MessageBoard design help



  • I have been up incharge of setting up an messageboard/forum for my website which is hosted at awardspace. Awardspace allows me 20 databases up 50MB each. 10 of the databases are in use (to maximize capacity). I have 4 topics but inside are 13 differant forums. Any ideas on how to set this up? I would perfer simplicity for moving threads and deleting.

    My original plan was a differant db for each forum subtopic but I don't have enough db's. Each db was to have a table with the threads and another table with the replies (threadID would match it to the correct thread). Using php and mySQL.

     Any ideas?



  • "Here's a dollar, kid. Go and get yourself a real hosting service."

    If you stick with those buttclowns, you deserve exactly what you get. 



  • Why not use a free messageboard already built?



  • First 50Mbs should be enough to cover any forum.

    Who/How many people are going to be using this forum, and what kind of content is going to be on it?



  • I would hope it to eventually have about a hundred regulars. It a poetry website, kinda like www.poems-and-quotes.com (I'm not telling you this one because it could be considered advertisement and it insecure right now and if anyone you guys could find it). I'm not the owner, just a work hand. I see if I can get the owner to switch webhosters but I think he took one of those two-year agreements for a cheaper service. I'm not asking how to program a board, just how should I arange the tables and databases.

     Any recomendations for webhosts and reasons why to go there? (I don't much care for awardspace anyway).



  • Now let's forget a bit about doing things the right way, and think pragmatic.
    How much diskspace do you get at that hosting?

    I myself am currently in the same position, i have near free hosting with my job, but my boss insists i pay if i want to use the database.
    So because i'm cheap i just wrote a abstraction class to write everything to xml files.

    With only 100 regulars, preformance is hardly a issue, and if you keep locking issues and race conditions in mind, you can make it pretty reliable.
    Just remember to use a lck file while writing, and for even more safty write first to a tmp file and then move that to the real space.
    And if you need to save something but the lck file is set, remember to reload the file before merging in the next change.

    It's a bit dirty, but it works.

     

     

     



  • I wouldn't consider that approch WTF-free, sure it may work but I'm not the greatest PHPer, I stick to Java better. I wouldn't know how to do as you describe.



  • roughly, how many threads and replys should 50MB database hold?



  • @malfist said:

    I would hope it to eventually have about a hundred regulars. It a poetry website, kinda like http://www.poems-and-quotes.com/ (I'm not telling you this one because it could be considered advertisement and it insecure right now and if anyone you guys could find it). I'm not the owner, just a work hand. I see if I can get the owner to switch webhosters but I think he took one of those two-year agreements for a cheaper service. I'm not asking how to program a board, just how should I arange the tables and databases.

     Any recomendations for webhosts and reasons why to go there? (I don't much care for awardspace anyway).

    Ok,i've been hosting a website with a message board for over a year now with 150+ regular visitors, and since the 16 months since it went up the mySQL database size is currently 13.87Mb.

    You have plenty of space. No need to worry about that aspect.

     As regards hosting, for the cheap ass hosts one choice is http://www.lonex.com/ @ $9.95/mo
    Otherwise for a real website i'd give http://www.mosso.com a try at $100/mo

    lonex as a small provider are actually realiable from what ive use, they have a very reliable uptime (total downtime: 12 hours in the 14 months ive been using them), and give 50KB/s bandwidth (more or less the same for any other low cost provider).

     Mosso on the other hand is the more professional approach, and are said to be capable of supporting 50,000+ unique visitors/day.



  • I'm not paying to much for it, it's bandwidth is really great but it seems to slow way way down if I upload too many files.

    I don't remember what I was going to say. :{ 



  • @malfist said:

    I'm not paying to much for it, it's bandwidth is really great but it seems to slow way way down if I upload too many files.

    I don't remember what I was going to say. :{ 

    I'm a little curious about what you meant when it's slows when you upload too many files?

    As in you have a much slow upstream to the server? Or uploading files affects the downrate at the same time? Or if there's a lot of files in the web root the pages takes longer to load?



  • If I'm doing some serious work on it I upload the same file (edited) multipule times. When I work for about 15min the site starts slowing down, takes longer and longer to upload to the site and the site takes longer and longer to download. If I work for over an hour it stops, completely. As in uploads freeze and the site never downloads. It's the reason I have a test server set up on my own computer.



  • That sounds like a really fucked up server. I would definately consider moving to another host just to avoid a situation like that.

    You should also have a test server *anyway*. For serveral reasons, you don't have to wait for the file to upload to test the server, you can have the website running live and not break it due to changes in your code that u still need to test. And the ease of being able to work on the site without u having a net connection.



  • I really want to move hosts, but I don't own it. It was hacked once sense I've started working on it and everything deleted almost (not just my site, all of them), according to their news it's not the first time either. They had a DoS just before I started working on it. ugh, I hate it.



  • @malfist said:

    I really want to move hosts, but I don't own it. It was hacked once sense I've started working on it and everything deleted almost (not just my site, all of them), according to their news it's not the first time either. They had a DoS just before I started working on it. ugh, I hate it.

     What is message board software are you using? I currently host my wifes website through 1and1.com, never had a problem with them and they are dirt cheap and usually give you a couple free domains.
     



  • I've seen 1and1's trillion-page advertisments in all the tech magazines I read. I thought it was worthless because of that, usually you can judge the company by their advertising, too much bad company, none - bad company.

     

    :P


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