should i get a dedicated server?

right now while my website is being created i will be running it off shared hosting.

Do you think it is wise to get a dedicated server even though I get 250 gb of bandwidth/ month?

how much bandwidth/space do the largest forums use up?

 

well i think if you hav good busy forum you would need more traffic.. but to get started 250Gb of transfer is fyne..
if you can you can go with dreamhost they give 1Tb bandwith and 20Gb of space
there's some coupon which gives you $97 for one time and so for the first year you have to pay only $5..
if you need one just post it in right category and there'll be lots of guys to help you out with that

 

Bandwidth does not matter much, its how much resources you use. For one of my forums I am using up less than 100GB/month, but because of the MySQL hammering I have it setup on its own server.

 

I had to move my forum off Dreamhost a while back for excessive CPU usage. It's not the DB, it's the script.(my db is still on dreamhost)

If I were you I would go shared until I needed to get something dedicated, as most forums fail.

 

bschneider said it best, there's no need to pay the extra for a dedicated server, especially while you're just getting started and don't need the resources. If you, like me, just really WANT to have an excuse for a dedicated box, do what I did, and consider it a reward for yourself whenever it's making enough revenue to pay for the server itself.

 

As bschneider5 said, go with shared until you see that you need more. Most forums start slow, and as has been indicated you'll probably outgrow your system resources long before you'll outgrow your bandwidth unless you're allowing file sharing/attachments and have a media based theme.

HTH,
Scott