Forum hosting issues

[MalcolmP]

This thread has been spun out of a discussion regarding photo uploads, I have copied that intro here but would welcome any comments, or observations or suggestions.

Jan 18, 2016 7:36:01 GMT sailbleu said:

....This way you don't burden Malcolms server....

Jan 18, 2016 8:20:19 GMT On y va said:

@trueblue: aahhhh, that is what is behind it!To not burden Malcolm´s server. Now that I did not realise. I thought this whole forum was in some cloud or external server or whatever. Thanks for explaining. 

Hi both

Thanks for your comments, but as this would be major digression from the original thread, I will explain that this is not the whole story:

This forum is hosted by one of the worlds biggest free forum providers, Proboards - so it is relatively safe, and stable. They have a lot of servers and back-ups, it is not hosted in my front room on an old PC...

However it is "free" and like everything else in commerce there is actually no such thing, so that is why Proboards put their own advertising on the forum to get revenue. They also allow a maximum of 200Mb of free storage for files like photos. In the old days this was not too bad when people used to load up 100kb images, but with everyone now having smart phones the images have dramatically increased and often a simple photo will be 5Mb. I spent the past 24 months asking people to be careful in the size of their uploads and also in personally editing and reducing the resolution of lots, but inevitably we came to the exceed the 200Mb limit.

Proboards of course are happy to charge for additional storage space - but not only is it expensive, if the plan was downgraded at any point in the future all those paid for images would be lost - so there is more security in photos being hosted elsewhere - be it Tinypic, imgur, google pics, yogile  etc etc

There are options of course to re-start the forum elsewhere such as on one of many the PhpBB boards, I am very open to suggestions on this, but all I have looked and all seem to have catches and cons. Additionally if a new forum host was used non of the existing jeanneau.proboards threads could be moved to the new platform. The only practical option I can see would be to lock this forum and encourage people to switch all new discussions to the new location.

As adding images actually is very simple - see jeanneau.proboards.com/thread/8029/revised-guidance-photo-uploads-forum

I personally think we are probably better to stay with Proboards, but very happy for people to suggest alternative options that I may not have considered.

[hoppy]

200mb is pretty pathetic for storage these days.

I guess one problem with the current off site hosting of photos is that some may disappear losing valuable information from the threads.

Out of interest, how much does it cost to increase the storage? I could not find that info on proboards

One solution to the photo could be to set up another site where forum members could load up the photos and link to on here. Something like tumblr.com could be good for photos. But then there will be the overhead of managing the users there as people will probably have to request you to add them there and it will need to be done manually.

Maybe it wouldn't hurt to consider restarting the forum with a better hosting site

[MalcolmP]

Hi Hoppy

These are monthly charges - but crucially if the payments stop I suspect all the images above the 200mb would be deleted.

Any suggestions about a "better" hosting site ? - from what I glean there may not be a robust free hosting forum server with unlimited storage for photos - but would love to know of a reliable one if it exists. At the end of the day the robust sites have to make money to stay in business.

[MalcolmP]

Jan 18, 2016 11:47:36 GMT hoppy said:

....One solution to the photo could be to set up another site where forum members could load up the photos and link to on here. Something like tumblr.com could be good for photos. But then there will be the overhead of managing the users there as people will probably have to request you to add them there and it will need to be done manually....

Hi Hoppy again

Good thought that has set me thinking...Yogile could be an option. I already pay the $45 per year fee for hosting all the gallery photos - www.yogile.com/2015   now deleted

and the $45 gives me unlimited storage and most importantly anyone can upload photos there without any registration - I could create a new folder there specifically for forum images - AND Yogile gives a simple full download option to take regular back-ups.

I will see what other comments come forward but I might try that if not

M

[hoppy]

Wow the space costs on the forum are a joke. $73.50 per month for only 10gb. They could buy themselves a 1tb drive every month for that. That sort of pricing should be driving forums away from their hosting. Makes me think that we should move hosting to elsewhere if anyone can come up with a good suggestion

It makes

[vasko]

Jan 18, 2016 20:21:57 GMT hoppy said:

Wow the space costs on the forum are a joke. $73.50 per month for only 10gb. They could buy themselves a 1tb drive every month for that. That sort of pricing should be driving forums away from their hosting. Makes me think that we should move hosting to elsewhere if anyone can come up with a good suggestion

It makes

I host my servers for £63 p.m. per server this includes 4TB traffic and 1U rack space and enough power to run a 12 core machine with 64G and 4TB discs

the problem is not space or computer power or internet it is support and backups etc. for a forum and sustainability - e.g it is not a problem for me for example to give space and internet and web server on some of my company servers , but this is temporary solution as after 2-3 years who knows I may have sold my company, I may mot be interested in boats etc. e.g. we need sustainable service serviced by company who's business is to run and support forums...