Moving UK host to UK shared or VPS - Suggestions ?

C

cjwinternet

Active member
We're currently based on a VPS in the UK. We've been given potential notice to leave because they want everyone using there own in-house management software rather than plesk or cpanel. While this isn't a major issue in itself, it does force our hand a bit because it's just so expensive anyway.

The forum has about 275,000 posts, 45,000 threads and 85,000 members. It has approximately 14,000+ page views a day.

Most of the resource (storage and bandwidth) is pictures which are currently on an external CDN. The CDN in the last 30 days served 692GB of data, 142GB of storage, and stores 1,843,188 images.

It's all getting a bit expensive, and we want to move to a cheaper and less complicated solution. It's here we don't quite know what to do.

We're after a cheap, capable shared hosting or VPS hosting with loads of storage and a daily backup with no restrictions on bandwidth, processes etc. Must be fit for purpose for running the forum.

I was after your suggestions please.

Cheers

Chris
 
I would think you can get away with a pretty cheap VPS if you offload your images to s3. Put cloudfront in front of the bucket, and put cloudflare in front of that to cache and enable workers at cloudflare to cache-control.

I can post more details if this seems interesting.
 
So, i went from a $250/m dedicated box to a $50/m vps by doing this image offload. AWS charges are around $7. i use cloudflare free so no cost there. Backups used to take 6 hours, now take 45 seconds. Everything is better with attachments offloaded to s3.

for size context, 75k members, 1.4 mil posts. not as active as it used to be so a lot of that activity is old, but still gets google guests. images are 25gb stored.

1) use the s3 plugin here in the resources area. https://xenforo.com/community/resou...or-amazon-s3-for-file-storage-in-xf-2-1.6805/
2) setup your bucket correctly for access. this was a trial and error process for me. see my quoted posts in the s3 addon thread.
3) enable cloudfront and point the origin to your bucket
4) create a cname on your dns or cloudflare for the bucket to be something like cdn.yourdomain.com and point it to the cloudfront.net url
5) if you have ssl issues, you may need to create CAA records (DNS only) for 'issue' and 'issuewild' for the following domains: amazontrust.com amazon.com awstrust.com amazonaws.com
6) create a page rule in cloudflare to allow caching of the attachments. If you care about privacy (eg, attachments in private forums being public accessible) don't do this but it negates most of the benefit of cloudflare to cache at the edge.
Code: 
yourdomain.com/attachments/*
Browser Cache TTL: a month, Cache Level: Cache Everything, Edge Cache TTL: a month
Enabled
 
Last edited:
I should also add -- install an image optimizer first. I used themehouse plugin and use resmush.it API service. I used the local hosted options for a bit but the api is just as fast and keeps the load off my server. It reduced my images by 75% in size and 40% cost reduction on s3.

I did it on s3, which was stupid. i should have done it locally first, then moved the images up. that conversion day was $20 itself :D
 
cjwinternet said:
We've been given potential notice to leave because they want everyone using there own in-house management software rather than plesk or cpanel. While this isn't a major issue in itself, it does force our hand a bit because it's just so expensive anyway.
Click to expand...

Is this Nimbus? I've had the same, less than 2 months notice to upgrade or leave. Awful service. Their lowest new package is £30+ a month and I am sure there's faster and cheaper out there.
 
briansol said:
So, i went from a $250/m dedicated box to a $50/m vps by doing this image offload. AWS charges are around $7. i use cloudflare free so no cost there. Backups used to take 6 hours, now take 45 seconds. Everything is better with attachments offloaded to s3.

for size context, 75k members, 1.4 mil posts. not as active as it used to be so a lot of that activity is old, but still gets google guests. images are 25gb stored.

1) use the s3 plugin here in the resources area. https://xenforo.com/community/resou...or-amazon-s3-for-file-storage-in-xf-2-1.6805/
2) setup your bucket correctly for access. this was a trial and error process for me. see my quoted posts in the s3 addon thread.
3) enable cloudfront and point the origin to your bucket
4) create a cname on your dns or cloudflare for the bucket to be something like cdn.yourdomain.com and point it to the cloudfront.net url
5) if you have ssl issues, you may need to create CAA records (DNS only) for 'issue' and 'issuewild' for the following domains: amazontrust.com amazon.com awstrust.com amazonaws.com
6) create a page rule in cloudflare to allow caching of the attachments. If you care about privacy (eg, attachments in private forums being public accessible) don't do this but it negates most of the benefit of cloudflare to cache at the edge.
Code: 
yourdomain.com/attachments/*
Browser Cache TTL: a month, Cache Level: Cache Everything, Edge Cache TTL: a month
Enabled
Click to expand...
I done exactly this and its flawless, saved a fortune on storage costs.

I used Wasabi for the storage due to the free bandwidth offering between cloudflare and Wasabi (You can only use the same amount of bandwidth as your storage, so if you’ve paid for 1TB of storage you can only use the same amount in bandwidth) and then you leverage the use of Cloudflares CDN offering enhancing your users experience and protecting your website.


If you need any help in getting this setup just message me and I’ll be happy to help.
 
I should also mention that Since i host on Vultr, i'm in the free Egress category as well. It's one of the reasons i chose to host there.
 
I’m in the US, but this company is based out of London and currently running a sale. I just happened to stumble across them and the best hosting company and support that I’ve ever had.

verpex.com

Web Hosting Services - Secure, Fast And Easy To Use | Verpex

Web Hosting services made for amazing speed, perfect security and 24/7 Expert Support. From Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting to Dedicated servers .
verpex.com verpex.com
 
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