Hosting

[SF Band dad]

The issues:
1) Hosting this forum on Forumatic.com is free and easy now, but could become expensive in the fall when our "Pageview count" gets high. Considering the content we are planning, our pageview count will get high.
2) Forumatic is using a custom version of phpBB software that is not compatible with the open-source phpBB 3.0 software that is in common use everywhere else. This makes exporting the Forum to another host complicated.

The worst case scenario would be that we have to start-over from scratch. I don't see that happening, I would think we could at least export all membership information (minus passwords) to a new forum and maybe lose the posts & history. The best case scenario is that we move to a new host seamlessly, nothing is lost, people are redirected to the forum automatically and we lose all of the restrictions we currently have on Forumatic's free service plan. (No attachments, live chat, greater forum customization and software mods and plug-ins.)

Some good news:
I spoke to my stepson about the forum and our issues. He is a professional computer geek (BS Computer Science - Francis Marion University) As luck would have it, earlier this month he decided to get some webspace so he could setup a personal page with a blog, family picture album, some file sharing, ect. He did a free trial with GoDaddy.com but ran into many technical issues getting his applications installed and running there. After 5 days he bailed on GoDaddy and went with DreamHost.com. They don't support some of his .NET applications which he's kinda' bummed about but everything else is working very well. They are more expensive than GoDaddy but it works, he purchased a two year contract with unlimited storage for $198.

I am now "negotiating" with him regarding the migration and hosting of our forum in his cloud space.

[EHSMeanGreen]

Sounds Good, SF!

If and when the need arises, put me down for your first $20 donation.

Hopefully a good % of the guys who have complained about the surveys on the other board will also donate.
If this happens, raising enough money for hosting shouldn't be a problem.


(The page view info that you posted in another thread makes it seem pretty clear that you will need to change hosts come Football season)

[cavaliereagle]

20 here too bro. Just let me know.

[SF Band dad]

I used the term "negotiating" loosely. I don't expect adding a forum to the space he's already got will cost him anything, particularly since he found out they won't let him use it as a cloud back-up of his music and movies. If there is an incremental cost or if it takes a lot of his time to get us up and running, we can probably take care of him with some ad revenue. (Or I can tell him to shut-up, stop whining and suck-it up.)

I think the next steps will be to have him install a vanilla installation of phpBB on his server and see if we can successfully insert a copy of this database into it. If we can, we can then set a date and time to shut down the board on Forumatic and go live at the new host.

I'm thinking I will ask him to register two domain names:
- SCPrepTalk.com for the forum
- SCPrepSports.com for any other content we wish to make available. Pictures, Standings, RF-74s projections, a Scoreboard...all can probably be hosted better outside of the forum, and linked.

[cavaliereagle]

I used the term "negotiating" loosely. I don't expect adding a forum to the space he's already got will cost him anything, particularly since he found out they won't let him use it as a cloud back-up of his music and movies. If there is an incremental cost or if it takes a lot of his time to get us up and running, we can probably take care of him with some ad revenue. (Or I can tell him to shut-up, stop whining and suck-it up.)

I think the next steps will be to have him install a vanilla installation of phpBB on his server and see if we can successfully insert a copy of this database into it. If we can, we can then set a date and time to shut down the board on Forumatic and go live at the new host.

I'm thinking I will ask him to register two domain names:
- SCPrepTalk.com for the forum
- SCPrepSports.com for any other content we wish to make available. Pictures, Standings, RF-74s projections, a Scoreboard...all can probably be hosted better outside of the forum, and linked.

Sounds great!