Free and Paid Memberships? On different servers?

[ColinC]

Hello

I refer to the following vB forum - The HardwareZone Forums, which I'd recently joined as a forum member.

They offer free and paid forum memberships. Free users access the forums through http://forums.hardwarezone.com/index.php and paid users access them through http://forums2.hardwarezone.com/, and apparently (so they claim), "forums2" is on a separate, fast, dedicated server with no simultanous sessions limit, while the free "forums" has a sessions limit to encourage users to sign up for the paid membership.

Now, is this possible? I mean, having "forums" (free) and "forums2" (paid) on separate servers, but displaying the exact same posts? Or is it just 2 subdomains on one server account?

How do I go about doing something like that for my own site? Does HardwareZone.com require 2 vB licenses to do this, or will just one license work? Am interested in setting up a separate free and paid membership system on my site as well...

[scsa20]

they're just using one server, it's imposable to have sub domains on multi-servers unless your running the servers yourself, then that's a different story (but still thinks it's imposable)...plus I think it's bs...I don't know about haveing it run 2 forums if it shows the same post and such, I think that if your running 2 and they use different MySQL database, then you need 2 licenses (right now, on my site, it seems like I have 2, but I'm only using one database, I'm waiting tell people knows that my main site is the board, then I'll just delete the sub and bye bye)......now, if your thinking about haveing people pay, you first need to think of what they are paying for....are they paying for more space for PMs?? are they paying to get access to some hidden forums?? cuz all you need to do is set it up so once the money get confrem that it's sent, it moves that user into a new user group that you made and in that user group have alot more stuff then the others, should be simple enough (or you could have them send you the money and ask for his screen name in a letter with the money so you can move him over to the user group yourself ) but why would you do that for?? I just think it's a cheap why of making money, just plain cheap and unfair for people that doesn't know what they are getting them self into.

[SaintDog]

Actually, this is what you receive:

http://www.hardwarezone.com/member/subscribe.hwz

- SaintDog

[scsa20]

I know, I read that before I posted what I said

[ColinC]

I understand that their parent company is in fact providing web hosting services, so I guess they may be running their own server(s). In that case, is it really possible to have 2 instances of vB installed into 2 subdomains of the same domain name, yet have them on 2 different servers, and (most probably) sharing the same MySQL database? How do I go about doing this?

If this is indeed possible, will I need to purchase 2 vB licences, or will 1 licence be fine, since both are installed onto the same domain name?

Then again, what are the chances that it's really just 2 instances of vB installed into 2 subdomains and on 1 server only?

[scsa20]

did you read my post throughly?? I posted all I could tell you in there