Shared with 50+ users online?

[vivebeauty]

Is it true that most webhosts will kick you off if you have a vbulletin forum which is on a shared server that has around 50 or more members online at the same time?

I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to webhosting....

My forum that I'm about to set up would have around 30-40 online at one time, if it grows past 50, what do I do? Upgrade to a VPS? Is this hard to do, or would the host automatically set everything up for me?

I was planning on going with A Small Orange on their medium shared plan, but if I go over 50+ users online I won't be able to upgrade because they arn't offering any VPS's at the moment. Grrr..I don't know if I should go with them anymore now, I'm upset because they have such a great reputation and I felt really secure by choosing them.

[Zachery]

50 active registered users online is about the limit of most shared hosting. However if you are expecting massive growth you should look into a VPS/Dedicated solution.

If you don't see your site growing past 40~ users online anytime soon I wouldn't worry.

If its 10 members most of the time and 30 spiders, then its a differnt issue.

While guests take up resources, generally not nearly the same ammount.

[encryption]

^^^ what he said

[cyburbia]

If its 10 members most of the time and 30 spiders, then its a differnt issue.

The spiders still have an impact on CPU cycles though, don't they? I would assume the impact of a spider accessing PHP/MySQL based dynamically-generated pages is the same as a human using a regular Web browser. There might be less bandwidth if images aren't being served to the spiders, but clock cycles will still be the same.

I'm in the process of moving from shared hosting to a VPS, because my message board has daily peaks at about 100 users/guests - that's not counting the rest of the site. Before I modifed robots.txt to keep the very aggressive Yahoo Slurp spiders from hammering my site, I had peaks of 400 to 500 users/guests. I had to throttle back Slurp spiders to one every five minutes; before, they hit my site every five to ten seconds.

You mentioned ASO, where my site is hosted now. It's a great host with fantastic service, but they're giving me the boot because of my site's impact on the server. They're vBulletin-friendly, but I'd probably look elsewhere if your site regularly has more than 60 or 70 users/guests. That, or wait a month or two for VPS to be offered again.

[express]

50 users online with a shared host is not a issue unless the server has 500 sites on it.

[lifanovsky]

Anyway, if the forum grows, even the most democratic shared hosting provider will kick you. I have around 100-150, and my hoster says I have to get a dedicated, not even VPS.

The only problem here is - where to find money for that. And, second, how to learn to administer dedicated server.

I plan to earn some money thru advertising, but it is going to take a llot of efforts from me. And since its not my only job...

Right now I am totally frightened. Cos I have almost no idea how to keep my forum alive all by myself.

[Zachery]

The spiders still have an impact on CPU cycles though, don't they? I would assume the impact of a spider accessing PHP/MySQL based dynamically-generated pages is the same as a human using a regular Web browser. There might be less bandwidth if images aren't being served to the spiders, but clock cycles will still be the same.

I'm in the process of moving from shared hosting to a VPS, because my message board has daily peaks at about 100 users/guests - that's not counting the rest of the site. Before I modifed robots.txt to keep the very aggressive Yahoo Slurp spiders from hammering my site, I had peaks of 400 to 500 users/guests. I had to throttle back Slurp spiders to one every five minutes; before, they hit my site every five to ten seconds.

You mentioned ASO, where my site is hosted now. It's a great host with fantastic service, but they're giving me the boot because of my site's impact on the server. They're vBulletin-friendly, but I'd probably look elsewhere if your site regularly has more than 60 or 70 users/guests. That, or wait a month or two for VPS to be offered again.

Yes but guest permissions are generally easier and they never seem to make the same ammount of impact on the system. I've seen the servers i admin holding 1500 users online, 1000+ guests and 500 users and the load was fine.

[Noctavia]

Sorry to jump into this thread, but I cyburbia's response and wondered how do I tell how many spiders are on my site? When I was on an SMF forum I sat around 50 users, I moved to vBulletin and jumped to over 100... I'm now wondering how many of those are spiders

How do I detect how many of my "guests" are spiders? And how do I restrict how often they can crawl my site?

[rh2004]

You can block spiders in a htaccess file

[Noctavia]

Thankyou rh2004. I'd like to at least find out how many are hitting my site and how often before I go completely blocking them. That's why I asked:

How do I detect how many of my "guests" are spiders? And how do I restrict how often they can crawl my site?

[Week]

Before I went to a dedicated solution and when I ran another website (2004) We were running on a dreamhost account (shared) and usually had roughly 100-140 users online at any given time.

I never received an e-mail from dreamhost about this but did notice a slowdown.

[SpaceStar]

Okay I have now understood why resources are eaten up at my VPS when there are more tha 50 users online - som times it run fine but i've seen as soon the figure raises to 70-100 users online it begins to hang and error are seen...

I am moving to a dedicated solution sooner...

[SaintDog]

50 users online with a shared host is not a issue unless the server has 500 sites on it.

It would more so depend on what those 50 active users are doing. On a standard, non-modified vBulletin installation, possibly so. Given, most communities are modified so 50 users passing back and forth bewteen the chat-board, forum and an arcade may react a bit differently and will cause additional stress to the server.

Given the server is actually powerful enough, the host shouldn't have an issue dealing with a spike, though if the spike is not subsiding, it's really time to look for a new solution, specifically VPS or Dedicated.

[Colin F]

Actually, the largest part of our customers don't modify their forum at all...

[express]

It would more so depend on what those 50 active users are doing. On a standard, non-modified vBulletin installation, possibly so. Given, most communities are modified so 50 users passing back and forth bewteen the chat-board, forum and an arcade may react a bit differently and will cause additional stress to the server.

Given the server is actually powerful enough, the host shouldn't have an issue dealing with a spike, though if the spike is not subsiding, it's really time to look for a new solution, specifically VPS or Dedicated.

Why this is true, it could be true with any software not just vbulletin, we host numerous vbulletins. In the last 2 years we have only had to move 3 vbulletins that were around 50 users online for load issues, of those 3 one had a massive gallery tied in, one other had a huge chat room, and the other had issues with getting hit repeatly with spiders. 95% of users with a average of 50 online users pose no threat on a shared server if it is configured properly. At least this is what we have saw on our servers.