Hosting Questions

[RMM]

1. Does anyone host their own site and forum on a home based server or in a colocation? Is it less expensive than paying for a good hosting service $25.00 month?

2. What hosting services are considered the best for large Vbulletin forums?

3. For those who would like reliable raid backed up network I use www.1hourhosting.com which is based near Los Angeles. But our forum is still small and growing so testing of performance hasn't really been an issue.

BTW does anyone have a tool to download/backup a large forum using PHP? I ran across a tool that will allow you to download/backup a forum of up to 100MB using PHP but it only works with a particular hosting service in Germany.

Thank you very much!

[RGSerge]

1. Does anyone host their own site and forum on a home based server or in a colocation? Is it less expensive than paying for a good hosting service $25.00 month?

Nope, not I.



2. What hosting services are considered the best for large Vbulletin forums?
I've used several hosting companies in the past, www.apisnetworks.com (http://www.apisnetworks.com) is my current host and the one I feel is the best, excellent service, packages (that are customisable), unlimited databases, fast and loads of admin tools.




BTW does anyone have a tool to download/backup a large forum using PHP? I ran across a tool that will allow you to download/backup a forum of up to 100MB using PHP but it only works with a particular hosting service in Germany.

Apis Networks have a backup / restore tool that suit.

[John Diver]

1. Does anyone host their own site and forum on a home based server or in a colocation? Is it less expensive than paying for a good hosting service $25.00 month?

Co-location would cost a lot more than $25 a month and you shouldnt run a site from your own PC unless you are expecting very low traffic.
I think it would be even worse trying to run a vbulletin from a home computer.


2. What hosting services are considered the best for large Vbulletin forums?
Find a host that has fast, reliable servers and that has been around a while and you should be ok :)


BTW does anyone have a tool to download/backup a large forum using PHP? I ran across a tool that will allow you to download/backup a forum of up to 100MB using PHP but it only works with a particular hosting service in Germany.

The most common tool is called phpmyadmin which most hosts include. It isnt capable of running a sql query which is 100mb though but is good for backup purposes.
You can gzip your backup before downloading to decrease the file size, download time and bandwidth required for your backups also :)