Switching Hosts - Need Advice

[vern17]

I'm looking to switch hosts. I am currently on powweb.com's One Plan (you can go to the site for details of the plan). I have had my forum up (www.fogpog.com) for about 5 months now and am starting to run into problems with pages loading slowly and I'm starting to get database errors. Everything is the same on my end when the site is running good and when it is not, so I believe it has to do with my host. I have over 300 members and have had nearly 60 users online at one time, which I feel my host should be able to handle. I have already contacted them about the problems a couple times and they say everything is fine on their end, yet myself and my users still experience these problems.

I would like to know some good, reputable hosts that I could use and if I need to think about switching to a dedicated host (which I don't think I should have to do yet, but I'm not sure). I have searched around the forums here and on the net, but most of the plans that I see seem too good to be true for as cheap as they are (which I'm starting to think the same about my current host), or their plans are too expensive for me at this point. I'm not really sure what to look for as far as a great host and especially if I need to upgrade to a dedicated server.

My budget right now makes room to spend about $30-50/mon. for hosting. My site is growing at a nice clip and I have added some things to my forum (arcade, ads, etc.) that my new host should be able to handle without any problems. I appreciate any help you guys can give me with this, as I've gotten to a breaking point with my current host. Thanks.

[Gene Steinberg]

I'm looking to switch hosts. I am currently on powweb.com's One Plan (you can go to the site for details of the plan). I have had my forum up (www.fogpog.com (http://www.fogpog.com)) for about 5 months now and am starting to run into problems with pages loading slowly and I'm starting to get database errors. Everything is the same on my end when the site is running good and when it is not, so I believe it has to do with my host. I have over 300 members and have had nearly 60 users online at one time, which I feel my host should be able to handle. I have already contacted them about the problems a couple times and they say everything is fine on their end, yet myself and my users still experience these problems.

I would like to know some good, reputable hosts that I could use and if I need to think about switching to a dedicated host (which I don't think I should have to do yet, but I'm not sure). I have searched around the forums here and on the net, but most of the plans that I see seem too good to be true for as cheap as they are (which I'm starting to think the same about my current host), or their plans are too expensive for me at this point. I'm not really sure what to look for as far as a great host and especially if I need to upgrade to a dedicated server.

My budget right now makes room to spend about $30-50/mon. for hosting. My site is growing at a nice clip and I have added some things to my forum (arcade, ads, etc.) that my new host should be able to handle without any problems. I appreciate any help you guys can give me with this, as I've gotten to a breaking point with my current host. Thanks.

60 users online ought to be all right for a shared server, but if your board has lots of image files, where folks are spending a lot of time uploading content, this could put you over the edge, as it were.

The extra content also puts you at the borderline. I use DreamHost with great performance on a largely text-based forum and we've had up to 61 users online at any time with no problems. But I can't say your situation would be comparable. I suppose you could give them a try and see, but I'd write to their customer service first to be sure that your load wouldn't tax their servers -- and I'd recommend you do that with any host you consider.

I expect we will have to go dedicated one of these days, but our budget isn't ready to cover that expense either.

Peace,
Gene

[adrianus]

Consider a VPS with 256-512 MB RAM. It can be a transition before you move to dedicated. You can get one with your budget. One advice: if you get one with CPanel/WHM, get at least 384 MB RAM.