What to look for in a VB host?

[abozich]

My current host is no longer going to support hosting VB and is only going to allow Wordpress installs on its platform. So I need to move my VB 4.2.5 to another host. This is a bit overwhelming for me and I'm not sure where to start.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what to look for? This forum I have has a lot of paid subscriptions and reliability is a huge factor for me. I believe the forum gets about 2-3 million page views per year. No plugins or customizations are installed.

I'm currently already running PHP 7.0 on a Linux Server. I believe my version of MYSQL is 5.6.

Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[abozich]

Posted this over in the VB4 forum, but then realized it might be better suited for here.

My current host is no longer going to support hosting VB and is only going to allow Wordpress installs on its platform. So I need to move my VB 4.2.5 to another host. This is a bit overwhelming for me and I'm not sure where to start.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what to look for? This forum I have has a lot of paid subscriptions and reliability is a huge factor for me. I believe the forum gets about 2-3 million page views per year. No plugins or customizations are installed.

I'm currently already running PHP 7.0 on a Linux Server. I believe my version of MYSQL is 5.6.

Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[TJF]

URLJet (now I guess merged with Homepage Universe) has been great for us. We have been with them for 7-8 years. They have excellent customer support and have always taken good care of us. They specialize in hosting vBulletin forums. They will do a lot as far as helping migrate and with upgrades.

[abozich]

URLJet (now I guess merged with Homepage Universe) has been great for us. We have been with them for 7-8 years. They have excellent customer support and have always taken good care of us. They specialize in hosting vBulletin forums. They will do a lot as far as helping migrate and with upgrades.

What versions of VB are you hosting with them? Do you have a link?

[Dave]

Are you looking specifically for a company that hosts vBulletin forums?
You can just get a VPS at a company such as Vultr, Digitalocean or Linode.

[abozich]

Are you looking specifically for a company that hosts vBulletin forums?
You can just get a VPS at a company such as Vultr, Digitalocean or Linode.

Dave, would love to chat offline with you sometime. What's the best way to get in touch?

And yes, just looking to move my vBulletin install, not the Wordpress.

[final kaoss]

You should be looking at getting a vps that has reliable uptime, good support and has been around for at least 8+ years.

Here's a good place to start looking for good vps servers & deals.
https://lowendbox.com/

And also, remember what your ram, disk usage & bandwith usages are before you make the switch so that you can find a host with comparable hardware.

[abozich]

You should be looking at getting a vps that has reliable uptime, good support and has been around for at least 8+ years.

Here's a good place to start looking for good vps servers & deals.
https://lowendbox.com/

And also, remember what your ram, disk usage & bandwith usages are before you make the switch so that you can find a host with comparable hardware.

Is it commonplace for the new host to move the site over or is that something I would need to handle on my own?

[final kaoss]

You should be prepared to move the site on your own. Just make sure you have everything setup and ready on the new host before you point your domain to the new servers ip addresses.

[DCD.RB]

Is it commonplace for the new host to move the site over or is that something I would need to handle on my own?

Some hosts don't mind doing this since:
1. You're a new customer and they want your business.
2. If you're paying for Part or fully "Managed" support, so the service is included anyway.

Do you know if you're going from a specific software to software? Such as CPanel to CPanel, those transitions are the easiest. You or your host, should be able to just run a CPanel backup, then import it to the new one.

But if you're transferring across different platforms, then it's more work since it's not as automated.

[Mattwhf]

Posted this over in the VB4 forum, but then realized it might be better suited for here.

My current host is no longer going to support hosting VB and is only going to allow Wordpress installs on its platform. So I need to move my VB 4.2.5 to another host. This is a bit overwhelming for me and I'm not sure where to start.

It is weird because every hosting should support to run every versions of vBulletin.



Does anyone have any thoughts on what to look for? This forum I have has a lot of paid subscriptions and reliability is a huge factor for me. I believe the forum gets about 2-3 million page views per year. No plugins or customizations are installed.

I'm currently already running PHP 7.0 on a Linux Server. I believe my version of MYSQL is 5.6.

Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

If you have difficulties in choosing a good hosting provider now, I would recommend hosting from his provider

https://forumweb.hosting/marketplace/virtubox-managed-plesk-vps-kvm-nvme-storage-unlimited-traffic.492/
(https://forumweb.hosting/marketplace/virtubox-managed-plesk-vps-kvm-nvme-storage-unlimited-traffic.492/)
The hosting will run on a VPS server, you can use Nginx via Plesk control panel where you can switch between PHP 5x and PHP 7.x just some clicks and of course, it can run all forum platforms such vB 4x, vB 5x, Xenforo 2, Wordpress...etc

Hope that helped.

[abozich]

Some hosts don't mind doing this since:
1. You're a new customer and they want your business.
2. If you're paying for Part or fully "Managed" support, so the service is included anyway.

Do you know if you're going from a specific software to software? Such as CPanel to CPanel, those transitions are the easiest. You or your host, should be able to just run a CPanel backup, then import it to the new one.

But if you're transferring across different platforms, then it's more work since it's not as automated.

My current host doesn't use CPanel. I believe they have their own custom interface. I have some time before I make the move as the current host isn't forcing these changes until December, but would like to get things done sooner rather than later if I can.

[DCD.RB]

I transitioned from a host like that before to CPanel, I simply asked them if they were willing to do the transfer work for me and they agreed to. Mind you, I also asked this during sales inquiry.

Since you have time, it doesn't hurt to ask when you shop around for a new host.

[TheLastSuperman]

I've merged your two threads, normally I would have deleted one of them but you had some helpful replies in both. Please read between the lines (replies) to differentiate the posts ;).

[abozich]

I've merged your two threads, normally I would have deleted one of them but you had some helpful replies in both. Please read between the lines (replies) to differentiate the posts ;).

Thank you. Very helpful!

[Brandon Sheley]

Here are the vbulletin requirements, as long as your host meets these, you should be fine.
https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/main/vb5_system_requirements

[abozich]

Here are the vbulletin requirements, as long as your host meets these, you should be fine.
https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/main/vb5_system_requirements

Thanks for the link, but it won't load for me for some reason.

[Dave]

Loads to me:

Minimum Requirements

vBulletin is a web-based application and as such has a few minimum requirements. To run vBulletin, you need a web hosting provider that includes the following things:
PHP version 5.6.0 or greater
MySQL version 5.5.0 or greater
A pre-registered domain name
1 Gigabyte of hard drive space
Rewrite Engine ? A rewrite engine is needed for vBulletin?s Friendly URL routing to work. Popular rewrite engines include mod_rewrite on Apache and ?URL Rewrite? for IIS 7 or greater.
Most hosting providers have already installed these applications on their servers. With the above requirements meant, the vBulletin software will run on any operating system using any modern web server software.

Recommended Requirements


The following settings and software packages are not required but will make your vBulletin experience more enjoyable. Your hosting provider can tell you whether these are available on your server.
PHP 7.x or greater
MySQL 5.7 or greater.
cURL or OpenSSL support ? Allows secure connections to third-party services like Facebook Connect.
MySQLi support ? MySQLi is a more robust software library to connect to the database that vBulletin uses.
Iconv support ? A library that provides extra language and character set support.
OpCode Cache ? An OpCode Cache like APC or XCache will enhance the performance of your vBulletin software. An OpCode Cache is a caching mechanism that can significantly increase the performance of vBulletin by pre-parsing the PHP files and keeping commonly used data in memory for rapid retrieval.