Easy Ways To Reduce Server Load From A Forum?

[Cret]

Bloody hell! I just signed up with AWS so I could have a poke around and see what's what and if it's of any potential use as an option.

I'm scared! It's quite bewildering in there and I wouldn't really know where to start with that in respect of migrating a forum application & database to it.

Would like to try and find out since it's got the free stuff for a year. But since it's pretty messy on there I will be setting a very low payment threshold alert so I can see the moment I get charged for something.

 

My forum has something from 1000-5000 page views a day, about 7000 members, and most evenings anything from say 5-35 members online at once. The posting is not too prolific because for the most part they don't post much spam or worthless stuff. It's mostly technical vehicle stuff discussed, with some element of friendly banter. I don't think it's my site that's causing load issues as it hasn't in the past and there's not really been any apparent increase in activity of late.

 

No, it's not MF but there is a link there. My host has been very helpful previously, and as mentioned the prospect of migrating to a new host worries me somewhat as it's not something I have experience of. The thought of a dedicated server does certainly have quite an appeal, but it's not something I would want to rush into and I'll be monitoring performance for a while to see if anything improves.

 

Today there have been 4 outages (with one just a few minutes ago that happened here as well) compared to 11 or 12 outages yesterday. Not sure if that's significant other than fewer complaints for me, but I'm not rushing to jump ship or anything.

 

I suppose the best option for me, would be to find a service which is pretty cheap and gives me tons of headroom, which I could perhaps run parallel to current hosting until I'd be comfortable enough to swap over at some point. I don't have lots of time for learning this stuff so it can be a bit seat of pants admin at times....

[Cret]

I checked an uptime app I use and it showed 93% uptime for the last 3 days.

 

J2bad - cost wise Amazon sounds very good, but I've no idea what options & level of service I'd need. It seems buzzworded up to hell in there so I think I basically need the following:

1) Storage - to hoard images and stuff and to install my forum software

2) Database - to go with the forum software

3) A control panel/front end of some sort

 

But how that translates to the myriad of services they display is beyond me from first glance!

[Slim]

Bloody hell! I just signed up with AWS so I could have a poke around and see what's what and if it's of any potential use as an option.

I'm scared! It's quite bewildering in there and I wouldn't really know where to start with that in respect of migrating a forum application & database to it.

 

For an invasion host you probably want to go with the pre built image that's called LAMP (Linu Apache, Mysql, PHP), which will give you everything you're used to on your shared host. It won't have as nice a control panel as cpanel but it's easier to use the admin pages than a bare install of those apps alone.

 

I still wouldn't recommend it unless you specifically want to get into managing the OS as well as the web apps. The defaults on ec2 are good, but once you've deployed them it's up to you (or your paid support).

[Slim]

J2bad - cost wise Amazon sounds very good, but I've no idea what options & level of service I'd need. It seems buzzworded up to hell in there so I think I basically need the following:

1) Storage - to hoard images and stuff and to install my forum software

2) Database - to go with the forum software

3) A control panel/front end of some sort

 

Might be talking at crossed purposes, but I think you should be looking at an ec2 virtual server for hosting the database not the amazon service.

[Cret]

Thanks Slim - yes I set up a lamp server on a spare PC at home a year or two back with a bit of assistance from a mate, so I could run a development environment of my forum for testing out modifications etc before putting up on the live site. Didn't last long though and I don't get on well with Linux, so your point about looking after the OS is a valid one I hadn't thought of.

 

Like I say I'm in no rush to jump ship, if I did that it would almost certainly be a case of frying pan to fire, and result in more problems immediately than it addresses.

That said, in due course it might not be a bad thing, so if things smooth out now (hopefully) I can look into trying to set up something parallel which eventually gets switched over once I have an idea how to keep it from going bang!

[Cret]

Oops - posts crossed there sorry as that one above took a few minutes to appear. Same issue I believe.

 

This is me being ignorant I'm afraid Slim - Is the EC2 server not part of the services that Amazon offer? I assumed that was one of the things that they provided.

 

Probably a good idea would be if they have a live support chat thing (or suchlike) to speak to someone and tell them exactly what it is that I'm after (already have) and let them translate that to their appropriate services. Then potentially scale it down if they're trying to get me to pay for overkill!

[Slim]

Thanks Slim - yes I set up a lamp server on a spare PC at home a year or two back with a bit of assistance from a mate, so I could run a development environment of my forum for testing out modifications etc before putting up on the live site. Didn't last long though and I don't get on well with Linux, so your point about looking after the OS is a valid one I hadn't thought of.

 

You can run a LAMP stack on a windows server if you're more comfortable with that.

 

Yes ec2 is part of the service, but they also offer things like the scalable database service. As you listed them, I thought you meant that rather than having your own Mysql server (for example).

 

I still think you're better off with a managed service though

[ManxMann]

You can run a LAMP stack on a windows server if you're more comfortable with that.

 

You might find the 'L' a bit tricky mind

[Cret]

If managed means that someone else does some of the dirty work then yes, that would be preferable, depending on the additional cost aspects.

 

In terms of me listing those things, I just meant re' the basics other than the LAMP/WAMP part of it. There's probably all manner of fancy stuff they offer but this is the stuff I use now and would need. How that's implemented (if there are various options for it) is something I'm not savvy enough with to choose one option over another. So the likes of how the database is created & managed for instance - I have no idea what's best.

 

Were I going to migrate, then the best scenario would be telling someone from a company in question something along the lines of "I need what's already running and in place here (give them my cpanel login or whatever), and I'd like it for the cost of some monster munch please".

 

You can run a LAMP stack on a windows server if you're more comfortable with that.

 

You might find the 'L' a bit tricky mind

 

was going to mention that myself but I'm the info scrounging noob here so I didn't!!

[Slim]

If managed means that someone else does some of the dirty work then yes, that would be preferable, depending on the additional cost aspects.

 

You'll pay lots for a managed dedicated server yes, but a shared host like you're on now should really manage the load you're looking at.

 

 

 

 

was going to mention that myself but I'm the info scrounging noob here so I didn't!!

 

Yeah, it's an acronym fail, but it's still used on windows, eg http://winlamp.sourceforge.net/

[Cret]

a shared host like you're on now should really manage the load you're looking at.

 

 

That's what I would expect too but the forum has been going very very badly now for a good few days. I'm not going to say much since as mentioned my host has been very helpful in the past and I don't want to cause upset that might mean I make life more difficult for myself.

But it is getting very very frustrating and my members are getting pretty goddam upset about it now. It's also difficult to try and prevent myself looking like a village idiot sitting at the top of the heap, scratching his head as stuff goes wrong (regardless of whether it's true!!).

 

There's a lot of complaints about posts & PMs being lost etc, and I know you can prevent that, but me telling people tips like ctrl-a & ctrl-c before posting makes it sound like I'm not addressing it properly. In reality I'm not sure how I can really address it in the very short term because I don't have sufficient knowledge to just up sticks and move quickly, even if I wanted to, and I don't. Yet.

[j2bad]

Cret, where to start.

 

There is a lot in AWS most of which you don't need.

 

You will need to set up an EC2 instance and for simplicity probably better to pick an image with a MYSQL server already on there, there are tonnes of Images that will do what you want, but you if you want to run it for free then you need to stick with an image that meets the free tier requirements.

 

Tutorials are a bit thin on the ground, but this one looks ok to follow:-

 

http://www.robotmedia.net/2011/04/how-to-create-an-amazon-ec2-instance-with-apache-php-and-mysql-lamp/

 

You will need to get PUTTY, and WinSCP to administer the server and access the files.

 

If you get stuck, give me a shout.

[Cret]

Putty, winscp? Don't worry - will get doing some homework on all of this to get a better idea what's what.

At the moment it's going over my head but I've spent about the sum total of 59 seconds looking at a screen or two on their site without taking anything in or looking for any external info.

 

I think once I spend a bit of time reading up some stuff and checking out the likes of your link it'll sink in a bit.

 

Thanks though (and you should be careful offering help since it's more a case of "when" than "if" )

 

Appreciate the replies & suggestions folks. Many thanks.

[j2bad]

I checked an uptime app I use and it showed 93% uptime for the last 3 days.

 

J2bad - cost wise Amazon sounds very good, but I've no idea what options & level of service I'd need. It seems buzzworded up to hell in there so I think I basically need the following:

1) Storage - to hoard images and stuff and to install my forum software

2) Database - to go with the forum software

3) A control panel/front end of some sort

 

But how that translates to the myriad of services they display is beyond me from first glance!

 

EC2 is effectivley a server and you can add EBS volumes, which you can think of as hard disk space, thats all you need to get going.

RDS is Databases, you can run a databse on the EC2 server which is what I would do to start off, though it is better to use an RDS instance and there is a free tier micro instance for this, there are other Data services from Amaxon but not what you need. RDS has many advantages like automatic back-ups and monitoring.

S3 is basically cloud storage and file serving, very good as a CDN for media files, you may want to use this though this is more likely something that invision either does or does not support.

CloudFront - This is a globally distributed network not something you need, you can also use this with S3 to allow real streaming of Video etc.

 

As for control panels you have PHPMYAdmin for the Database, and the command line via WinSCP.

[Slim]

 

Tutorials are a bit thin on the ground, but this one looks ok to follow:-

 

http://www.robotmedi...and-mysql-lamp/

 

This advice out of date as the images have moved on a bit since then. Windows is also available on the free tier, and might be better than a linux server for someone who's not up to speed.