Server Location

[Cambion]

So on my forum I have a broad audience of people.

50-60% of my members are Euro based, there are some in Australia and New Zealand(About 3 percent) and then the rest of us(myself included) are located in the US or Canada. Although we now have members from Brazil.

Currently we are hosted with a host based in Chicago but I have noticed some complaints from my NZ members in regards to speed and load times. I was thinking of moving to the UK for my host.

What is a good place to host our site that would not be so restrictive and lessen load time and speed issues? And is there anything I could do to tweak this with my VPS?

 

[MattW]

You could always look at putting the site behind a CDN such as Cloudflare to help bring some of the static content closer to the end user?

 

[euantor]

UK isn't too bad, though ping across to the US will obviously be slightly slower. Honestly, I would try CloudFlare as advised above and see if it helps before going for a move.

 

[CTXMedia]

I use is Positive Internet in the UK - they're not cheap, but their support and technical knowledge is second to none and I've been a loyal customer now for 13 years.

For a truly worldwide audience though you'd probably benefit from a CDN as no matter where you place your server there will always be someone who's far away.

 

[Slavik]

Stick your server where ever it makes most of your customers happiest!

 

[WSWD]

Los Angeles is going to get you perhaps the best speeds to Australia/New Zealand, but will be slower for the European folks. If 50-60% of the users are in Europe, it would make the most sense to put the server there, though that will REALLY make the Aus/NZ folks dissatisfied.

 

[Cambion]

Alright, I decided to probably give the UK Host i am looking at a try. But I am going to add litespeed to my hosting package. That should help lessen load times with the Australian and NZ members correct? Or no?

You could always look at putting the site behind a CDN such as Cloudflare to help bring some of the static content closer to the end user?

Los Angeles is going to get you perhaps the best speeds to Australia/New Zealand, but will be slower for the European folks. If 50-60% of the users are in Europe, it would make the most sense to put the server there, though that will REALLY make the Aus/NZ folks dissatisfied.

Stick your server where ever it makes most of your customers happiest!

I use is Positive Internet in the UK - they're not cheap, but their support and technical knowledge is second to none and I've been a loyal customer now for 13 years.

For a truly worldwide audience though you'd probably benefit from a CDN as no matter where you place your server there will always be someone who's far away.

 

[WSWD]

Alright, I decided to probably give the UK Host i am looking at a try. But I am going to add litespeed to my hosting package. That should help lessen load times with the Australian and NZ members correct? Or no?

No, litespeed will do nothing to improve the speed for them. It will speed the server up in general, but the data still has to travel to the Australia/NZ folks, which is why the slowdown is happening in the first place. There is nothing you can do on the server itself to change that.