What does it really take, financially?

[Downn2Earthh]

Hello Forum,

I have to say that the vB Community Forums here are excellent and I'm glad there's one for Pre-Sales questions. I'm really excited about creating a savvy, fast and substance-filled, vB-based Community by (or before) the middle of this year. Seeing various customizations and hacks for vB makes me that much more excited about using it. I got a sample of vB because I'm a Mod on a vB forum. :)

However, just as quickly as I get excited about my vB Community endeavor, I get hesitant. The hesitation sinks in when I think about what it takes to run a successful vB Community from a financial aspect. I'm sure others may be at this same stumbling block.

Ideally, I want to set up my own (physical) Linux web server to host my vB forum and web site. I'm a brand newbie to *nix but willing to learn enough to be dangerous! If creating and maintaining my own *nix web server proves to be too much time & money, then I'll have to opt for a web site host provider.

What are the tradeoffs in running your own server for a vB forum and paying for the appropriate high speed connection vs. paying for a company to host it? Also, what about running vB on the Mac OS X server platform because it is Unix and includes Apache? If anyone is currently running vB on a Mac OS X Server, please share your links and how easy or difficult it is to work with.

Also, if anyone can offer any ballpark costs in establishing and maintaining a vB forum, that would be excellent. I know this is not the easiest question to answer because if one doesn't have an existing forum and is starting a new one, everything (user count, etc.) is all an estimate.

Thanks in advance for all advice, suggestions and feedback!

Downn2Earthh

[Cluster]

I'm really excited about creating a savvy, fast and substance-filled, vB-based Community by (or before) the middle of this year.
Not to discourage you, but unless you can offer something that no other community can, you will have a really hard time accomplishing this goal.

What are the tradeoffs in running your own server for a vB forum and paying for the appropriate high speed connection vs. paying for a company to host it?
Basically, paying a [good] company to host your stuff relieves you from 95% of worries. You don't need to worry about keeping the server up, keeping it physically protected, paying for high speed Internet access (this is a biggie!), etc. All you need to worry about is bulletin board administration.
Running it yourself gives you 100% power over everything. You don't need to share the server with anyone, etc.

Also, if anyone can offer any ballpark costs in establishing and maintaining a vB forum, that would be excellent.
I run a small forum for players of a certain MUD (25 members, maybe a dozen posts a day), and all I pay for is my DSL connection (with static IP and domain name). That comes out to about $635 per year -- and $600 of it I would pay for regardless of whether I was running forums or not, just for fast Internet access.
Of course, the drawback to this is that my server is connected to the Internet only via a DSL line. Had I opted for professional hosting, it would be at least on a T1 line.


Hope that helps.

[tubedogg]

Just as an FYI we generally do not recommend trying to host a site yourself (that is, on a computer in your house/business). For two reasons:
- you are at the mercy of your DSL/cable provider as far as uptime goes, plus it can drag your system down (not to mention the effect on your connection if you want to surf the net)
- it is against almost all DSL/cable providers' TOS to run a server. If you using a business account it is sometimes different but in most cases it is still against the rules.

Especially for starting out the costs of hosting it yourself are going to far outweigh anything you get back. A T1 line is, in most places, between $500 and $1500 a month (that's just bandwidth, and if you start getting busy, a T1 is not much). Compare that to a dedicated server at a good host at approx. $300 to $500 a month (and that includes enough bandwidth for multiple thousands of visitors per month). Given that you probably won't even need a dedicated server to start out, shared hosting, even with a lot of bandwidth, will run you at most $75 a month.

Of course none of this takes into account things such as network connectivity (good luck with your telco - it may be months before they get around to installing that T1) security (webhosts are in the business of security, you are not and are therefore more susceptible right off the bat) and actually running the webserver.

In short, unless you really know what you are doing and have a lot of cash lying around waiting to be thrown at your local telco, don't even think about trying to host it yourself.

[Downn2Earthh]

Thanks for your replies and opinions! I was unable to post for a minute, but all is well now. :)

I'm not at all worried about how great of a community I can provide. My concern still is about how to fund it. I have a few ideas I'm tossing around though, and hopefully one of them will prove to be the best idea to put into action. Needless to say, paid Hosting is the way to go, hands down. Thanks for the tips...

D2E