VPS size for phpbb

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Dev222
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VPS size for phpbb

Post by Dev222 »

Hello,

I have a phpbb forum (version 3.0.8) which is now hosted on a dedicated server along with other websites. I am planning to move it to its own VPS on Vultr (or Linode).

This forum receives about 50.000 page views per month. About how big should the VPS be? Would the 1 core 1GB RAM VPS be sufficient?

Thanks!
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thecoalman
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by thecoalman »

Any VPS should be plenty for that however you may run into other issues with the low RAM such as the server control panel etc.
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KevC
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by KevC »

Your other problem is likely to be that 3.0.x does not run on the latest versions of php that a host is likely to be running and support for 3.0 ended nearly a year ago.
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thecoalman
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by thecoalman »

If you are on a VPS it is no different than a dedicated server as far as managing it goes. If you are using a panel it may limit the PHP versions, the oldest WHM/Cpanel supports is 5.4.
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by sakm »

page views per month is irrelevant

How many simultaneous visitors do you have?

you want enough in reserve to keep the server running when you have the max number of visitors without it slowing or crashing

I would say 1GB is low for a VPS! depending on what you will be running on the VPS will depend on what you have left for your forum
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Mick
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by Mick »

The people to ask would be the hosts, we only supply the software.
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Dev222
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by Dev222 »

I am going to use Serverpilot as a panel, which is a remote panel which takes nearly no resources and allows PHP versions down to 5.4 which works OK with my version of phpbb.
page views per month is irrelevant

How many simultaneous visitors do you have?
When you say "simultaneous visitors" do you mean peak concurrent visitors on the server, or what phpbb is reporting as "users online"?

50.000 page views means on average about 1.6 page views per minute, which at peak hours would at most be 6 page views per minute, so 1 visit every 10 seconds. So there would be rarely any concurrent visits and when it happens it wouldn't be more than 3 or 4.

"Users online" as reported by phpbb is irrelevant. For my forum a "user online" is based on users active over the past 5 minutes, for this forum for the past 90 minutes. A user can be making 1 page view or 100 page views in those 5 minutes. What matters to server load is the number of page views. Certain actions, like making a post, could require more resources than simply viewing a page, but my forum receives very few new posts each day, so that wouldn't be an issue either.
The people to ask would be the hosts, we only supply the software.
I am basically asking other users who have already tried this. E.g. if somebody is already using such a VPS to run a forum which is more active than mine, that would mean it would be fine for me also. Or maybe somebody tried it with a less active forum but it still wouldn't work etc.

So basically I need an answer from people who are running phpbb on a VPS :)
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by sakm »

You are wasting your time averaging it out!

Remember visitors aren't there 24 7 and you will get a peak! If that peak means 150 users all requesting and posting The the same time then the server could grind to a halt!
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by Dev222 »

The average is 1.6 page views per minute. The peak is 6 per minute. Maybe I could add a bit to that and say 10 page views per minute max.

This is an old forum, it will not get more popular suddenly. I don't want to be paying for hosting way more than it needs. If for some reason one day it gets a totally unexpected high number of visitors (which highly doubt it will happen) I am OK if it gets slow or fails to respond to some requests. This is not a critical service.
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by david63 »

If you believe that you are only going to have three or four visitors at any one time then you do not need VPS. Remember that it is not just visitors that appear on your site you also have bots accessing your site all the time which will add to your user count.

Before making any decisions you need some reliable statistics from your current site rather than making assumptions as to what is happening.
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Dev222
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by Dev222 »

I moved my forum to a 1 core 512MB VPS on Vultr (with serverpilot and cloudflare) and it runs fine. Only searching can be a bit slow.
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by david63 »

Dev222 wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:00 pm ... and cloudflare
Be aware that Cloudflare if it is not configured correctly (and that may be the reason for your slow searches) is known to cause problems with phpBB - there are many topics on this board where Cloudflare has been the culprit when there is a problem.
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Dev222
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Re: VPS size for phpbb

Post by Dev222 »

david63 wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:43 pm
Dev222 wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:00 pm ... and cloudflare
Be aware that Cloudflare if it is not configured correctly (and that may be the reason for your slow searches) is known to cause problems with phpBB - there are many topics on this board where Cloudflare has been the culprit when there is a problem.
Thanks. I made some searches and all problems with cloudflare and phpbb seem to be related with the IP issue. Serverpilot automatically fixes this issue and my forum can see the real IP of the users. Apart from this is there any other issue between phpbb and Cloudflare?
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