TexasCHLforum.com

Joes data center

Thats awesome

And the prices seem very competitive
My current server is fully managed which helps me keep my sanity ...

Russell wrote:

92f-fan wrote: A low estimate of the cost to run a site like this is in the $500 to $700 a month range if its done efficiently. With no need for admin intervention or hardware upgrades you might get that down to $300 to $400... Maybe less if the database size and traffic is less than I figured.

Sorry but what? I would love to see how you are coming up with these figures. I've run large forums of this size as well before, and of course run and bankroll texas3006.com and the cost isn't anywhere near that. Knock a 0 off and you get my cost per month. I'm handling about a million hits a month with that increasing as more folks pick up our mobile apps and begin using them. The VM's load is very low and ought to be able to handle 10X that before I have to consider upgrading...

I would expect this forum's traffic to be a lot higher than my site, but you can get some pretty beefy virtual machines and dedicated servers for a lot cheaper than your figure.

Hits mean nothing - if you had a static html page with a thousand graphic elements and it was seen 1,000 times thats a million hits. In that example you had 1000 page views, from some fraction of that many humans. If you had a PHP page like this one with 10 to 20 queries per page, the server load goes up in a non linear fashion. Busy sql likes fast drives, fast drives cost $.

I was quoting dedicated server pricing. A decent dedicated server that can run significant sql queries per hour costs a minimum of $200 a month and Charles has stated that he has help with some of the technical pieces, so I added $100 for that, and to properly manage a site like this you need some paid software along with the open source stuff so add in some license fees here and there.. Many Webhosts charge for backup space so if you offer daily or multiple t8imes per day backups that adds $$. you stated to drop off a zero from my estimate. This site has over a million posts, Id love to see a web account for under $80 that would support that kind of mysql load.

While your site may run happily on a VM or a slice of a server it likely doesn't see hundreds or thousands of updates an hour. A mid size forum often sees that kind of traffic.

My point was about more than just this site but most sites that exist on the internet cost some $$.
And most are run by people or businesses who expect to make $$ to pay for food and lodging. And maybe beer. That $$ often comes from Advertising and Ad blockers impact that. Without ads soon the only sites left will be behind paywalls or enthusiast sites like this one, some of mine and yours that are bankrolled at a loss...
And in my opinion that would be a shame.

Cudos on finding an inexpensive solution for hosting your site.
I see you are running cloudflare - is that the free version ?

Pop ups and pop unders are 1990s technology that should have gone away

while I understand the desire to not see ads
keep in mind the internet and the servers it runs on aint free and the ads you are blocking are paying so you can see the content you are consuming ..
Its a trade off

I run a couple enthusiast forums like this - mine are auto related
One has been declining in ad revenue for years -
If it declines much more Ill just close it - ad blockers are part of the reason

Just be mindful that running adblockers 100% of the time is contributing to the demise of content on the internet
This site runs no ads. It must be privately bankrolled. Not all sites can do that.
A low estimate of the cost to run a site like this is in the $500 to $700 a month range if its done efficiently. With no need for admin intervention or hardware upgrades you might get that down to $300 to $400... Maybe less if the database size and traffic is less than I figured.

Charles - consider running CSF firewall and blocking entire IP ranges by country. And set it to auto block IPs for 15 min after 5 malicious attempts. This is a domestically focused site. So blocking all the "stans" ( Pakistan, Kurdistan etc) and all the known hacker strong holds ( china, russia etc ) over seas will significantly reduce your exposure and server load, while having almost zero impact on Texas gun owners who view the site.