Messageboard tech support - listen to me! (or, let's talk about running websites)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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This started out as a weak Pit rant, so mods feel free to move it there, but it seemed just too darn mundane not to be here. It’s a weak rant because I still love vBulletin. My website ran on Infopop’s UBB for it’s first couple of years, and when a problem arose that they refused to fix I went to vBulletin. I was amazed at the difference! Tons more options, and amazingly faster! Light years ahead of UBB. It was love at first site (cough).

Anyway, this morning I decided to upgrade my messageboard to the latest version (2.2.8), partly to close a couple of security holes they had discovered, and partly due to the fact that I’ll be forced to upgrade to 2.2.8 soon anyway if I plan to install vBulletin 3 (which I’m quite excited about).

So I make a backup (natch) and install 2.2.8. And… IT CHOKES! The server load number on a usual day (20 to 30 people milling about) is under 0.5. On busy days, the load can hit 2 or 3. As soon as I turned on the board and people started coming back in, it went through the roof! When 5 people connected it shot over 10. When ten people wandered in, it rocketed to 25! I didn’t even know it went that high!

So I submitted a trouble ticket with vBulletin, telling them the whole story from above. Their response? I need more memory. They’re right, I do (160meg at the moment), BUT IT WAS WORKING THIS MORNING! I can’t believe they were honestly telling me that I need 512 megs of memory to handle 5 people online at once. :mad:

So tonight I was finally able to restore my backup (I backup the static files as well as the DB, fortunately) and I’m working fine again on 2.2.6.

Does anyone here run a somewhat busy messageboard? If so - do you have a host that you’re elated with? I’ll likely be outgrowing mine soon, so I may need to look for a new one. My site typically has 20-30 people on it at once, with a few periods during the day with 40-50 visitors. The database itself is about 550 megs.

I may try to find a good deal on a dedicated server, but the setup costs alone on those are usually awful. I’m on a “Private Server” now - which is a server cut into pieces where I’m dedicated a certain amount of processing power, and a set amount of RAM. A heck of a lot better than shared hosting, but not quite a dedicated server either.

Anyway - any advice would be appreciated, or just ramble on about your own site hosting experiences. I’d love to hear either one. :smiley:

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I know another board running vB 2.2.6 on a virtual server and it kicks along just fine. It gets pretty heavy load. everyday (not quite sure of the amount of people but almost everyday brings in 4 pages of new topics in one forum with tons of replies in the others)

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Have you tried doing a Contrast, WinDiff, or using BeyondCompare, to see what changed from 2.2.6 to 2.2.8? Having recently done the same exact upgrade, I can say I noticed no difference in speed whatsoever.

I can’t comment on hosting options. I host myself. In fact, one of my dainty bare feet is resting on my server right now, soaking up the warmth. Now that’s something you just can’t replace…ahh…

Una

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lol one of these days I’ll get a decent connection at home (the cable modem is only 128 up) and host it myself too. :smiley:

And that’s a good idea with BeyondCompare - I’ll check that out tonight. Thanks!

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I run vBulletin 2.2.6 on a virtual hosting account at 100 Megs Web Hosting (http://www.100megswebhosting.com). So far, so good. They use vBulletin for their support board, which must mean something.