Communitech.net and vBulletin

[SonnetCelestial]

I am wondering if anyone is planning to install vBulletin to Communitech.net If so please tell me afterwards how things go. I have an account with them and I'm wondering if I should change my ubb to vBulletin.

[evoir]

btw What do you think of them?

Communitech. They seem (on paper) like a dreamboat....But I have heard BAD stories about them. BAD tech support....bad bad.

Would love to hear from folks about that!

Sorry I don't have a direct answer...

Evoir

[Edited by evoir on 05-02-2000 at 04:21 PM]

[SonnetCelestial]

Well they're not BAD but as for running a UBB forum..NO...don't even do it. I'm not sure if vBulletin is the same resource wise but if you suck up their cpu then don't think about using their services...

[doron]

I'm a Communitech customer, and the bad stuff you hear is because they are rpone to close sites that break their TOS without much of a warning. Which is not bad, just bad for the person breaking the TOS.

SonnetCelestial - the best thing would be a freeware to check out the board, but seems that will take a bit. Since VB is less resoruce hungry, I think the reaper program won't hit you. I actually emailed the CT people about looing at vb, since they need a UBB replacement.

[SonnetCelestial]

Well I think with ANY big board the reaper would hit you if you don't manage the posts and the size of it. I'm not sure how important the database sizes are in vBulletin however I know in UBB pruning threads was essential to making it a healthy program.

I would like to say that VB is the one for me but unless I can test out either a beta or something else and see how the server handles it, I don't want to second guess on it.

[Alwaysmefirst]

Originally posted by SonnetCelestial
Well they're not BAD but as for running a UBB forum..NO...don't even do it. I'm not sure if vBulletin is the same resource wise but if you suck up their cpu then don't think about using their services...

SonnetCelestial: how big was your UBB there? I had up to 260 Mb used by UBB and it worked fine. I just pruned it lately and now it has around 35 Mb.

Olly

[WebStyles]

Well I think with ANY big board the reaper would hit you if you don't manage the posts and the size of it. I'm not sure how important the database sizes are in vBulletin however I know in UBB pruning threads was essential to making it a healthy program.

You're mistaken there. Pruning the UBB was neccessary because it was not written very well. The reaper would get you because of the time it took to execute all the code to muddle through it's millions of text files. VBulletin uses a mySQL database, and stores information in a more optimized fashion (ie: not duplicated in ten different places). Also, I find it worth mentioning that our UBB took upwards of 250 MB of space up, and after we switched to VBulletin, the same data takes up about 40 MB.

Wandrer has done some quite extensive performance tests on UBB and VBulletin. Once UBB hit about 75,000 threads, posting times skyrocketed (which is when the reaper would catch you)... VBulletin stayed steady throughout all the tests.

[Edited by WebStyles on 05-16-2000 at 04:13 PM]

[doron]

the reason i used to get hit was during extensive searches on UBB - mysql should be much less resource-hungry on searching

[Alwaysmefirst]

Originally posted by doron
the reason i used to get hit was during extensive searches on UBB - mysql should be much less resource-hungry on searching

mysql should be much less resource hungry on searching but is it the case with Vbulletin?
I disabled the search for all forums on my ubb to prevent the problem you had...it is only possible to do a search through one forum.

Olly

[werehere]

Yes the search on my forum is very fast through all forums. In fact it is faster than searching any one forum on just about any UBB I can find, but on my vbulletin it is searching through all forums

[doron]

having one central mysql database with a 'post' table should be much faster than a flat text database search.

[Alwaysmefirst]

Originally posted by doron
having one central mysql database with a 'post' table should be much faster than a flat text database search.

doron: do you have Vbulletin installed on a CT account? I use CT and FQ as web hosts and plan to buy and install Vbulletin this weekend. I would like to know how it works at CT.

Olly

[DonV]

WARNING! WARNING!!

The last time I checked, Communitech did *NOT* compile PHP into their Apache daemons - it runs as a CGI, like Perl. vB may be just as much or possibly even *MORE* of a load on the server than a UBB (!!!!!!), depending how heavily loaded the server already is.... MySQL won't help you if the reaper decides to make you its primary target....

[WebStyles]

Not sticking up for Communitech or anything... But on *their* server at least, they have PHP compiled into Apache (and mod_perl and AuthMySQL!). I also checked a friend of mine's domain who is hosted by Communitech, and he's got PHP compiled into Apache as well.

[DonV]

My information might be out of date. I stopped reading their support forums a few months ago.

Then again... Are you *SURE* they're running mod_perl? That's an incredibly memory consuming process. No host in its right mind would run mod_perl on anything but a dedicated server. Then again, I've never known CT to be in their right mind.