Hosting a forum - what sort of hosting needed?

[destro404]

I'm thinking of starting up a forum and am not sure in the slightest how much of a hosting package I would need.

To make some over-generous guesses at how how much usage it would get say...

5000 visitors per day with a max of 500 at any one time.
Posting habits would likely be much like d-f with most occasional posters and a core contingent of chatty buggers.
Forum design would hopefully be nicely designed with good graphics.
Posts would be limited to text only with some smilies with no hosting of pics, files etc (these would have to be hosted elsewhere and linked to).
This is a big guess but likely maybe 300 posts per day.
For arguments sake say I would use vbulletin as I would guess it is the most resource hungry.

Any recommendations you can give to what sort of processing power/disk space/bandwidth I would need would be really appreciated. Also any recommendations of a good host with scalable plans would be nice too. I tried google but all i get is loadds of crap about hosting bargains.

Having thought things over i think I have really over-exaggerated most points on my requirements but I'd rather be on the safe side and have capacity to spare.

[-AMO-]

I'm thinking of starting up a forum and am not sure in the slightest how much of a hosting package I would need.

To make some over-generous guesses at how how much usage it would get say...

5000 visitors per day with a max of 500 at any one time.
Posting habits would likely be much like d-f with most occasional posters and a core contingent of chatty buggers.
Forum design would hopefully be nicely designed with good graphics.
Posts would be limited to text only with some smilies with no hosting of pics, files etc (these would have to be hosted elsewhere and linked to).
This is a big guess but likely maybe 300 posts per day.
For arguments sake say I would use vbulletin as I would guess it is the most resource hungry.

The best thing you can do is scale your hosting requirements to match the traffic requirements your site needs as it grows, saving you money in the process.

Theres no point overspending on hosting and having bandwidth going unused each month, and with the spare cash saved you can invest it on marketing your site to reach your aim of 5000 visitors per day. By keeping an eye on your traffic stats, you'll be able to forecast when you need to start thinking about upgrading to more bandwidth and diskspace etc.

Any recommendations you can give to what sort of processing power/disk space/bandwidth I would need would be really appreciated. Also any recommendations of a good host with scalable plans would be nice too. I tried google but all i get is loadds of crap about hosting bargains.

Personaly I use www.xilo.net and have done for over a year now with very little problems. They're probably not the cheapest around, but anyone will tell you that a decent, reliable host is worth the extra cost.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ is a great forum to check out potential hosts that might suit your needs. If you do come across a company you're interested in, make sure you do a search of the forum and even google to see testimonials from other people that have used the service before you buy.

[DiGiT]

Just curious as I was always interested in doing the same thing in Canada. What if any at all is the source of revenue/income for the forum.. Is it strictly the banner ad's. Assuming I wouldn't want pop-ups.

And roughly what are the costs for the forum software.

BTW.. Since you will have quite allot of storage capacity for a forum.. you said you would not host images/pictures... assuming every member posted their own image with the maximum size of 100k lets say.. And you had 10,000 members (Like -AMO- said build as you grow/populate) meaning, at the 10,000 member capacity wouldn't the images only take up a bit more than 1 gig of space.. meaning at first you would need almost very little.. assuming you don't get 10,000 members to sign up on day one.

I am on a few forums, and one thing I do appreciate is being able to upload my own image.. the user friendliness keeps people coming back as well.. not just the topics of discussion, although we would hope it is mostly the topics.