Hosting my Own Board

Hello everyone. I come to you with a conundrum today. It's probably an easy answer but best left to someone who knows EXACTLY how to handle it.

My board sees quite a bit of action, and it actually the featured Featured RPG at the top, Flawed Genetics. But I've come to a point of crossroads. I want to begin hosting my forum on it's own, but I really don't understand what this entails and what it comes with. So I'm hoping someone can help me. I also may be using the wrong terms, but basically I'm willing to pay to have my board seperate from InvisionFree's TOS and hoping to branch off from them.

So my questions are numerous but really varied. But they mainly focus down to a few points;

How much should I expect to pay to do this?

Is there tutorials on how to do this or someone who can help me acheive it step by step?

What are the cons ( excluding price) to this venture and what do you feel are some Pros besides seperation from InvisionFree's rules?

(This should probably go in Software & Hosting)

Do you really want to host it yourself or do you want to piggy-back host ?

I'd say go with a piggy-back host. It's usually free, but primarily because you have someone who does know what they are doing helping you set everything up and being there for you when you have a problem.

Self Hosting
Hosting yourself means that you go and find a hoster and pay an average of $10 for your domain name (unless you're okay with myforum.myhost.com or myforum.myhostserver.myhost.com as a url) per year and $10 for hosting each month. You can get free hosting but the downtime and usually forced-ads aren't worth it.
Next, you go into your hoster and set up a database with a login and password. You either unzip or install the forum software on your hoster depending on if they have what you want. Finally, you import the database that you used on your old IF site into your new site and it does all the work. If you're lucky, you'll retain your skins and custom fields. It all depends on which software you convert to and what converters are available.
After that, you fix up whatever's not done and then it's just maintenance you have to worry about: performing monthly backups.

What's a Piggy-Back?
In technical terms, a piggy-back host is someone who already has hosting and will put up your site on their hosting.

What's the Cost of Getting My Database from IF?
Start the process of getting your database from IF by submitting a support ticket and asking for it. Support is slow and they'll give you a quote of the cost before they do anything. You're probably looking at $5-$20 but don't quote me on it.

Why do I want my Database from IF?
The database on your existing site holds all its information. All of the members, posts, topics, skins, news updates, everything. If you start from scratch, all of this is left behind and members can (but not necessarily) feel annoyed. By obtaining your database, you have a starting place to work from : where you left off. It's possible to obtain a nearly seamless transition to your new site, but only if you have your database.

Cost Break Down
Piggy-back hosting : $0 + cost of your database from IF
Hosting yourself: $10 / year + $10/mo + cost of your database from IF

We pay 40$ a year for hosting and I'm not sure how much for the domain - it's really pretty affordable if you find a good host.

I can't offer a how-to guide because @kisstheground set it up, but a lot of hosting plans (like ours) include a forum software like phpbb and as far as I understand it isn't incredibly complicated.

Pros:
- no adds
- no rules on swearing and adult material
- a nice domain name
- space to host some other stuff like graphics etc.
- a good feeling

I'm in the same boat as you - moving into paid hosting (though possibly piggy-backing with @Morrigan) for better software and support. The hosting providers I've looked at cost about £2.50 - £6.00 a month. Some come with a domain (which you'll need if you don't have one already, but if you piggy-back you'll probably be offered a sub-domain).

The difficult part is not knowing enough/not knowing what you're doing at all (like me...). At some point in the Software and Hosting section I asked everyone about their Hosting Providers and the three that were recommended enough that they ended on my shortlist today were bluehost, Ace-host and GoDaddy (even if some people say don't go with GoDaddy, I have only once been given a reason beside the elephant thing, and I myself have never had a problem with them in regards to the email and domain I have with them, and their support is amazingly fast - highest I saw estimated wait time was 6 hours and they got back to me in 30minutes despite that).

I'm moving Sizael onto Xenforo. I absolutely fell in love with the software when I first found it back in April (and I admit there was a big squeal in me when RPGD moved onto it so I could experience it properly). Xenforo isn't free (works out about £45 for the software license and £25 for installation help). IP Board is similar but takes up more space because of likes, MyBB is easier to skin and PHPbb is apparently very flexible if you know PHP (which I'm figuring you're probably not if you're anything like me lol).

This morning I thought I had figured out who I was hosting with - bluehost. But then I noticed that their telephone support is US based, and I don't want to deal with international call bills too and their IM-like help really didn't like my work computer (which is better than my netbook and home computer). So they were out. CPanel (it's my understanding that it is like an admin login panel so that if you let others use your hosting they get directed to their hosting area backroom or whatever the technical term is) was something I was looking for admittedly, which bluehost has, whereas GoDaddy has FTP access and others can access it that way (I have no idea what FTP is - I have yet to google it). Morrigan is on Ace-host I believe, so I'll be bombarding her with questions about piggy-backing with her and more about hosting.

You also need to know the specs you need and if the server you will be hosting on is compatable/has those specifications. It took me over a month to get this information for Xenforo - I had to ask twice on their forum (admittedly their community has a habit of answering some and not all of your questions in one go) and in the end I linked the bluehost support to the information on the forum comparison site (http://www.forum-software.org).

I don't know if any of that was helpful or not, but I hope it was at least a bit. My advice - don't rush, ask people at the D whom you know use paid hosting for help, ask the community for the forum software you'll be using as many questions as you can and take notes. When you feel close to ready, approach your members with a detailed why-you-are-considering-this for your forum and what it means for them (like new feature or the loss of them), talk about anything they might have concerns about (like losing posts) and be as open and honest about the whole thing as you can be with them. Which should be incredibly open

Wow guys. I couldn't have asked for better answers. While some of it was a bit tough of a read given that my experience with this is very slim. So, I'm going to begin looking into it. I am even willing to pay someone to help me do it, but that's if someone is willing to really take their time to help me do it.

I take this as a learning experience, and considering I work in the IT Field, it's good for me to learn.

With that said, the most important things to me are as follows;
-Retaining Member work and actions, I do not want them to lose what they've done.
-Ease of Use : I feel InvisionFree is user friendly and very intuitive, but I'm hoping to retain that.

So, I'm going to start talking to invisionfree about getting the Database. And I'm assuming that should be my first step? And given my other concerns, what should be the next step?



Also, I saw that a few of you have a Sodium Sky link in your Signatures, it is a very nice site and we are sharing the top Featured Links on the 'D.

http://www.invisionfree.com/conversion/ (looks like you're looking at about $35)

to clear up one thing, self-hosting does not mean that you go from rules to no rules. All you'll be doing is trading one TOS for someone elses and depending on the host, they might have the same rules on swearing and adult material. Read the TOS before jumping in.

Secondly, even if you get your database, you have to figure out what you're going to put it into. You can find self-hosted IPB 1.3 but I do not recommend it. It's unsupported and outdated and using it is not a question of if you'll get hacked, it's when. I was using it, applied all of the available security patches and was hacked three times, so be careful. I recommend taking a look at MyBB as it's entirely possible to achieve the same look with a little elbow grease and they have great mods. However, I'm not sure if there is a converter available for it so even if you were to get your database, you might not be able to use it unless you convert to this software, then take that coverted file and convert it again etc etc. Sometimes starting over is easier, depending on what software you choose.

More and more I read these responses and what needs to be done, it's beginning to seem like it may not be worth it. It seems that the trade off MAY not be worth it. But I am continuing to look into it.

@Lorreign You said you were hacked three times. Why not just change to a different host?

My host had nothing to do with it. It was a security hole in my software that the hacker knew about. I fixed the problem by upgrading to the newest version which also cost a pretty penny too.

If you work in IT it should be easy

I would recommend asking some worthy colleagues about hands on experience or help. (Because really. I can't believe that you'd work in an IT department where no one has a website of their own at the very least. There should even be soemone running their own server )

The best part about that is that any 'difficult technical questions' can be answered by said colleage who should be able to give you answers you understand and can work with.

For my part, we went self hosted more than ten years ago, and we havent looked back since. Setting up forums is easy for someone with a solid IT background. Shouldnt worry you at all

The absolute best community for discussing webhosting details is WHT: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/

There's a lot of things that go into finding a good host. Buy the bandwidth/space that you need, not hosts that trump up claims for "unlimited" space and bandwidth. If you're new to hosting, you'll probably want a smaller host where you can find personalized service. You can expect to pay, depending on your needs, anywhere from 30-100 bucks a year, more if you outgrow a shared hosting environment and need your own VPS/dedicated server.

Be sure to search for reviews on a credible site like WHT and not just randomly through the internet for "Top 10 webhosts" or whatever, because almost all of those are influenced by referrals and site promotions.

With pricing, it all depends on how much you're willing to spend.
One site I'm on, I love it to death, but we had a monthly bill of 200-300 dollars. The admins could no way pay this every 30 days, so we relied heavily on member donations.

If your needs involve having a dedicated server or more, then certainly you would be paying at least that much. There was one site I helped manage that required a complex cloud, and server costs were in the thousands per months. But these things are almost never a concern about RP forums, as most of their demands are quite small.

I self-host, costs me about 8$ a month plus 10$ a year for the domain. I can host more than 1 forum too.

Like Lorreign said, self-hosting doesn't mean no rule. There are TOS and laws that you need to comply with wherever you get hosted.

I use SMF (Simple Machine Forum) which has plenty of skins, very nice mods and is completely free. It's easy to install, also easy to upgrade. If you decide to go for SMF, I might be able to help.

I'd like to thank you for all of your help again. I'm taking all of this in as I go and learning as I go along.

I go through hostgator. They don't restrict the content level, as far as I read. Granted, not every thread has horrible violence or sexual scenes (it's actually rather rare), I still like having that option. It's fairly cheap. I think I paid $7 for my domain for a year? I can't recall exactly, but it wasn't expensive. Monthly, I pay $10 for hosting.

Switching to paid hosting was the best thing I've ever done in my online life. While the software you install on your site might have their own TOS, there are options out there to have almost complete freedom to do what you like. It's certainly worth the money and hard work, in my honest opinion. If you're fairly internet savvy, you can learn it all. Most just requires basic knowledge of css, html, and a tiny bit of php. I did it by googling every little question I had, and I still do! Granted, it took me quite a while to get the site how I wanted it, my members could not be happier with the switch.

Software wise, I use myBB. It's free, and I've been able to make my site look exactly as I wanted (though currently undergoing a layout revamp). There are some limits as far as content goes. Their rule is if your site contains such and such content, you'll be denied support. Most questions have already been answered should you need help on their support boards, so you usually don't have to stick your neck out there anyhow. My site allows 'M' content and we've been just fine so far.

There are many tools that allow you to import your forums into new software, but I'm not sure which are compatible with which. (So many options.) I only know for certain that proboards won't allow you to backup and transfer your forums.

I just finish the move to paid hosting, though there are still a few bits of this and that that need to be carried over manually (guidebook pages mostly and a few sticky/pinned thread that didn't carry over).

In the end I went with Bigwetfish for hosting, took a UK shared server (BWFS1). Their customer support is fast and good (and if you give them a bad rating for their help, they try harder next time). They also tweet a lot and currently have a summer deal.

Software is Xenforo and we moved from Zetaboards to it. @Aki helped us by converting it into various PHPBBs until it could be converted into XF, and has helped further each time I've messed something up. I've learnt a lot this week past, but I no doubt have more to learn coming up.

My members so far love the upgrade, though we did have a slight issue with the conversion passwords not working for a lot of people and Zetaboards' email edit bug in the admin CP meaning that a lot of us still have to get me to edit our emails so we can get notifications by email if we want to per character account. I love the upgrade too - Xenforo is so flexible compared to Zetaboards, Invisionfree and Jcink!

What I will also warn you of: once the move is finished, expect a slow start - try and ensure you have a day free to help 'bump-start' your forum back. And if you have affiliates, decide early on if you'll take them over and let them know the new URL as soon as you're using it (as I'm finding even after 5 days some admins that are our oldest affiliates from before we had the domain haven't got round to updating it yet).

Congrats at your move @Drae, I know that was a long time in coming!

Thanks, Fluff

If you know next to nothing about hosting like me, I suggest piggy backing with one of the awesome folks here at the 'D. Like AERO, CoT is hosting with Aki on MyBB software (Drae, if its easy to skin do you know any MyBB skinners or tutorials? We need a new skin. ).

Its an awesome experience and the board has thrived since we moved. I can't recommend it enough!

MyBB is free right? I could always host a forum on my server space and see if I can manage skinning one for you? I've skinned Zetaboards and Invisionfree before, and Xenforo's great fun (though I'm still learning the XF-specific bits lol), so MyBB would be a great one to add to my arsenal!