And, no, this is NOT directly related to the current hot topic on the SDMB.
I’m just on the verge of setting up a Board on a subject of interest to me and hope to see it build into a community. So, assuming at least modest popularity and usage at some time in the future, how much bandwidth should I expect to be paying for?
I had been charging blithely into this but having read a few of the threads regarding the SDMB’s (surmised) operating costs, I’m feeling a bit daunted.
Obviously, some hosting services charge more than others and I’m looking around for good service at low cost. BTW, I’ve already looked at and rejected a few free BB options for one reason or another.
Also, any recommendations for good BB software? Many hosting services offer phpBB for free; any drawbacks?
UnaBoard runs off of a 1.5MBit upload/128kbit download line (from the Member’s end, that is), has 1/10 the posting rate of the SDMB, 130 active Members of 451 total, and typically a peak of 25-30 people on at once. It also serves a large (multi-GB) public domain art gallery, runs a recipe database, mailserver, FTP server, and other software. And typically has a fast response rate, which is server bound, not line bound. You can do quite a bit with the line specs above, provided your board is not meant for serving porn, MP3s, etc.
Thanks for your response, Una Persson, but I guess to I need to clarify my question a bit.
Rather than using my own server and being concerned about the speed of its connection to the Internet, I will be using an online hosting service. Typically, you are allowed a certain amount of traffic (number and size of data packets served to browsers, measured in gigabytes) per month as part of your basic hosting contract. If the traffic for your site goes over that, you are charged extra per GB of excess.
So, my question therefore becomes: How much traffic, in gigabytes per month, does a popular board soak up for its operation?
OK, I can answer this too. And I found that a lot of it depends on the level of graphics you have (such as avatars and custom art) and the level that people have their IE cache set to.
My Board is a relatively standard vBulletin 2.x Board with avatars turned on, and I host a nice amount of images (used within posts) from the same Board.
Here are some stats for my Board last year, with about 90-100 active Members (about 100 unique people accessing per average once a day). Note that there is a large amount of “Guest” traffic in there, as well as spider and webcrawler hits too.
Average hits/day: 57,781
Page Views per day: 6630
Average Page Views per Visitor per Visit: 10.37
Average bytes/day: 100.94 MB
Cached requests: 69.9%
Unique IP Addresses: 2067
IPs that Visited Once: 1140
IPs that Visited more than Once: 927
Note that this was some time ago, when the posting rate was about 50% what it is now. One might be able to scale that fairly linearly and say 200MB a day. And one might also be able to say “about 1.5MB per active Member per day” too. The question is, would you consider about 130 active Members per day to be a “popular” Board?
Also note that if your host allows you to GZIP the Board pages, this can save you as much as 2 to 6 times on your bandwidth use. I save about 4x on my bandwidth use as a result of GZIP. (Note this does impact the 100MB and 200MB numbers - that is the actual amount through the pipe.)
Thank you so much for your help, Una Persson. Those are the numbers I’ve been looking for and they put my mind more at ease.
20 Mb per day translates to 6 Gb per month, approximately. As I’ve got a hoster who allows me 50 GB per month for $10 and supplies the freeware phpBB, that means I could potentially host a board with 8 times the traffic of yours (gzipped) for $120 per year…plus my time, of course. As the administrator here at SDMB has pointed out, support hours on the part of a human being are the expensive part…but I won’t be paying myself a salary.
I looked over your BB and I’m very impressed. It’s definitely a cool site. Based on what I’ve seen, there and elsewhere, I’m considering going with vBulletin 3. It’s not quite free but it has added features and, best of all, much better documentation than phpBB.
BTW, I would have registered on Unaboard and said hello…but the roadblock you put up with security requirements for registration does not include a link or form for providing you with those requirements. I would guess that’s why many people don’t go further. I gather that I would have to email you or Fierra? If so, I promise that I would never, ever leave the toilet seat up.
You may have misread that - it’s likely about 200MB per day, not 20MB per day, by my first rough guesstimate. However, in looking a the stats the last week, it might only be about 100MB per day, even at the higher posting rate. I’m guessing it’s more cached hits and less artwork served. So let’s say plan on 3 Gb per month for a place as busy as mine. Hope that clears things up.
It just says basically “send a mail with the info”.
