i plan to start a social network site using DZOIC script. what are the minimum server requirements for hosting a social network website? would a VPS work? I am worried about server load and other stuff? what type of hosting i should be after. I am newbie to hosting such high bandwidth sites and any expert could advice me, that would be of great help!
you sure will have months of low web visitors and probably just stick with a shared account. when hits increase, go dedicated
Go with a expensive, high-spec VPS should do the trick, however for a limited time, if budget isin't limited go with a dedicated server. - Meti
More important than the actual hardware is the architecture. If your architecture isn't scalable then it won't matter how many boxes you buy, it won't be enough. Once you have a scalable architecture, you can start with a single 486 connected up to your DSL line and as your needs grow you can upgrade whichever bit of your architecture needs upgrading. Now all I need to do is explain what I mean by "scalable architecture". When you start, as I said, a single 486 on your DSL connection will be enough because you will only have one user. As you get more users, you will find that one part of this system becomes a bottleneck. Maybe it will be bandwidth, maybe it will be CPU, maybe it will be disk space, maybe it will be something else. At first you will want to buy a better computer with a better CPU and more disk space and more RAM but this approach will only work for a short while. Eventually, you will need to buy a second machine and split the load across them and this is where the scalable architecture comes in. Can you just buy a second machine and set it up the same way or will your application only work on a single machine ? Web servers are usually fairly easy to scale this way but database servers don't work the same as web servers. You can make a read-only copy of a database fairly easily but if you want your site to be interactive then you will need to have lots of writes going to your database as well. Eventually, you will reach a point where your main database server can't keep up and at that point you will need a plan for splitting the load between two main database servers. If you have a plan for exactly how each component of your entire system can be scaled across several machines then you are ready to start building traffic to your site. It's not really possible to predict exactly which component is going to be the first one to need to be upgraded in your specific site but if you have a plan for scaling then it's just a matter of buying a new machine and plugging it in. Making predictions before you have any data is a recipe for wasting money on something you don't need.
I'd go with vps hosting so you you have room to grow. Here's a list of good value vps hosting providers Andrew
Why are you considering using this script? My reading is that there are plans for a new version eventually. Right now it doesn't handle flash like others do and if you're just looking for a video solution, there are other items that may be of interest to you. It's an excellent piece of software, as is, but it depends upon the application you want to use it for.