What OS to use, when installing xenforo?

F

farber

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I want to install xenforo on my vps but I am not sure of what OS to use and what panel I should go with.
Right now my vps is on centos 7 and I want to go with VestaCP but I don't know if it's good.
Any recommendations?
 
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The only way to run a forum unless it has little traffic is on a CentMinMod CentOS7 Server (VPS or Dedicated) in my humble opinion.....

By forum I mean XenForo, vB, Invision or other....

As for difficulty, after running cPanel servers for many years and having various bits fall over with updates, Contacting cPanel with support tickets, CMM is far far easier with less hiccups and the support is far superior, combine that with a decent VPS provider (I use Vultr and Hetzner) with snapshots and automated backups and the ability to clone a server to another, its really the only way... The other thing is the cost of cPanel which has escalated in recent years astronomically when they got taken over...

And by far the best way to run the email server (again in my humble opnion after many years) is to offload this from your forum server and either outsource it (No point me listing them when CMM has a list here ) - My personal choice that I use is Namecheaps PrivateMail paid for facility which works out pretty cheap or run a cPanel server for the emails.

The beauty of a separate server for the emails is is the forum goes down or is taken offline the mail still works and vice versa...

Letsencrypt SSL is a breeze to set up and use on CMM.....

And Nginx is a totally great web server, after coming from 15 years of Apache it was fairly easy to pick up...

I had to buy a license just to be able to make this post 😆
 
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Muddy Boots said:
I had to buy a license just to be able to make this post 😆
Click to expand...
wow, that IS dedication! Much appreciated :)

briansol said:
The doubts are within myself and my time/commitment i have these days to learn it and be comfortable running it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Centmin Mod isn't for everyone. The key is to remove the barrier of fear of messing up and using a test hourly VPS server as the best way to just get a feel and learn the ropes in your schedule/time without touching your live sites yet. Getting Started Guide after initial install should help. If you want more advanced install steps, they can be found on the official blog at https://blog.centminmod.com/2019/07/15/117/centmin-mod-advanced-customised-installation-guide/. My signature link has a specific guide for Xenforo 2.

I created Centmin Mod for performance after 20yrs of optimizing forum clients' servers on vBulletin and Xenforo. FYI, ~10% of the largest Xenforo forums actually run on Centmin Mod LEMP stack CentOS 7 servers https://community.centminmod.com/th...p-powers-10-of-xenforos-largest-forums.16435/. As do many high traffic non-forum sites https://blog.centminmod.com/2021/10/18/2622/http-archives-core-web-vital-technology-report/ :D

briansol said:
cpanel is easy/autopilot for me these days. yes, it's almost as much as my server. 25 for the server and 20 for the cpanel license a month and it is on my list to do for cost reduction efforts to keep my dying-niche forum alive a little bit longer (eg, profitable).
Click to expand...

I can relate. 99% of my servers are now Centmin Mod based saving me an equivalent of US$65,000+ per year in cPanel license fees :D I've been a cPanel user for ~16yrs and some of how they configure stuff has rubbed off on my Centmin Mod development i.e. main hostname vs site domains. Centmin Mod was started in 2011 as a fork of the original Centmin Mod so ~10yrs of part-time work on the side.

But on topic, as to OS to use for Xenforo, my advice is to use whichever OS you're most comfortable with. It's not what you use that matters but how you use it. I use CentOS/RPM distros as I know them like the back of my hand. So if you're not sure which OS to use, try each one and see which you have a better feel for.
 
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I would either stay with Centos 7 for the time being (do not change to Centos 8 or wait until it's more clear how Centos 8 stream will work), or use Debian. Both of these are the most stable for hosting.
I don't know VestaCP, we're using cPanel and Directadmin for hosting. Directadmin has a ver nice personal license nowadays, cost only $24 a year and you have 1 admin account and 10 domains (so -not- 10 user accounts), which is very good for hobby stuff.
Ubuntu is popular for at home, but is based on Debian and Ubuntu is not really good supported by panels so I would stick to Centos or Debian.
 
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It may be intimidating in the beginning but the default is pretty darn good really.

And the basics are really simple. A default CentOS 7 install and running one specific script...
 
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I've been running Ubuntu LTS (started with 18.04, migrated to 20.04, and will be migrating to 22.04 in the future) since March 2019, and have zero issues. Very stable and exceedingly well supported, and with a certain, long-term roadmap. Highly recommend Ubuntu.
 
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If the Xenforo on the server is not only supposed to be fun for leisure, to be able to cope with high loads and to be operated with relatively little administrative effort

Ubuntu root server installation with Plesk as admin panel. I haven't used anything less complicated.
But that alone is not enough.
You should plan for a large forum with at least 32GB Ram, better from 64GB up. The CPU should not be chosen too weak either, 8 cores/16 threads make the server really fun. If you then configure MariaBD (~10.7) correctly and use SSD as hard disk, there is no longer any "bottleneck".

PS: Never neglect backups!
 
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Masetrix said:
If the Xenforo on the server is not only supposed to be fun for leisure, to be able to cope with high loads and to be operated with relatively little administrative effort

Ubuntu root server installation with Plesk as admin panel. I haven't used anything less complicated.
But that alone is not enough.
You should plan for a large forum with at least 32GB Ram, better from 64GB up. The CPU should not be chosen too weak either, 8 cores/16 threads make the server really fun. If you then configure MariaBD (~10.7) correctly and use SSD as hard disk, there is no longer any "bottleneck".

PS: Never neglect backups!
Click to expand...
Those specs for a new site are wayyyyyyyyyyy too much; many sites don't even get to the point where they're active enough to need 8-16GB after a year or two. Even most medium sites don't need that much.

Plesk Migration is simple enough to use, so they can easily just migrate to a larger server from a VPS or something when needed.
 
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The amount of memory can be matched by the database size so the entire db can be run from memory.
But that is a nice to have and not mandatory.

In practice I tend to agree with @Forsaken. For most forums 4-8gb should be enough.

It's like what men with small eh...penii say: It's not the size that matters but what you do with it.

A tuned vps (like Centminmod) with 4gb will perform better compared to a default Ubuntu vps with 8gb.
 
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