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MyBB or PHPBB Server spec

Hissingsid

10:45 am on Apr 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

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I'm doing the ground work for my first forum site and have decide that I'm going to use MyBB or PHPBB.

I'm now trying to decide whether to go shared or VPS and what server spec I'll need.

Can anyone here who uses MyBB or PHPBB give me some pointers please.

What spec CPU,HD,Ram should I go for to start up with VPS.

Based on our plans and guestimates below should I even consider shared or is that just a nine starter?

If you use MyBB or PHPBB I'd be very interested to hear your spec/traffic/user numbers and experience.

I know I'm being a bit cheeky but this kind of information might save us from going the wrong way and I'm therefore prepared to ask a cheeky question.

Many thanks

Sid

== Guestimates ==

I'm hoping to build to around 10,000 members by the end of year 2. Based on the numbers in our real world customer base and visitors to other on-topic websites that we operate, I'd be disappointed if it was less than this but would be very surprised if I got more than double that number.

robzilla

4:13 pm on Apr 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

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Top Contributors Of The Month

You can easily scale up on a VPS and if you choose the right provider you won't have to share your resources with others as you would on shared hosting. Around 256MB of RAM and a single core should be quite sufficient to get you started with either phpBB or MyBB. Install an opcode cache such as APC or XCache and go easy on the number of plug-ins and modules, use only what you really need. That way, a small VPS with the above specs can probably handle a couple thousand visitors per day -- and if it starts sweating, you can simply upgrade without a hassle.

As for phpBB vs. MyBB, I only have experience with phpBB, and I think it's great. I love the templating system, how it allows you to keep things simple (unlike vBulletin, for example), and so far it's had all the features I needed, and a solid community that produces add-ons and can provide support when required.

Swanny007

10:00 pm on Apr 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

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I'm running multiple phpbb forums on shared hosting, I have for several years without any problems. Unless you have 50-100K people a month even a VPS is overkill IMHO. My largest site on shared hosting sees 300K uniques per month, it has regular HTML areas and forums so not every page results in calls to the database.

Hissingsid

8:08 pm on Apr 29, 2012 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Many thanks for the input it is very helpful.

I'm thinking that I will go the VPS route. The price in the UK isn't that much more than a good shared host and if it works out then the cost will be negligible in real terms. Less than I spend a day on Adwords for a full years hosting.

I like the sound of phpBB's templating system. I run a few sites using Textpattern as a backend.

Have either of you considered moving to a more complete community solution like Elgg for example or is the simplicity of a forum what most folks want? I must admit that I personally only contribute to forums (and Twitter).

Thanks again

Sid

Asia_Expat

3:54 am on May 4, 2012 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

I get around 130,000 visitors per month to my forum at this time. I run my own server, a little Dell R200 with dual core and 2 gigs of volatile memory, and I colo it. I run cPanel and the memory is right on it's limits, so I need to add more soon. The server hardly ever sweats, and only really sweats for a few minutes when it occasionally comes under pressure from bots before the firewall locks them out automatically. The daily backup process is starting to push things over limit too... but generally, Apache usually reports less than three requests per second.

I have my own server because I have a very specific setup and need httpd.conf control etc.

I run Invision Power Board.