Forum Hosting can be a difficult task. It would be tough especially when one has not done it before. One must look for the guides or requirements in a web host or video web hosting when planning on forum hosting. First thing to watch out for are the databases. A forum consists and receives a vast amount of data. So to support this, one must have a hosting service that could put in order the data a forum could possibly hold.
Frequently, available forum software is very moderate when it comes to storing data in. There are instances where you have to choose between data and storage compatibilities. Such as phpBB which is compatible with SQLite, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MS SQL, MySQL, and Firebird. This compatibility gives the user more options to consider before engaging on forum hosting. Whatever software or setup they want to use, there will always be an accompanying support to match their preferences.
One hosting solution is to emulate having multiple databases. This can be done by using a single database with different prefixes. Hosting plan for a forum usually takes more than one database to support; though this is not a desirable setup, forums need to be setup this way so it would end up well as it grows. Nowadays PHP is the most popular scripting language for forum software. There are the new and the earlier versions. The latest version should take care most of the functions of your hosting. It is not known to everyone though that web hosts claim that they have the latest PHP version to advertise with, this is not always the case because oftentimes they limit the use of certain functions and add-ons associated with it. This is one of the things that what Forum Hosting planner should watch out for.
Forum hosting planner should watch out for the list of items that a PHP should offer to be enabled. Basically these items are the Zlib, remote-access to FTP, and support for XML documents. These items are necessary for file compression, automatic add-on installations and for RSS feeds respectively. The planner should also check out the bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth a planner needs for a forum is directly related to its usage. To make this proper and more accurate, the possibility for low- moderate image usage has 50kb average page size and for moderate-high image usage has possibly 200kb average page size.
One way to properly estimate these, one needs to consider the average page views per daily use and the average number of active users per day. Storage is important but all a planner just needs to have is that he or she should have enough to store extra thins like attachments and avatars. One also has to make sure the server is ready to handle gigabytes of storage for the database.
