest 3.0.7-PL1 has very good antispam.
The built in Q&A option is extremely good. I can't remember the last time I had a spambot.

[WHUK-DAN]

Based on the description and views that you gave in this thread, I'll suggest you to go for a Fully Managed Dedicated Server with which our System admins can take over all the server side aspects of your ever growing forum and you can focus on the further growth of it. You can start with an entry level server so that you get an opportunity to test the services provided and then can consider to upgrade to the high end servers if needed.

[Pumazooma]

The shared server deals tend to cope just fine until you get around the 10,000 member mark. That takes a lot of doing.