Bandwidth problems
 

I'm having bandwidth problems on my site, I have 16GB of bandwidth but I need much more for my site considering my members used it up in about 12 days. Anyone know of a good host?

I reccomend ViperHost.com :) - I personally own and run ViperHost. If you need to speak with me about hosting, feel free to contact me.

Regards,


- SaintDog

16 gb's in 12 days?!?! My god, you are the man. :)

I would go along with Viperhost.com. I am going to soon get hosting there once I get some money ;) I mean, just take a look at his/there services!

I'm extremely interested in Viperhost.com I just want to be able to get peoples honest opinions that are already hosted there. Not that I don't trust SaintDog, I just have to hear for myself.

You can talk to Ben Johnson on here or over at FeXBoards.com because he has a great site with a lot of graphics and stuff so I am pretty sure he knows about the bandwidth and all of ViperHost just as well as SaintDog ;)

What the hell are you hosting that could eat up 16GB in 12 days? :confused:

:D lol mashby, he is probably hosting...tons of "How-To: Eat your vegetables!"

Ok, not that funny but oh well.

heh, depends, I moved a forum to a seperate server because of the amount of bandwidth it was using. At one point, over 100 gigs a month, 2.5 million page views.
Since then though i split the forums, and took over the dev side (we do computer pinball games and translations of the old flipperless pins from the 1920's and on)
There are ways to save bandwidth you know, with just simple settings in your admin panel. VB.com has a thread on that very subject somewhere, with a lot of great tips. Would search for the link, but they seem to be down

Going by what you said, you need a plan with at least 50GB per month bandwidth (while this is over what you will probably actually use, it leaves for a little expansion).

If you are thinking you are going to need well over that any time soon, I would suggest persuing a dedicated server (contact me for details, I will see what we could work out :)).

2.5 million hits? My website is nearly there and we've only used 7.4 gigs. Massive size forum you got there.

k33nny,

Shiva said page views, not hits. Those are two different things. :)

Slight mistake on my behalf.

Yeap. :)

People get confused by that. I've forgotten how many server hits I racked up in a month, it was a lot...
That's how many times the server was requested to display a file image etc.
As to saving bandwidth, the one thing I did find that saved the most bandwidth was displaying file attachments as a link to a pop up window, as opposed to it automatically displaying in the posts. Most people are only interested in seeing a image once anyway. This board does that, and when I did that, my bandwidth use dropped big time.
You can also compress your code as well. A HTML compression, removing the unused spaces etc can save about 10 to 15% everytime a page is loaded in, though you have to be careful you don't break the code somewhere. There's some good programs for that, HTML shrinker comes to mind. Most people never compress their code, but if you get a lot of people browsing your boards, it does add up.
Also, check your image sizes, and also see if your members are caching your site as well. People who don't have caching set in their Tools/Internet Options/ Temp internet files/Settings may be reloading your page and calling your server with a page refresh with every page they browse. That translates to a lot of server hits, as your server is reloading in everything fresh. Most people have it on the default setting, but I do sometimes have it set to reload a site fresh when I check a new design, and some people set it if they browse a forum/site a lot, or just don't know what the settings actually do.
Just post to your members, and ask them to check their settings, most will be happy to check if it's causing you bandwidth problems.

Please contact me at tim[at]paradise-designs.net I'm sure I can work out a great deal for you :).