Windows Only?

[Treehouse]

Well, I am going to get an apple laptop this Christmas and I was looking at apple's Mac OS X Server and thought of it for hosting the forums. It supports wikis so I'm guessing it supports forum hosting as well. Does anyone know if I can use vBulletin on Macs?

[SNN]

vBulletin's only requirements are PHP 4.4.9+ and MySQL 4.0.19+ (or something of the related)

All the best,
Guru

[peterska2]

Yes, you can run vBulletin on a Mac Server as long as it meets the minimum system requirements (PHP 4.3.3 or greater and MySQL 4.0.16 or greater).

[Treehouse]

Does anyone know how many vBulletins can be on a Mac OS Server like the one I want? I know it supports wikis and mysql 5 databases, but I don't know how many they support.

Can anyone help me?

[cheat-master30]

How many databases can you have? That's how many vBulletin installations, with the right amount of licenses can be had (or pretty much as much as the server can support).

[Treehouse]

I don't know how much space they offer. Does anyone know?

[l SKN l CHRIS]

I'm kind of confused on what your asking.

[Treehouse]

I'm kind of confused on what your asking.

I am buying the Mac Lepard OS X Server (reseller, not the official one from their site) and I know it works with vB and Wiki but I want to know how much space it will have and how many vB's I can host on it at once without buying another Server....

I hope someone knows....

[l SKN l CHRIS]

Well how many vBulletin installations you can put on it is basically how big your harddrive is, the speed of the processor, and the amount of RAM you have. The installations will use processor and RAM resources depending on the traffic they get. This really all depends on the Mac your putting OS X Server on and the traffic of the vBulletin forums.

What I would like to know though is why are you buying OS X server edition? Is this for a at home server? Home servers don't usually function very well because they lack the fast uplink speeds that commercial datacenters have. I highly reccomend you just by yourself a hosting account.

[Treehouse]

Well how many vBulletin installations you can put on it is basically how big your harddrive is, the speed of the processor, and the amount of RAM you have. The installations will use processor and RAM resources depending on the traffic they get. This really all depends on the Mac your putting OS X Server on and the traffic of the vBulletin forums.

What I would like to know though is why are you buying OS X server edition? Is this for a at home server? Home servers don't usually function very well because they lack the fast uplink speeds that commercial datacenters have. I highly reccomend you just by yourself a hosting account.

I just think it's better because I won't have to wonder "why are my sites down?" with another company when I could just fix it. I also would know that I have the control over the server and not any other company would. Also, it would be much cheaper in the long run because (I will be paying from another place for the server, not the official site) it will cost under $500.00 USD and other hosting packages shared or dedicated would rack up quite a bit of money where I can just buy one thing, install it easily, and then be on my way....

[Wayne Luke]

With vBulletin there are 2 different types of disk space usage:

(1) Web space - For the PHP scripts and images of vBulletin.

(2) MySQL database space - Which is separate from Web space, and you need to make sure your host gives you enough space in that department.

When you use vBulletin, you have to take into account both web space and MySQL database space. vBulletin 3.x consists of:

1. PHP scripts and image files in the zip file you download = 12mb in size once zip file is extracted and uploaded to your Web site account.

2. MySQL database space which holds the actual vBulletin data:
- On initial install the MySQL database space used is approximately 10mb, and that is mainly the database table structure and initial data in the database tables.
- Once you start posting, adding threads, members, polls, private messages, attachments, avatars etc, your MySQL database space is the one that grows and should be your main concern - MySQL disk space.

How much MySQL disk space is used is highly dependent on the type of forum you run, and factors such as:
- Your average allowed attachment and avatar size
- How many attachments and avatars you have stored in your vBulletin database
- How many private messages you have stored in your vBulletin database from members
- How many posts and threads you have and the size and variables you have set for your searchindex
- How many members you have
- How many forums you have
And so on and so forth.

For example, one installation we have seen had 5,800+ members, 40,000 threads, 662,000 posts, 70,000 private messages and 8,000 attachments. The total MySQL database size was 940MB - which comes to around 140MB per 100,000 posts. Please note that it does vary from forum to forum, so your mileage may vary.

[RichM]

If you're running your own dedicated machine, disk space shouldn't be a problem unless you plan on having an absolutely massive forum.

Also, running a dedicated server is typically a lot more hassle than hosting your site on a shared host. This is because you're the person responsible for fixing it when it goes down. And sometimes it's best to leave that job to others, especially when you don't know what the problem is. And keeping your system up to date and hardened for security purposes is also an added chore for you to worry about. So I don't think I agree with you on that one.