Midas Cars Forum - www.midascarsforum.com

I'll drop some over after pay day David, things are pip squeakingly tight right now.

Hosting for a forum of this size should cost around £4 - £10 a month, I was up to over 1000 members before I had to upgrade to the £10 option. I'm currently paying £40 a month now the membership is up to 3000 with 100+ active members online at any given time, this cost is covered by a couple of adverts. I must admit I've wondered about the need for running my own server like Turbo minis does but the costs don't add up for me and my forum is busier than TM.

Hi Rich, its not just the amount of user numbers that is relevant, but also what kind of backup strategy they have, the hardware its on, is it apache or iis, whether its a dedicated server box for a website or whether its a box shared with other websites behind the scenes. My server could host hundreds of sites simultaneously. It currently doesnt though. This is probably why the TM one is more expensive than your hosts.

I'm currently running on a virtual private server, the uptime is generally 100% with maybe a couple of minutes down time every other month and 24/7 support, we no longer feel the effects of sharing with other sites thankfully.

As I've only got the one site to worry about so apart from having ultimate control as an Admin, I can't see how the expense of buying and running my own server would give me an advantage commensurate with the cost.

I dont think TM has bought theirs either Rich. I understand its basically a rented space in a rack.

A dedicated server can be either a physical server or a virtual server. I manage a few of physical and virtuals servers at work. The ones we use have 128GB of Ram and 16 xeon core processors to do the virtualisation effectively for MS SQL Clustering.

Just for interest, do you run a virtual server for your forum for yourself, or as part of your job role?

I think everyones feeling the pips squeeking at the moment. I wish the Euro would settle down. Its causing a lot of uncertainty.

The virtual server was a step up for us and was just to deal with the traffic and bandwidth that the forum was using whilst getting us away from the problems associated with sharing space with other sites. From memory the one we are on now is a 16 cpu effort running Apache.

Although the forum is professionally related and does appear in my performance reviews it is done in my own time and expense, 18 months on the learning curve is still pretty vertical.

The pips are particularly tight this month as my eldest has moved down to live with us. As you can imagine having met him, this month has been busy!

I have absolutely no idea what any of you are talking bout with all this computer tech but I'll be happy to throw in a tenner for the year if this helps. At times I desperately need peoples help on this forum and with Alan organising various group buys through it I think it's invaluable for all of us. No chequebook but happy to send a tenner through tinterweb banking or Paypal (your choice, just let me know)

Cheers Wolfie. Glad its working for you. Thanks for your offer.

the paypal address to use is: lvm_1975(a)yahoo.com

manifold wrote:Cheers Wolfie. Glad its working for you. Thanks for your offer.

the paypal address to use is: lvm_1975(a)yahoo.com

There should be £10.54 in your Paypal account now. The 54p is because I've paid the Paypal fee

cheers wolfie. much appreciated! I have it. Your name is now in lights!

manifold wrote:cheers wolfie. much appreciated! I have it. Your name is now in lights!

Where is this Hall of Fame? Is it still to be created, or have I just failed to find it?

You may well get a donation from me sooner rather than later (about a week, but not a large amount I'm afraid)...