In this chapter we begin at the point where most people begin with vBulletin—with a copy of the software and somewhere to upload it to. If you have both of those, then you are probably eager to get going with the installation!
We will look at:
- The requirements of vBulletin
- How to install the files
- How to create the database
- How to troubleshoot installation problems
- How to configure vBulletin
- How to administer the default usergroups
- How to secure vBulletin
- How to get help and support
The requirements to run vBulletin are pretty straightforward, and even the basic shared hosting available nowadays for a few dollars a month should allow you to upload, install, configure, and run vBulletin.
Basic requirements are:
- MySQL database support
- PHP support
If your host claims to support these, then you have a good chance of being able to run vBulletin. Now you need to look in a little more detail at what your host offers.
Detailed requirements for vBulletin are:
Disk space is an important consideration. By 'disk space' I mean the amount of space you are given on the server to host your site and the associated databases.
Disk space is a requirement that is harder to predict. Initially, you will be able to get away with a small amount of space, say 50 Mb. However, over time, the posts in your forum will add significantly to this. All you can do is estimate how busy your forum will be and judge how much space you need from that.
For example, if you think that your forum will generate about 100 posts a day, then that's 36,500 posts a year. On average, this number of posts will take up about 75 Mb of room. If you think that your discussion board will generate 200 posts a day, then you'll need at least 150 Mb of space. 400 posts a day means 146,000 posts a year and an approximate disk consumption of around 300 Mb.
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Points to note about disk space
Remember that these figures are average figures. If your site regularly has large posts (in terms of text content) or users are able to attach a lot of attachments to posts, then these figures could rise significantly.
Another point to note is that posts are stored in the database. Different hosts handle disk space versus database space differently, so make sure you know in advance how much disk space and database space you have.
Bandwidth is the amount of data transfer that your site has. Each time a page is called up by a browser, data extracted from a database or an image retrieved, this adds to your site's bandwidth usage.
For convenience, almost all hosts measure bandwidth over a period of a month in megabytes or gigabytes, so one hosting plan might give you 100 Mb of monthly bandwidth while another might give you 50 Gb. The more bandwidth you have, the more you usually pay and the more room your site has to expand.
Judging how much bandwidth a discussion board will need is tricky for a number of reasons. Yes, it depends on the number of users and the number of posts made, but it also depends on other, harder-to-measure factors. These include:
- How often posts are read. (Remember, a post can be read once or many times by the same person.)
- How often a post is re-read. (Re-reading a post contributes to the bandwidth used.)
- How many posts are displayed on a page.
- How many graphics are on the site.
- How often people carry out searches.
Even a small a forum can generate a lot of activity and therefore consume a lot of bandwidth. Shop around and you'll find some good deals.
As a general rule, it's probably better that you don't go for any plan that offers you less that 20 Gb a month. If you go over your allocated bandwidth, you'll end up paying over the odds for additional bandwidth, so it pays to have more than you need.
Many hosts also allow you to roll over unused bandwidth, which means that what you don't use this month you have available the next month.
The bigger your discussion board is, the more system resources it is going to need from the server that it is being hosted on. (By big, we mean how busy it is, which can be measured by how many people are on it at any one time and how many posts are being made over a period of time.)
There are three types of hosting solution available to you.
If your board is small (say under 200 posts a day and about 20 people online simultaneously), then you should find that this forum could be run on hosting known as shared hosting, where your website lives on a computer with many other websites.
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Shared hosting facts
On a shared hosting plan you can be sharing the server with over 200 other sites. This means that the server power available to you is only a fraction of what the server has to offer. If your site is big and busy, then this can affect others on the server. This is why shared hosting is only viable for small discussion boards.
Shared hosting is by far the cheapest option open to you because you share the cost of the server with others, but be aware that you get what you pay for. Don't expect a shared server solution that costs $100 a year to offer you the same power and flexibility as a hosting solution costing $100 a month would offer you.
One rung up from shared hosting comes semi-dedicated hosting. This is similar to shared hosting, but you share the server with fewer other sites. This means that more server power is available to you and your site. The more power that you have, the more users can use your site at any given time and the faster your site appears to them (although ultimately the speed of their Internet connection also plays a big part).
There are benefits to semi-dedicated hosting—the main one being a lot more power for only a little more money—but be careful and make sure that you are clear about what you are getting. Find out up-front how many people will be sharing the server and what is the maximum allowed on a single semi-dedicated server. A good host will give you this information freely. If they don't, look elsewhere.
A dedicated hosting solution is where you get a server all to yourself. This gives you the best in terms of power and flexibility, but at a price. Remember too that dedicated hosting is a term not a standard—a package (or packages) offered by one company is likely to be different from what's on offer from another company.
There are many variables when it comes to dedicated hosting—connection speed, server specification, support packages, add-ons. Be careful and shop around for the best deals.
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Get advice!
If you are unsure about what you want, then you can get good advice, recommendations and feedback on good deals on the vBulletin community forums:
Also, you need to factor in issues like support and downtime. Check out the guarantees offered by the host.
There are other options open to you. These include running your own server from your home over a leased line and collocation (where you lease space for your own server at the hosting company's server location). They are both similar to the dedicated hosting solution outlined above.
Both these are expensive solutions but allow you the very best in terms of performance and power. Choosing a collocation solution normally only makes sense if you want complete data privacy or want to handle your technical support and upgrades yourself.
Again, however, bear in mind that these terms aren't standards and that what one company offers you will differ from what another one will be offering. You will need to shop around to get the best deals.