[500 Errors] Any big vB boards or php experts?
 

Just wondering.....since im new to it and all. :) This is a letter I got in reply to a letter I sent to the host. I was hoping vB would be the answer but is it now time for dedicated hosting? :scratch:
~Mike

Are they saying that you are using to much bandwidth?
or that your mysql databases are to large or what?

According to what that REALLY LIMITED email says,
your maxing out the server with how much data is
being pulled at one time, maybe not in general, but like
spikes of usage...

Similar to the digg effect...

There are some things you can do to fix that, but iv never worked on
vB or php or databases as large as this site has to be...

I do have really good technical skills and ALOT of knowledge...
so feel free to ask me anything if i can help...

Thanks for the awesome site...

Email them and ask them for more details. It seems they are saying that you need to change something in order to allow THEIR app to function properly.

Dedicated may be the way to go. It sounds like the site is reaching the memory limit on the shared server, each user (account) is allowed so much memory and with tons of users on here all the time I'm sure it's getting up there. At some point (as with most forums) there's only so much a shared server can offer and at some point we are going to have to get a dedicated server if we keep on growing like this.

Correct...

Well, I'm a hosting provider in real life (already talked to Mike about this a few months ago and determined that we weren't a good fit for him) but I can dissect what they told you a bit more.

They run a program called "procwatch" on their shared servers. What it does (in English) is monitor the resource usage of each site on the server (CPU, memory, I/O, etc.) and assign limits to each site based on those numbers. The reason is so one site doesn't run rampant and take the whole machine down. As an example, assume that there were 5 sites on the machine... they could set it so that each site only can use 20% of the total memory, etc.

This is an incredibly dumbed down explanation, so don't put any stock in the numbers, but you get the idea.

Mike, from the bandwidth numbers you gave me a few months back, I think it's just a question of an enormous amount of traffic for a site on a shared server. As much as you don't want to hear this, I think it is time for a dedicated box.

If you do that, make sure it's truly a dedicated box and not a "virtual private server" or anything like that.

Another thing you probably don't want to hear, but I think would be a good idea, would be to tier the membership to two levels "free" and "premium" like HoFo did. With the dedication of the members here, I think you could get enough of the users like myself to pony up a few bucks a year for a "premium" membership to offset the cost of the dedicated box. Count me in as someone who would be happy to pay. IIRC I paid $36 for a one year membership at HoFo. Geez, it's $3 a month. That's one less beer at the sports bar on a Saturday.

Well looks like its that time. Anybody got any suggestions for a good managed dedicated server host? Cuz it would have to be managed I don't have time to run the server and keep it up to date. Please post some suggestions and we may add a premium type package with fewer ads but theres only one now anyways. :) The ads are gonna have to come back to support the dedicated server cost. Thanks for your explanation of what's going on though.
_Mike

theplanet.com has dedicated for $69.00 per month.
Dreamhost has adjustable virtual private, but I'd stay away from that.
http://www.lpdedicated.com has dedicated starting at $99/month.
If you want to go virtual and save some money, maybe http://ipower.com/virtual.html might deserve a look. $49 and RAM is burstable to 1 GB (128 dedicated)

Slightly off topic, but God bless the Adblock plugin for Firefox. :)

working on a few quotes. thanks for ur post yuma and others. It was most helpful. :)
_mike