Anyone who's switched from UBB >> vB

[Nupraptor]

Have you noticed a drastic difference in the amount of bandwith your forums use? I'm attempting to help someone I know move their UBB to another server, and I'm really trying to convince him to switch over to vB.

One of the main troubles he's having right now is in sheer bandwith usage for his board: at this time, it uses between 75-80GB a month. Now, my board seems at least as active as his UBB (if not moreso), and we use about 15-18GB a month. This leads me to believe that UBB is at fault (but of course, this is a totally subjective observation that I can't really back up ). So I was wondering if anyone else could confirm this, or at least relate their experiences on the subject.

[Martin]

vBulletin works wth mod_gzip to compress the pages before they are sent to the browser, so his bandwidth use will be considerably less for the text portions of his board. Prior to mod_gzip my vB was using about 3 Gb/day, after implementation it dropped to about 0.75 Gb.

[The Prohacker]

Originally posted by Martin
vBulletin works wth mod_gzip to compress the pages before they are sent to the browser, so his bandwidth use will be considerably less for the text portions of his board. Prior to mod_gzip my vB was using about 3 Gb/day, after implementation it dropped to about 0.75 Gb.

Actually, the admin cp function uses the php zlib libary..... mod_gzip will compress the output of apache no matter if its PHP or Perl, well considering its setup to compress those things....

[Nupraptor]

I know that the mod_gzip does seem to help considerably with this (although I could never figure out how to implement it on my own board @_@), but I was curious if vB uses less BW than UBB. I believe I read somewhere that it handles things a little better (thats the technical explanation, of course ), and thus uses less to do the same amount of work.

[Steve_S]

Hi,

I just posted this on my own Board but it also belongs here:

vB is wriiten by folks who actually understand and have first hand experience in running LARGE boards and the bandwidth implications of same. The same can NOT be said for other scripts

Bandwidth consumption may be reduced using the following:

1. Turn off avatars
2. Guests can not search
3. Use mod_gzip or vB supports PHP 4.0.1 or greater with the ZLIB library. Reduction is about 20%
4. Simultaneous sessions limit
5. NIX Load Limit

BTW, medium to large Boards belong on their own dedicated server and YES, all factors being equal, vB uses less bandwidth

HTH

[Nupraptor]

Thanks for the response. I hadn't even thought about turning off avatars: It would be unconscionable at my own board, but the people who visit the UBB in question are used to not having avatars.

I'm sure a dedicated server is, of course, the best solution. However, my pockets aren't quite that deep.

As it stands, I pay $100/year for the hosting of my board. I'm looking to spend about the same for this board.

[JamesUS]

Originally posted by Nupraptor
Thanks for the response. I hadn't even thought about turning off avatars: It would be unconscionable at my own board, but the people who visit the UBB in question are used to not having avatars.

I'm sure a dedicated server is, of course, the best solution. However, my pockets aren't quite that deep.

As it stands, I pay $100/year for the hosting of my board. I'm looking to spend about the same for this board.

Dedicated servers are now going for $99/month from RackShack.net - I don't know if your board is up to the level of requiring one yet, but if you're going to change hosts anyway it wouldn't be a bad idea to get one.

Edit: Just realised you said $100/year, not $100/month. You may as well ignore this post then

[Nupraptor]

Yeah. My personal board seems to be doing just fine on a shared server, but the new one might require a dedicated server.