Phpbb bandwidth issues ?

sigo1 · Post by **sigo1** » Fri Dec 17, 2010 6:53 am

Hi . I plan on hosting my PHBB forum on hostgator , so i spoke to the customer care agent on the best plan for me . he suggested the baby plan , so i asked if bandwidth matters when using a forum and he said no it doesn't , i would like to ask the rest of you guys here who own forums . does the amount of monthly / yearly bandwidth matter ?

Danbo342 · Post by **Danbo342** » Fri Dec 17, 2010 7:10 am

Hello,
Most hosts that I have had over the years have a set bandwidth to their packages and have a few FLASH sites. I just started with forums but it's hard to give an answer to your question without knowing more about what you intend to use your forum for.

If you plan on having lots of hi res screen-shots and lots of members that will be viewing them, then of course it matters. If you plan on not caring what people have in their signatures then it too matters. There are a lot of things that you have control over of course and ways to be sure that bandwidth won't have to be a problem.

I have one site that is actually 3 sites on various plans and servers just because of bandwidth. The actual flash site, a Flash gallery, and a forum that will have tons of screenshots and tutorials so for me, bandwidth matters, for most people running a forum, my guess would be no it wouldn't, since again they have control over the content.

Hope this helps,
~Dan

sigo1 · Post by **sigo1** » Fri Dec 17, 2010 5:39 pm

Hi dan thanks for the response , I would like to ask a question concerning Your statements "if you plan on having lots of hi resolution screenshots and graphic signatures then of course it matters"

1. when you say lots of hi res screenshots can you please explain , because i want my users to be able to put up pics (but of course through stuffs like tinypic , they wouldn't upload directly )

2. How exactly does the signature "eat" up bandwidth ?

i would appreciate if you or some one else who "stumbled" across this thread replies . thnx

Lumpy Burgertushie · Post by **Lumpy Burgertushie** » Fri Dec 17, 2010 9:33 pm

sigo1 wrote:Hi dan thanks for the response , I would like to ask a question concerning Your statements "if you plan on having lots of hi resolution screenshots and graphic signatures then of course it matters"

1. when you say lots of hi res screenshots can you please explain , because i want my users to be able to put up pics (but of course through stuffs like tinypic , they wouldn't upload directly )

2. How exactly does the signature "eat" up bandwidth ?

i would appreciate if you or some one else who "stumbled" across this thread replies . thnx

1. in the first place , if people are linking to images stored somewhere besides your server then
it would have no affect on your bandwith useage at all.
If , however, you let people upload images as attachments and they display in the posts, then that would
be using your bandwidth.
Until and unless you get thousands of images and a lot of traffic, bandwidth is not going to be an issue with your hostgator account.

2. I don't see how sig files can have any effect. rarely is an image that is in a sig file located on your server.
they are most often linked to somewhere else for the images.

If your board starts using excessive bandwidth hostgator will tell you about it and you will need to upgrade to a bigger account.
but I think you are a long way off from needing to worry about that.

robert

sigo1 · Post by **sigo1** » Fri Dec 17, 2010 10:30 pm

Hi Robert thumbs up for all the help i have been getting from you here .
Would it be a good idea to only allow url images and disable image upload ? considering the fact that some people might not know how to use tinypic or the likes .

the forum warriorforum http://www.warriorforum.com has this triangle design at the bottom right corner , i would like to know how that was done and if it can be done on Phpbb.

Lumpy Burgertushie · Post by **Lumpy Burgertushie** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 12:47 am

well that is backwards. if you do not know how to use tinypic or whatever, then you can't use the URL type.

just allow it all , set the limits to what size images you want to allow in avatars, attachments etc.

you can control all of that in the admin panel.

as for the thing at warriors forum, that is some css.

try this:

put this just above the </head> tag in overall_header.html

Code: Select all

<style type="text/css">	


.corner_image {
	position: fixed;
}
.cornimage_left {
	left: 0;
}			
.cornimage_right {
	right: 0;
}
.cornimage_top {
	top: 0;
}
.cornimage_bottom {
	bottom: 0;
}

</style>

then find this:
<body id="phpbb" class="section-{SCRIPT_NAME} {S_CONTENT_DIRECTION}">
on a new line after it , put this:

Code: Select all

<div class="corner_image cornimage_bottom cornimage_right"><a target="_blank" href="http://phpbb.com"><img border="0" alt="" src="http://phpbbace.com/images/Animation12.gif"/></a></div>

see how that works for you

robert

Danbo342 · Post by **Danbo342** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 1:04 am

Sorry for the late reply but see you got good advice.

I forgot to mention I was talking about attachments. As I said my use is different than yours but not different than everyone being my forum I am talking about is mostly tutorials and user uploaded files & images. All the images in my tutorials are being hosted by me since of course it is mostly myself doing the tutorials. Same with the sigs and yes linking to an outside source won't effect you so the above advice is the best.

*My sigs are advertisements for simming products done in flash by me. The file sizes are very low around 50k being the more outrageous in size. Just to elaborate on what I was referring to was that type of situation and the how if you had say 10 posts per page, 50 viewers viewing a full page where everyone was using a flash banner, well that is what I was referring to and just wanted to explain for situations like that. I was/am a member of the AVSIM forums also and have made 100's of jpeg, gif & png sigs for people as well that were hosted from their site. They asked me after a year of doing it to cut them all down in size haha. The largets was maybe 15k but as you see, different situations and traffic will indeed effect bandwidth in these situations.

Good luck on your new venture btw.
~Dan

Lumpy Burgertushie · Post by **Lumpy Burgertushie** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 1:39 am

yep, I had an image in one of my posts here several years ago with phpbb2. It was getting so much traffic that I had to keep upping the limits on my server so it would continue to show up.

just depends on what you do.

robert

sigo1 · Post by **sigo1** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 6:41 am

thanks guys for being very helpful . Anyway i plan on going with the url image rather than the upload option (just like this forum used the Img url option

) . Anyway i was wondering does the image url services like tinypic delete the pic after sometime ?

@robert , i was thinking the warrior forum triangle stuff was like an iframe or something ?

Pony99CA · Post by **Pony99CA** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 9:55 pm

sigo1 wrote:i was thinking the warrior forum triangle stuff was like an iframe or something ?

View Source is your friend.

Code: Select all

<div class="angular_advertisement angadver_bottom angadver_right">
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-forum-news/119745-warrior-forum-going-back-paid-status.html">
  <img title="War Room" alt="War Room" src="http://www.warriorpro.com/banner-02.gif" border="0">
</a>
</div>

Do you see an IFRAME there? No, but you do see the angular_advertisement angadver_bottom angadver_right classes on the enclosing DIV just as Lumpy indicated.

Steve

sigo1 · Post by **sigo1** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 10:08 pm

Hi guys thanks for being very helpful . i have a question (as always ) . Someone told me it would be best if i integrated facebook / other social network login into my forum , that way they would be able to log into my forum using their accounts on the social networking sites . What do you guys think about this ? . Because i am thinking this could help pull in users who are always too lazy to registering but i am also thinking it might increase spamming and the users might not really feel like members of my forum , they could just see themselves as people who breeze in and out . anyway whats your take on this .

Lumpy Burgertushie · Post by **Lumpy Burgertushie** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 4:50 am

I think it would not be worth the trouble of figuring out howt to integrate the logins. It would take some type of custom scripting to make it possible.

If people don't want to take the few seconds to register at your board, then you probably don't want them anyway.

robert

Pony99CA · Post by **Pony99CA** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 11:47 am

sigo1 wrote:Someone told me it would be best if i integrated facebook / other social network login into my forum , that way they would be able to log into my forum using their accounts on the social networking sites . What do you guys think about this ?

Based on your previous questions, I think that you're getting a lot of questionable advice. Do what makes sense for your board. If you have a Facebook presence, maybe allowing people there to log into your board makes sense.

I also think that this has nothing to do with bandwidth issues.

Steve