Xenforo moving from namecheap shared to digital ocean, aws or?

[Artonn]

Hi. So I'm quite new in this field, and trying to find the best and cheapest solution to host my xenforo forum in an optimal place.

I've come around issues with my emails landing in spam, and my website sometimes getting the error "XF\Db\Exception: Too many connections ", and come to realize that perhaps it's a better idea to run on a vps or some kind of cloud solution. There's also been some plugins I couldn't use because I was unable to install things like pngquant.

So I'm just seeking advice on where to start? I've heard good things about DigitalOcean and the prices won't be crazy. I was hoping to maximum pay a 50 usd a month. So far I know I need something I can run some type of linux on, storage and am mail service kinda like SES from AWS. And maybe somekind of mysql database, which is either just hosted on the cloud/vps or a seperate service. I'm not sure on what would be the best.

I'm also interested in know how I can move my forum from a shared hosting(currently using namecheap stellar plus) to the new "place" in safe and smooth manner.

Thank you.

 

[Jja]

Yeah I believe this is an issue in most places, and the solution would be SES or some other kind of mail service. SES probably remaining free for me for a couple of years as I'm not sending 1000 of mails out a month, mostly and max a 100.

Where do you host a dedicated server for 32 usd a month? I need mine to be hosted in amsterdam or frankfurt

Why bother with dedi when you have roughly 1k visitors per month at this moment?
You can easily run in Hetzner cloud for ~5eur/month, located in Nuremberg and Falkenstein and use SES for mail.

 

[Artonn]

Why bother with dedi when you have roughly 1k visitors per month at this moment?
You can easily run in Hetzner cloud for ~5eur/month, located in Nuremberg and Falkenstein and use SES for mail.

I'm going with a vps at digitalocean, about the same price. Just wanted to hear more about it.

 

[fly]

Anything I should be prepared for when moving from apache to nginx ?

nginx doesn't support .htaccess. Instead it has its own system. And of course the vhost setup is different.

 

[Artonn]

nginx doesn't support .htaccess. Instead it has its own system. And of course the vhost setup is different.

Alright so it seems like a fairly simple upgrade, once I feel like doing it.

 

[⭐ Alex ⭐]

I’ve ran into problems with my digital ocean droplets being blocked by most email providers

Is that still the case if you're sending via SES? I would think Amazon gets in trouble for bounced emails, not you. Thus why amazon threatens to block you if your bounce rate is too high because it's their reputation on the line.

 

[TPerry]

Is that still the case if you're sending via SES?

I doubt it.. Digital Ocean ASN's are blocked by a LOT of large MTA services due to the history of their cheap VPS offerings and spammers spinning up a VPS instance fo ra month or so (until it gets blocked and the instance removed - but damage already done).
LiNode and the other cheap VPS providers are not any better. OVH is WELL known for having their IP's blocked for this also.
Even Amazon SES can get hit with it... they are better about catching it though, but it still prangs their shared IP's frequently.


But even with that, I still get delivery to Hotmail and such.

 

[⭐ Alex ⭐]

But with SES you authenticate with an access key linked to your account. There's absolutely no reason I can find to believe aws would be blanket banning IPs when you need to generate an access key in your account in the first place. That just wouldn't make sense.

 

[TPerry]

But with SES you authenticate with an access key linked to your account. There's absolutely no reason I can find to believe aws would be blanket banning IPs when you need to generate an access key in your account in the first place. That just wouldn't make sense.

SES doesn't "blanket ban" IP's for their sending transactional emails... now, how they do their blacklisting for receiving, I don't know as I don't use them as I have cheaper providers for that and I usually don't send from those emails.
Generally... the issue is not the sending MTA blocking IP's... it's the recipient MTA blocking. Then you have MickeySoft, who uses some public data points, but they also have their own "secrete sauce" on how they block..... and getting a DO/LiNode/Cheap VPS provider IP unblocked from them can be very problematic.
That image I posted was a testing site that can show your info on your sent transactional emails... the SES IP is listed in the SORBS list, which can cause deliverability issues... but I haven't had any.

 

[Korsch]

Is that still the case if you're sending via SES? I would think Amazon gets in trouble for bounced emails, not you. Thus why amazon threatens to block you if your bounce rate is too high because it's their reputation on the line.

I just found with all these cheap VPS company you have an extremely hard time with SMTP. As mentioned before it’s not the mail being sent out as I ran a few test and mail will leave my end but it never get to the destination. I only recommended a Dedi because it gives me all the options a DO droplet offers plus I get dedicated everything, I’m not sharing resources with any other spin up. It was my best option for the price that would allow me to scale up and also had mail options. Of course go the route of having SES but I just didn’t want the headache of migration at a later date with my services sprawled out over even a few providers.

I’m not an expert I just do this as a hobby so I don’t like headaches lol.

 

[Helmuts]

If you have a limited budget, I would likely recommend Contabo to you. They offer a minimal VPS for only 5 euros with the following specifications:

• 4 vCPU Cores
• 8 GB RAM
• 200 GB SSD

However, in your place, I would also consider purchasing DigitalOcean Spaces for an additional $5 and create a combination of Contabo and Spaces for $10 per month.

You need to be careful with Contabo. They were heavily used by email marketers and most of their IP blocks are blacklisted (not just individual addresses > the whole blocks). >> this means > you will need a 3rd party smtp server for sending your system emails for these to get delivered to inboxes not spam.

[screenshot].. My personal experience with them last year:


.. Contabo is a very solid brand, I am sure they will sort this out with time.

Worth trying > in the worst scenario you will get the refund (very decent company).

 

[CedricV]

You need to be careful with Contabo. They were heavily used by email marketers and most of their IP blocks are blacklisted (not just individual addresses > the whole blocks). >> this means > you will need a 3rd party smtp server for sending your system emails for these to get delivered to inboxes not spam.

[screenshot].. My personal experience with them last year:
View attachment 305152

.. Contabo is a very solid brand, I am sure they will sort this out with time.

Worth trying > in the worst scenario you will get the refund (very decent company).

I think this has already been long resolved. My IP isn't blacklisted from Contabo.

 

[lanbin]

It seems to me that this is a problem with all providers. Today, I had to deploy 20 servers on DigitalOcean to find a clean IP address and then delete all the unnecessary ones.

 

[Artonn]

Just use a real email provider like SES and stop worrying about that stuff.

Agree that's what I ended up doing. No issues with emails anymore.

 

[Ernomies]

I think this has already been long resolved. My IP isn't blacklisted from Contabo.

I tried this out.

Still blacklisted on Outlook/Hotmail like I have been for several years.

 

[Artonn]

You mean LEMP, right?!?!

I chose LAMP lol, I know apache and I guess moving over to nginx won't be a big issue, if the need arises some day.