Anyone else getting tons of messages from their hosting provider always pressuring to upsell hosting plans…?

Wildcat Media said:
It's not just members of your forum--search bots have been known to hammer sites and drive up resource usage substantially. I had an issue last week where a bot from China was hitting a busy forum so hard that when we figured out what was happening and blocked them in the firewall, the visitor count dropped by 1500 in a matter of about 10-15 minutes. Our host saw many bursts of accesses all at once, which was nearly causing us a denial of service attack. (It's a site we have not yet set up to use with Cloudflare.)

It's in the terms of shared hosting agreements that resource usage be within a certain amount. That said, they are not really suitable for something as resource intensive as a forum, especially when traffic ticks upward. Decades ago when I was on shared hosting, I occasionally had sites taken offline due to abnormally high resource usage. It was not pressure to upgrade--it was simply to keep our shared server neighbors from suffering the loads of one customer (us). So they are well within their right to suspend service, especially when the load of one site affects all the other customer sites on the same server.

Some shared hosts offer more generous allowances. I admin a really busy forum that runs on a dedicated server but otherwise, I run a group of sites and forums across three Droplets at Digital Ocean. So I really can't help recommending another host to move to.
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No worries thank you for your advice about the bots etc if anything the resource problem is bots since less than 10 members are active on our forum🍻
 
thegx.ca/forum said:
No worries thank you for your advice about the bots etc if anything the resource problem is bots since less than 10 members are active on our forum🍻
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Now that I think back, a lot of my issues on shared hosting were caused by bots as well. Sadly we can't do much about them, and on shared hosting it is sometimes difficult to block those bots.
 
One thing I had at our shared host was access to Apache configuration files. In other words, I could deny access to blocks of IP addresses in the .htaccess file in our site's directory. It does still put a bit of a load on Apache, but much less of a load than having XenForo render pages.

If your host has something similar, that might be a way to do it. But you would have to look through server logs to see which IPs are hitting the hardest, and trace them back to the company that operates them.
 
Wildcat Media said:
One thing I had at our shared host was access to Apache configuration files. In other words, I could deny access to blocks of IP addresses in the .htaccess file in our site's directory. It does still put a bit of a load on Apache, but much less of a load than having XenForo render pages.

If your host has something similar, that might be a way to do it. But you would have to look through server logs to see which IPs are hitting the hardest, and trace them back to the company that operates them.
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Ok I’ll look through all that thanks again🙂
 
thegx.ca/forum said:
I hate cloudfare sites personally they block me too because of the VPN I’m using…I’m using ProtonVPN but I’m pretty sure most VPNs have same problems…
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Most VPNs do not have this problem. I have never had my VPN blocked in the many years I've been using it. Nor any of those that some corporate clients have asked me to use.

Besides, you don't need to use a VPN to connect to your own server when you are using HTTPS connections. What are you trying to do, hide your origin IP from yourself?
Spying Conspiracy Theory GIF by DrSquatchSoapCo
 
MySiteGuy said:
Most VPNs do not have this problem. I have never had my VPN blocked in the many years I've been using it. Nor any of those that some corporate clients have asked me to use.

Besides, you don't need to use a VPN to connect to your own server when you are using HTTPS connections. What are you trying to do, hide your origin IP from yourself?
Spying Conspiracy Theory GIF by DrSquatchSoapCo
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Haha no I always have VPN on I never turn it off i was trying to goto other people websites that had cloudfare I don’t have cloudfare…
 
What I meant is you shouldn't have to worry about this with your own server. You have control over Cloudflare settings. By default Cloudflare is not going to block VPNs.

If you're been blocked by Cloudflare its not because Cloudflare doing this normally, but because the site has chosen to setup rules either blocking the country of the VPN exit node, or blocking VPNs completely.
 
thegx.ca/forum said:
Thanks man any suggestions on where I could move hosting to…? Which are reliable and inexpensive?
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You could just move to XF Cloud. It's not the super cheap you're looking for, but the smallest plan is $60 / month, the service is very responsive and it's extremely reliable - zero downtime in almost a year. It also removes all the hassle of running your own server. You just get to concentrate on the forum and you get the full suite with all the official add-ons, see the plans below.

xenforo.com

Get started with XenForo

Choose a solution to suit your needs
xenforo.com xenforo.com

Click on my NerdZone link in my siggy for a feel for how it runs.
 
I am using Bluehost for my Xenforo 2.2 forum. It was fine for over three years, now with 9 months still on the contract, they reduce the storage size from unlimited to 40GB. We use media so that brings us very close to the limit. And in the past week they messed up the dns, told me they don’t work with Cloudflare anymore, and make dns changes daily. We have been down almost 100 hours in 5 days and their support basically does nothing. They put me with support techs halfway around the world so I have to wait a day for replies. They removed Cloudflare and removed the proxies I had with it. I feel exposed and with the site such a mess and super slow when I can get connected, I chose to just move. I signed up with dreamhost. They have a 97 day money back guarantee. They also guarantee uptime, which Bluehost does not! I haven’t told Bluehost I am moving the forum yet. I will be copying the files and database tonight.
Now the trackers I’ve used say my website is giving 301 errors. That is not good!

Now my question. Has anyone ever done a move of their forum quickly? I realize there may be some redirects needed, etc, but is it really as straight forward as it sounds?
 
Oh yes, and Bluehost has a selection of upgrades and add ons I can buy on a monthly increase that they say will fix my problems.
 
KL_D said:
I am using Bluehost for my Xenforo 2.2 forum. It was fine for over three years, now with 9 months still on the contract, they reduce the storage size from unlimited to 40GB. We use media so that brings us very close to the limit. And in the past week they messed up the dns, told me they don’t work with Cloudflare anymore, and make dns changes daily. We have been down almost 100 hours in 5 days and their support basically does nothing. They put me with support techs halfway around the world so I have to wait a day for replies. They removed Cloudflare and removed the proxies I had with it. I feel exposed and with the site such a mess and super slow when I can get connected, I chose to just move. I signed up with dreamhost. They have a 97 day money back guarantee. They also guarantee uptime, which Bluehost does not! I haven’t told Bluehost I am moving the forum yet. I will be copying the files and database tonight.
Now the trackers I’ve used say my website is giving 301 errors. That is not good!

Now my question. Has anyone ever done a move of their forum quickly? I realize there may be some redirects needed, etc, but is it really as straight forward as it sounds?
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Yes i've had to do this with AWS because they were ripping me off.
The place i was actually with had suspended my services when i was fully paid up.
So i moved to Namecheap and never looked back
 
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@KL_D Bluehost sound like a bunch of crooks. You're well shot of them.

btw, XenForo use Vultr for their cloud products, so you might want to look at them to create your own hosting. They offer a similar service to AWS, but are cheaper and really good. I've been on cloud for about a year and it's been bulletproof, with no downtime. You may also want to look at XF Cloud, but be aware that you will lose all server access, something which I miss.
 
FTL said:
@KL_D Bluehost sound like a bunch of crooks. You're well shot of them.

btw, XenForo use Vultr for their cloud products, so you might want to look at them to create your own hosting. They offer a similar service to AWS, but are cheaper and really good. I've been on cloud for about a year and it's been bulletproof, with no downtime. You may also want to look at XF Cloud, but be aware that you will lose all server access, something which I miss.
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Thank you. I will check that out.
Now Bluehost wants to change my website ip address because they say it is wrong. It will take another 48 hours to propegate. i have had The same ip for over three years, now it need changing after being down for a total of more than 100 hours in less than a week.
I am at a loss of what to do other than move. I did a backup of the website and i am gathering information on how to move the website to another provider.
 
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