Yet another hosting help thread.

[Club3G]

Greetings!

I run a handful of vbulletin sites. Currently club3g.com is hosted with ASmallOrange and we're having mixed luck with them, but their support has been great and we're ironing it out.

The site in question for this post, however, is http://www.sevenstring.org.
I have just about 80k posts, 1,000 users and average around 20-30 users online at any given time, and about 300 or so posts a day.

My current host, 1and1.com, has been just fine up until now. Unfortunately, the database size limit on their hosting is 100MB, and my database is 92MB right now. The next plan that I have with them that I can upgrade to is a $99/mo dedicated server, which is way overkill for the size of my site. Additionally, they're capping me at 10% CPU use and 10MB of memory, so lately my site is dropping about 20-25 queries a day (lord, how I hate those emails!)

ASmallOrange has temporarily stopped selling shared hosting accounts:

Originally Posted by ASO.com

Due to delays in a recent server order from Sun, we've placed a hold on new shared hosting orders. We do not yet have an ETA for when orders will resume, but please keep an eye on our forums for announcements.

And unfortunately, I need to get my site moved over within the next couple of days. Sevenstring.org is a young site, and still in the "Every post counts" phase of building a web community, so a prune is out of the question.

I've been reading this thread:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=104465

And someone recommended hostgator.com. I'm looking at these packages here:

http://www.hostgator.com/resellers.shtml

And I think the Silver plan for $49.95/mo looks like it will be a decent home for my site for a good amount of time. There is no SQL database size limit, and it's plenty of space and bandwith for sevenstring.org going forward. I don't have many big images/etc posted, it's all just vBulletin, avatars, and attachments.

Hostgator's plan is 25% CPU and 25% memory usage for the cap, which is more than double what I'm spiking to now, and that seems like it will do the job. If I end up going that high consistantly, it'll mean my site's big enough to the point where I do need a dedicated server, and will upgrade then.

So what I'm looking for is a plan that's not quite a dedicated server, but bigger than a standard $20-30/mo hosting plan. Sevenstring.org is at the crossroads so to speak, and in that I'm just a working stiff Admin, I can't really afford to dish out $100/mo for a dedicated that I really won't need for about another year or two.

All that said, does anyone see any glaring reason why the silver plan here:

http://www.hostgator.com/resellers.shtml

wouldn't work for my site? Right now, rough numbers:

- 3 Million page views a month
- 100MB database size
- Under 50 users online at any given time.
- 1000 members
- 80k posts
- Around 300 posts a day.

If someone has a better solution I'm all ears, I've been reading and searching this forum for the last couple of days and haven't really found anyone else in a situation similar to mine with a medium-sized vB site with my ballpark stats.

Any insight/advice/suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks!

- Chris