Starting a forum, questions

[gadgtfreek]

I've had the idea of starting a small forum for some time, and I noticed URLJet is kinda geared for vbulletin which is nice.

My main question is how do you predict what bandwidth you would use? They have a semi dedicated plan for $50 a month, it gives you 30gb of raid-10, hourly backups, 750gb bandwidth and a dedicated IP. Is that not enough, overkill?

I just do not have any idea how much a slow forum would use bandwidth wise. I know a place satguys has to use gobs of it.

 

[Anole]

I'll ask my friends over at the VideoReDo forum.
They're a small support-only setup, with no b/s conversations, and don't push any annoying advertising.

I had a problem with mine some years ago, where a few users would download the entire contents so they could browse it off line.
I found that really annoying.
Will get some numbers from the admins and post later.
It's SETI and Distributed Computing-related, and about 10 years old.
Again, advert-free.

Knowing something about your use/application and expected user count would help.
Otherwise, it's a lot like asking "how big is a box?".
Best way to find your needs, is to set up and go on line.
If you use more than you want, find ways to limit use.

 

[The Insider]

if you are just going to have a small website you do not need to invest in a dedicated server. Paying 50$ a month for a site that is small is ridiculous. go with a small shared hosting company at first and as your site grows then you can look to move on to bigger things. I mean a site like sonicbabble.com which is a partner of satguys here is a small forum and costs less than 15$/month in hosting fees. It probably barely registers any bandwidth use maybe a handful of GB a month. As its mostly text.

I recommend a host like www.primeoptic.net but there are many around like godaddy, hostgator, etc. Just which one fits you best. With most of them like primeoptic you can pick the smallest package and as your site goes just upgrade as you need more bandwidth. If you outgrow shared hosting and start getting very large then you can also move on to a dedicated server (which most are self managed so you will need some knowledge in managing a web server) although some providers offer management packages for an extra cost.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Great info, thanks.

 

[Anole]

I didn't get the info on VideoReDo.
However, KWSNforum com uses under a gig storage and less than 5gb throughput per month.