XenForo Cloud discussion

From the most recent email:

Now that XenForo Cloud has been up and running for a while, we are ready to start accepting migrations of existing forum sites onto our fully-managed, hosted platform.

Sites on XenForo Cloud have all the features and functionality of those that are self-hosted, including third-party add-ons.

I'm going to have to get in touch. I don't know if we would fit a Business level account (over 25 million posts, 2,000+ online during peak hours, etc.). We are at a crossroads where we are somewhat outgrowing our current managed hosting solution. Their service has been good over the past 18 years, but upgrades are prohibitively expensive, especially since ownership changed a few years ago. I've looked at doing my own setup at another host I use (unmanaged) which gives me a lot of flexibility, yet with XF's cloud service, those customizations would not even be necessary anymore. We do have a WordPress site as a front page for the site owner's business, but that can be hosted anywhere cheaply, or I could redo the site using XF's pages and some kind of portal.

I have maybe 15-20 addons I have written, but just about all are for custom template changes. I would guess those shouldn't cause a problem once you've had a look at them.

I'll have to get in touch, since we'll need to make a decision soon.
 
Yeah please feel free to get in touch.

The most significant aspects of deciding an appropriate plan would be the number of monthly page views (Google analytics or similar should help) and the total disk space used by your database and data and internal_data directories.
 
I just left a message. 👍 Our data storage will fit a Business plan, but pageviews are way beyond the allowances. I'll be interested to see what we come up with.
 
Curious what softwares/services/versions does XF cloud use?
  • PHP 8.0 or 8.1 ?
  • Nginx 1.21.x or 1.20.x ?
  • Nginx Modules ? like pagespeed, brotli, etc.
  • Mysql 5.x or 8.x or MariaDB 10.x
  • Redis or Memcached
  • Centos 7, 8, or Ubuntu LTS 20 or 22
 
I just left a message. 👍 Our data storage will fit a Business plan, but pageviews are way beyond the allowances. I'll be interested to see what we come up with.
I've had a ticket open discussing our package, and I have to say that based on other managed hosting solutions I have looked at, including our current host, XF Cloud's pricing is very competitive, plus it has the strength of being configured and optimized for XenForo usage. I've used my current host since 1997, and got the first dedicated server for vB3 in 2004 for one of the busiest of the forums--they are a managed hosting company, but we have to pay any time we want something custom installed, and making configuration changes results in a day or two of back and forth messaging, and scheduling the change, before it goes into effect. Since XF Cloud is already optimized, I'd no longer need to deal with that.

My ultimate preference is for a cloud hosting environment where I could set up my own servers, but since uptime and good performance are very important for this one forum project, it is worth the extra money to ensure we have good uptime.
 
Curious what softwares/services/versions does XF cloud use?
  • PHP 8.0 or 8.1 ?
  • Nginx 1.21.x or 1.20.x ?
  • Nginx Modules ? like pagespeed, brotli, etc.
  • Mysql 5.x or 8.x or MariaDB 10.x
  • Redis or Memcached
  • Centos 7, 8, or Ubuntu LTS 20 or 22

Our specific "mix" isn't something I imagine we would release given the significant time we spent benchmarking not only individual parts of the stack but combos on them also. As well as assessing them for long term support, frequency of errors, ease of troubleshooting, ease of deployment, ease of upgrades etc and then on top of that how they interact with our customer portal and deployment/management servers. Ultimately what works for us may not be for you.

However in general, whatever stack of modern softwares you use will be blazing fast for xenforo so go with what you are happy to admin and maintain :)
 
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Wondering the following things:
  1. Is there access to daily backup?
  2. Can we use our own add-ons?
  3. Is there phpMyAdmin or similar access to database?
  4. How does upgrade to the new XF version work? Is there some test environment available?
  5. Is it possible to see some forum based in Frankfurt to check it out?
 
Is there access to daily backup?
Backups are automated and taken daily but there is no access to them.
A backup could be provided on request - for creating a local copy, or moving to another provider, for example.

Can we use our own add-ons?
Yes.

Is there phpMyAdmin or similar access to database?
No.

Is there some test environment available?
Not currently but it has been discussed.

Is it possible to see some forum based in Frankfurt to check it out?
We can't give out details of customer sites so someone running a Cloud instance in Frankfurt would have to let you know.
 
24/7 access to daily backup is something that we absolutely need. Are there any plans for this?

What happens when some add-on creates issues, is it possible to turn it off somehow?

How to compare cloud instance vs. dedicated server without example website?

If somethings goes wrong, is there support available to restore things from the backup?

What does "priority support" exactly mean in case of any technical incident?
 
Are there any plans for this?
Not that I'm aware of but @Kier or @Chris D can confirm.

What happens when some add-on creates issues, is it possible to turn it off somehow?
If you can't access the ACP you would need to submit a ticket so we can edit the config.php file to disable listeners.

How to compare cloud instance vs. dedicated server without example website?
Unless you have an exact replication of the site and traffic, you wouldn't be able to do a comparison anyway.
It would require those who have moved from dedicated to cloud to show stats of before and after.

If somethings goes wrong, is there support available to restore things from the backup?
Yes - that's what part of the fully managed aspect of the service entails.

What does "priority support" exactly mean in case of any technical incident?
It means that tickets and issues would be prioritised over others and managed until the issue was resolved (although turnaround for tickets is very fast anyway so you likely wouldn't notice much, if any, difference).
 
Not that I'm aware of but @Kier or @Chris D can confirm.
That's a deal breaker. We need to have access to our data whenever we want.

It means that tickets and issues would be prioritised over others and managed until the issue was resolved (although turnaround for tickets is very fast anyway so you likely wouldn't notice much, if any, difference).
In terms of time, is that 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 6 hours, etc?
 
24/7 access to daily backup is something that we absolutely need. Are there any plans for this?

What happens when some add-on creates issues, is it possible to turn it off somehow?
Partly answered over here:

I had to get used to this, having all the controls myself vs. fully managed, but that is what you pay for. If something breaks because of a bad add-on, XF will fix it. I also noticed that some (new) add-ons need to be reviewed before they can be installed. So there are some checks implemented. This review process usually takes a few minutes.
 
Your data is yours. Our current commitment is that the data will be provided if you decide to move away from XenForo Cloud.
What if a customer wants to maintain a separate staging copy of the live Xenforo Cloud hosted forums? They'd be able to get a copy of that data or is the data only available if they're moving off Xenforo Cloud?
 
Hi,
Very interested in your offer for my big forum… but :
  • I have to manage Ads.txt file on my server and I used to do that through FTP.
  • I have also a CMP platform installed and config on my server through ftp.
  • I have an .htaccess file for redirections setup on my server.

How do you adress these basic needs through your hosting solution?

Thanks
David
 
Uploading files for ads, etc. is something we can do for you.

Redirection is not an issue - many of our cloud customers have that implemented.

I have also a CMP platform installed and config on my server through ftp.
What is involved with the platform?
Does it require constant updating/changing via FTP?

Feel free to submit a ticket if you want to discuss in detail.
 
Hi Brogan.
Thanks for your quick reply.
I will study that on semester 2, I am interested in migrating before end of this year.
Will start that when having more time.
Thanks
David
 
That seems like it would require server software and configuration that isn’t available to cloud customers and not something we would be looking to provide so in all likelihood, probably not.
 
Thanks. Not sure if anyone has ideas on alternative methods for enabling such functionality (live chat, etc) without server configuration?
 
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