I have never been a "hosting" guy and I don't know much about it. I generally have someone from my staff take care of it but I am looking to learn myself now. My question is I am starting a forum it's on a shared hosting plan now. I plan to grow the forum fairly quickly and want to know what type of hosing and specs I should look for. I know I need msql, php and hosted in the U.S but besides that I am pretty clueless. I have always used Cpanel but don't know if I would really need it for a forum. Any help is appreciated.
Well I suggest you keep with cPanel as it's most easy to use. Also depending on the forum, I suggest you find a host with Fantastico as it can install many forums with 1 click Good luck
You could stay on the shared hostig plan, but once you see your site takes a little longer to load, or it uses a higher cpu %, it means you should be looking for a VPS or Dedicated Server
I agree cpanel is the easiest, to use.. I would choose a host that have flexible plans and that would allow you to upgrade easily as you grow. V Bulletin is a good forum script and most host support that.
I do agree cPanel is the easiest to use, but Direct Admin is just as nice. If you do not want to spend much money on a forum script you can use MyBB which is free. It's pretty much the same as vBulletin.
Thanks for the feedback - so the general consensus would be to stick with the shared until I blow it out and then move to VPS w/cpanel? Any other specific specs I should look for besides that?
Negative. Most of us would be able to help you if you needed hosting or such. Oh, there is one tip: Cheap isn't the best; Expensive doesn't assure quality either. Look for a balance in between to get good service.
Well I would not stick with the shared until you blow it up. LOL (your host will stop you before that) but depending on your host.. you want to make sure that you are getting good fast service to your site, you don,t want to end up getting suspend or shut down by your provider. This will all depend on what server specs your forum is on, how many other sites are on the server, and how well maintained the server is. I have clients hosting forums on my server that get huge traffic and it don't affect my server at all, I don't even know that they are there. LOL But I host them on a 8 core 6gb ram server, with the msql tweaked to handle the processes, so it will all depend on the server, the host and how the server is set up.. Most forums do not need a dedicated server,
A shared hosting plan is fine. As IwhiC said it all depends on what kind of server your hosted on and how many people are on it. What is your budget? - Prilep