Re hosting why not move to free host like 000webhost

[groov]

Just interested as VJforums went down recently due to insufficient funds for hosting, why not just move the site onto http://www.000webhost.com/, its completely free and should have enough bandwidth and data allowance to host the site, supports php has a MySQL database support so should run vBulletin, and has no adverts.

Just seems there is an ongoing endless struggle to meet the hosting costs and I'd rather have a slightly slower load time and a stable reliable source of info than a endless hosting struggle and the site going down. Anyone have any thoughts? Seems like a no brainer to me especially with the site going offline due to funding issues.

[sleepytom]

VJForums is way too big to host on a free service. We regularly max out the resources on our vps. I'm guessing that you haven't ever run a big website? Our MySQL database is over a gigabyte in size. Without root access you wouldn't even manage to copy VJForums to another server!

[neilric99]

yes this is one thing that most people dont understand about web hosting, they seem to think free is the best option when in reality free doesnt scale to the size that you require a forum to grow too. even shared hosting has its issues and you end up moving to a dedicated server which you can create larger database/s

I think you are doing a great job within the boundaries of a £60 month hosting account. Now to get some help in paying for it, we can all give time but hard costs like this need to be shared by those that get the benefit from the information that this forum allows to be shared.

[Anders]

Could we make it a membership thing ? commercials ? what are the possibilities ?

[sleepytom]

Membership would only work if people were wiling to pay (seems unlikely) it would also exclude new people which would be a very bad thing.

Adverts are possible, though it is unlikely we would cover the costs using adverts they could be an important way to generate part of the funding. I've applied for google adsense so we can try that on the site (i've been running a trial of adsense on the archive version of the site - it is pretty disappointing in terms of relevance, though this might be better on the main forum pages??)

Really I'd hope the community could simply raise some money to pay for the server costs. LOTS of people come here to get help with projects which clearly have decent budgets (thousands of euros), yet if they donate anything it tends to be just a bit of spare change.

In the past we organised some real world events which were able to raise funds for the running of the site. Perhaps people who are keen on doing something could organise a local VJ meetup and pass round a hat for the forums??

The trouble is that everyone wants everything for "free" these days..

[many2]

I just wanted to take a few lines to thank you SleepyTom, as well as all the moderators, for your support and all the efforts you've put to keep our community alive. Money and funding sure are issues, but that alone would not suffice without a team of dedicated people.

THANKS !