New Host and Possible Forum Upgrades

Space Goat · 05-04-2014, 04:32 PM

This is to let you guys know that sometime later this month (not exactly sure on the date yet), my host is going to be moving this site to a new server and datacenter. Over the past couple years, many of you have probably noticed some degradation in site load times and overall performance. I noticed around the same time this began that my host had stopped selling shared hosting plans (which we are currently on) and began specializing solely in managed VPS and dedicated server solutions. It has been my gut feeling for quite a while now that they have been overcrowding all their remaining shared hosting customers until they could decide what to do with us, seeing as we didn't really fit into their business model any longer. Fortunately, it appears the situation is finally getting ready to improve, because as part of the move, they are also creating a new brand that focuses solely on shared hosting services. I am hopeful we will see an immediate improvement in site performance when this migration is completed.

At the same time all this is going on, I am now strongly considering moving the site off shared hosting and onto a VPS. So serious in fact, that I bought a VPS yesterday and already have a clone of the forums up and running on it. For those who do not know what any of this means, a VPS (Virtual Private Server) is essentially a virtual machine that runs on a shared physical server, but emulates a dedicated one. Each VPS has its own operating system, usually a linux flavor of the customer's choice, and specific portions of RAM & CPU are allocated to each VPS instance separately. Consequently, other customer accounts on the same physical server as us are severely limited in their ability to affect the load times of our site, and overall performance should be much more consistent. The only downside is that with an unmanaged VPS (like I am considering), all of the server setup and maintenance (including the installation of required services like Apache, PHP & MySQL) are my responsibility. Initial setup of the VPS I bought yesterday was a piece of cake, but I have only moderate experience with linux and am unfamiliar with the best practices that admins should perform to adequately secure a web server. This is my only concern at the moment. Over the next several weeks I intend to do a lot of testing to gauge whether or not I am up to the challenge of maintaining a server like this for the foreseeable future.

Now here is where things get a little more interesting. All this change has got me thinking about the long-term security of the site, and I've begun considering changing the forum software we are running as well. The problem? The version of vBulletin we are running is ancient and riddled with security vulnerabilities that I have admittedly fallen way behind on patching. I looked at upgrading, but unfortunately my vBulletin.com account expired years ago, and even if I still had access to upgrades, the vBulletin product has been so horribly ruined over the past several years--first by a parent company change, and then by subsequent mismanagement--that it's not even a viable option anymore. So with no upgrade path, and the ever increasing risk of exploits, I've been looking at alternatives. The one that I fancy at the moment is xenForo, which is actually lead by the same developers responsible for the version of vBulletin that we are running now. It will be a huge challenge though to not just import all the user accounts and threads, but also redesign the layout (which is overdue for a refresh anyway) and rewrite all the custom 3DMM integration I've done.

So the question I raise to you guys is, how does all of this sound to you? What kind of forum features do you think I should consider adding? What type of changes do you want in a new layout, if any? And lastly, is there anyone who can offer me advice for administering a VPS running linux?

05-04-2014, 04:32 PM	#1
Space Goat Administrator Join Date: Sep 2001 Posts: 6,042	New Host and Possible Forum Upgrades This is to let you guys know that sometime later this month (not exactly sure on the date yet), my host is going to be moving this site to a new server and datacenter. Over the past couple years, many of you have probably noticed some degradation in site load times and overall performance. I noticed around the same time this began that my host had stopped selling shared hosting plans (which we are currently on) and began specializing solely in managed VPS and dedicated server solutions. It has been my gut feeling for quite a while now that they have been overcrowding all their remaining shared hosting customers until they could decide what to do with us, seeing as we didn't really fit into their business model any longer. Fortunately, it appears the situation is finally getting ready to improve, because as part of the move, they are also creating a new brand that focuses solely on shared hosting services. I am hopeful we will see an immediate improvement in site performance when this migration is completed. At the same time all this is going on, I am now strongly considering moving the site off shared hosting and onto a VPS. So serious in fact, that I bought a VPS yesterday and already have a clone of the forums up and running on it. For those who do not know what any of this means, a VPS (Virtual Private Server) is essentially a virtual machine that runs on a shared physical server, but emulates a dedicated one. Each VPS has its own operating system, usually a linux flavor of the customer's choice, and specific portions of RAM & CPU are allocated to each VPS instance separately. Consequently, other customer accounts on the same physical server as us are severely limited in their ability to affect the load times of our site, and overall performance should be much more consistent. The only downside is that with an unmanaged VPS (like I am considering), all of the server setup and maintenance (including the installation of required services like Apache, PHP & MySQL) are my responsibility. Initial setup of the VPS I bought yesterday was a piece of cake, but I have only moderate experience with linux and am unfamiliar with the best practices that admins should perform to adequately secure a web server. This is my only concern at the moment. Over the next several weeks I intend to do a lot of testing to gauge whether or not I am up to the challenge of maintaining a server like this for the foreseeable future. Now here is where things get a little more interesting. All this change has got me thinking about the long-term security of the site, and I've begun considering changing the forum software we are running as well. The problem? The version of vBulletin we are running is ancient and riddled with security vulnerabilities that I have admittedly fallen way behind on patching. I looked at upgrading, but unfortunately my vBulletin.com account expired years ago, and even if I still had access to upgrades, the vBulletin product has been so horribly ruined over the past several years--first by a parent company change, and then by subsequent mismanagement--that it's not even a viable option anymore. So with no upgrade path, and the ever increasing risk of exploits, I've been looking at alternatives. The one that I fancy at the moment is xenForo, which is actually lead by the same developers responsible for the version of vBulletin that we are running now. It will be a huge challenge though to not just import all the user accounts and threads, but also redesign the layout (which is overdue for a refresh anyway) and rewrite all the custom 3DMM integration I've done. So the question I raise to you guys is, how does all of this sound to you? What kind of forum features do you think I should consider adding? What type of changes do you want in a new layout, if any? And lastly, is there anyone who can offer me advice for administering a VPS running linux?