phpbb suited for super high traffic forums?

breitweg · Post by **breitweg** » Fri May 24, 2002 6:10 am

I run a super high traffic forum (at http://www.blind-guardian.com). The forum is currently running under UBB, with about 6000 registered members, and taking up about 300MB of disk space.

I have been thinking of changing to a different forum software and therefore I have some questions. Which forum software (ubb, vbulletin, or phpbb) is the better suited to handle high traffic and very long threads (over 400 posts sometimes)? I am interested in phpbb so much because it is free, but I need something that is very stable and also full of features (which phpbb seems to have). Does anyone else out there run a high traffic phpbb forum? Any opinions/suggestions are appreciated, thanks.

marja · Post by **marja** » Fri May 24, 2002 8:22 am

It seems that nobody has bothered to answer yet. I cannot answer your question but i do now a forum that tried to switch to phppbb and crashed twice. They returned to their previous software. This forum has app. 500 users. I am not saying that this software caused the crashes but we don't know what did.

R45 · Post by **R45** » Fri May 24, 2002 8:31 am

If your server is configured badly, phpBB can crash with 1 user. This forum has 13000+ members and its running fine. 6000 isn't really super high load, its medium. phpBB can handle that, however you have to make sure your server is configured properly, changing some config settings and whatnot. Do some searches on the board for bandwidth and you should find threads about tweaking your server properly.

interDist · Post by **interDist** » Fri May 24, 2002 9:56 am

I think this forum is a good example of what phpBB can handle... there are 13000+ members (already mentioned), there are always more than 20 users online. But it depends, of course, on your server too.

whofarted · Post by **whofarted** » Fri May 24, 2002 10:28 am

What db does this forum use? MySQL?

interDist · Post by **interDist** » Fri May 24, 2002 10:39 am

yes, if I remember correctly. ask John or James, anyway.

R45 · Post by **R45** » Fri May 24, 2002 11:56 am

ffeingol admins the server. He's posted threads around about the server setup. Yeah its MySQL.

ffeingol · Post by **ffeingol** » Fri May 24, 2002 1:32 pm

breitweg,

The number of registered users does not really make any difference. What's important is the number that are on-line.

Do you have any idea of the avg. number of on-line users? Any idea about daily transfer?

Frank

breitweg · Post by **breitweg** » Mon May 27, 2002 11:04 am

We run an old version of UBB and I don't have any idea how many users are online at the same time. But if I need how fast some people post and how fast some people reply I guess it would be a big number.

I know that the term 'big number' is relative but what is considered a large number of people online at the same time? 20? 50? 100?

Also I would guess that the forum generates something like 500MB-1GB traffic per day if not more.

herc · Post by **herc** » Mon May 27, 2002 11:14 am

another good example is http://www.depechemode-forum.de -- it has at peak times 60 users at the same time and thousands of registered users.

R45 · Post by **R45** » Mon May 27, 2002 3:27 pm

breitweg wrote: We run an old version of UBB and I don't have any idea how many users are online at the same time. But if I need how fast some people post and how fast some people reply I guess it would be a big number. I know that the term 'big number' is relative but what is considered a large number of people online at the same time? 20? 50? 100?

Also I would guess that the forum generates something like 500MB-1GB traffic per day if not more.

Well large number will be hundreds upon hundred

If you are running an old UBB, its probably on flat files. phpBB will run MUCH faster than that since its using an RDBMS (Any of them, phpBB supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, M$ SQL and M$ Access) which is much faster than a flat file, especially with larger sites....

ffeingol · Post by **ffeingol** » Mon May 27, 2002 4:46 pm

breitweg wrote: Also I would guess that the forum generates something like 500MB-1GB traffic per day if not more.

umm no. It's more like 4 -5 gig/day and 150 - 200K pageviews per day.

Frank

Kylecool · Post by **Kylecool** » Mon May 27, 2002 5:45 pm

Yes, this site generates quite I bit. I viewed the logs myself and WOW. lmao Yes, UBB has flat files so it takes longer. With mysql, it will be faster and a lot better for you.

-Kyle 8)

jackqu7 · Post by **jackqu7** » Mon May 27, 2002 5:51 pm

It has, however, been noted that if pgsql is availible, you should use that for high traffic forums as it handles them better. (I think anyway)

Kylecool · Post by **Kylecool** » Mon May 27, 2002 5:55 pm

jackqu7 wrote: It has, however, been noted that if pgsql is availible, you should use that for high traffic forums as it handles them better. (I think anyway)

Yes, for quite high traffic sites, that is better. If not, then MySql is ok too.

-Kyle 8)