Forum that won't overload server?

[DomainDog]

I would very much appreciate some input on the following:

I plan to install a user forum. But from posts I've read here, forums in general can become resource hogs and get an account suspended.

How can I:

1) install one (like phpbb) which will NOT become a resouce hog?
2) how does one monitor this to be certain it does not happen?
3) Is there a specific number of members that signal an overload?

Thanks for any ideas or input you may have! :-)

[DomainDog]

Does anyone have any suggestions on this?

[bhills]

punbb forum software is one of the least resource hogs of all the forums. It's designed that way. I've been playing with it and it will likely be the one I use. phpbb is generally considered quite resource demanding.

[DomainDog]

Thanks bhills

Any idea about vBulletin? Or Invision?

I see three alternatives- 1) Run it on my current account, 2) get another seperate Dathorn account only for this, or 3) go elsewhere with a VPS or dedicated. Options 2 and 3 could be expensive.

[AndrewT]

Don't use phpBB.

I would recommend vBulletin, but I'm kind of biased...

[ChrisTech]

I like Invision

Still running an older version of it.

Forums have fairly good stats

Our members have made a total of 22017 posts
We have 3185 registered members
The newest member is DocXxX
Most users ever online was 39 on Nov 21 2004, 12:38 AM

[ Script Execution time: 0.0600 ] [ 9 queries used ] [ GZIP Enabled ]

**Also biased

[-Oz-]

simple machines forum http://www.simplemachines.org/

[bhills]

It kind of depends on what you want. I've been researching some of the forums a bit because I need to make a decision myself. My opinion from looking around - I'll go with either punbb or vbulletin.

punbb - small, lightweight, very fast and taxes the server less than other forums. By far the smallest use of server resources. But, it doesn't have the bells and whistles on it, if that's what you want. It's open source and the people doing most of the work on it seem like they will be around for awhile.

vbulletin - this is kind of the standard by which all others are compared. Stable, will do about anything you want a board to do. In five years you know the software and developers will still be around. You have to pay for it (not a big deal if you have a major income producing site, but it probably is if you have a hobby site). It is, however, more of a resource hog than punbb.

SimpleMachines - seems to be an up-and-coming board. More similar to vbulletin than to punbb.

phpBB - the most popular free forum software. A big resource hog. And all you have to do is look at the security problems it's had in the last three months to run away from this.

[Jonathan]

I personally love IPB, but vB is tons easier to skin MHO.
If it had to be paid, I'd take the life-time license from vB and run with it,
IPB is really good- but not good enough to cost the outragous $$$ they want.

Free I would go with punBB, MiniBB, SMF, or MyBB.

[DomainDog]

Guys, this is a lot of very helpful info.

Does anyone know- how can you tell if a bbs is starting to run away with server resources BEFORE getting the dreaded "ACCOUNT SUSPENDED message??

Is it...... number of members online at once? Or is the software itself eating up the resources? How are you supposed to know?

Sorry for my ignorance, but I've never installed/run a forum before! :-)

[sdjl]

It's very hard to tell without being able to monitor system resources yourself.
Essentially you have to look out for spikes in traffic. Lots of users starting to use the board, lots of posts made per day, etc etc.

There's a lot of angles you have to take into account, including which piece of forum software you use.
I think the best thing you can do is go with suggestions for server friendly forums then monitor it's use on your website. If you feel that things are starting to hot up a little, you could maybe send off a support request asking if your forum is causing upset or not.

David

[DomainDog]

I wonder what Andrew would say..........??

[AndrewT]

I wonder what Andrew would say..........??

sdjl has pretty much covered it...