Web hosting for big torrent site

[Wolf]

I am made up my mind on using vbulletin as a forum software for a major mainstream band tracker only.

As for web hosting I need some help. I am currently using http://www.webhostinghub as my webhost for my personal portfolio site. Do you think their service (what they offer, unlimited everything) is good and fast enough for a big site with lots of activity? Or do I have to go to one of those expensive hosts with a business hosting plan (something like $40 a month) to get what I want.

Any recommendations? Maybe some particular webhosts/packages?

[U2Lynne]

You really haven't posted anything that would help anyone help you. How many users do you anticipate to have on the tracker at a time? How about how many users on the forums? We usually have around 9K-12K on our tracker and about 200-300 on the forum and we run on two servers and pay $238 a month. We are not a big expensive host. If we had moved to, for instance, The Planet, they would have changed us about $400-$500 a month. We also have Unmanaged servers which cost less.

Also, there is no such thing as Unlimited everything. Beware if someone tells you that.

[Wolf]

I would say about 1000 on the forums and 500 on the tracker

[U2Lynne]

You think you will have 1000 users on the forum at a time?

500 on a tracker isn't much. Have you gone and tried to find a similar site running vbulletin and a tracker and asked about their hosting? There are several sites successfully running vb and a tracker.

[Wolf]

oh no not 1000 at a time, I meant like 1000 total registered users. Maybe 25-50 online a time, and possibly just 500 on the tracker in the beginning, and more once it gets bigger. About bandwidth, is 3000GB/month enough? Does that mean that people can only download/upload a total of 3000GB of torrents per month?

I did some research, what do you think is better. Dedicated server or VPS?

thanks for all the help u2lynne

[TimJ]

I run a fishing forum and the hosting company we use is URLJet. (http://www.urljet.com/performance-vps-hosting.php) We're a small forum
without a tracker, so we get away with the shared hosting packages they offer.

They offer Shared/VPS and variety of dedicated servers (fully managed, free storage and support)

Free migrations, upgrades, installation, 99% guaranteed uptime, hourly backups, outstanding Tech
Support, specialize in vB service, everything tuned on the servers to individual forums and how they
operate

If you give them a call, tell them what you anticipate your requirements will be,
given our dealings with them over past couple of years, I would guarantee that they
would be straight up in telling you exactly what you need to operate, without trying
to sell you extra stuff.

They aren't cheap, but they are far and away the best group we've dealt with over
the past 6 or 7 years

[U2Lynne]

Make sure your host knows you are going to run a tracker! There was a another vbulletin/tracker site that was suddenly shut down because the host suddenly realized they had a tracker and they didn't allow trackers.

As for traffic... we've had a bit over 18GB of traffic in the last 10 hours with about 10K users on the tracker. You can do the math there.

We were lucky with our host. As we grew, they just moved us up to better servers. We started out shared and went to dedicated after 4 months. Then a couple years later, we switched to a two server configuration which we are still currently using.

[dcbullet]

How much of the 18GB is from the tracker vs. picture attachments? Do you know that detail?

[rspencer]

That would be interesting to know. Although there's no way 10 people in the Lounge are taking up that much of the traffic.

[U2Lynne]

Nope, I don't know that, Bill. But, that 18GB number seems larger today than normal - probably some backup data that was transferred this morning (may have done some attachments). But normally, I seem to recall a number of less than 500GB transfer a month (I think we are allowed 1000GB or 2000GB - well above what we need).

[Wolf]

thanks for the suggestions, im looking more at a canadian provider since they don't have DMCA in canada and wouldn't worry about any copyright issues, not that we would be hosting any illegal content in the first place, just torrents from a taper friendly band

[dcbullet]

sure.....

[U2Lynne]

A DMCA will still get to you, the owner, even if you have a Canadian host. They will find you AND your host.

I have gotten quite a few DMCAs due to content on this site (which we do our best to keep legal!). Not fun. But, you respond right away and do what they ask of you and you be polite and you won't have any problems. Don't do what they ask and I can't say what will happen.... nor can I say what would happen to your blood pressure if you don't!