Xenforo moving from namecheap shared to digital ocean, aws or?

[Artonn]

Hi. So I'm quite new in this field, and trying to find the best and cheapest solution to host my xenforo forum in an optimal place.

I've come around issues with my emails landing in spam, and my website sometimes getting the error "XF\Db\Exception: Too many connections ", and come to realize that perhaps it's a better idea to run on a vps or some kind of cloud solution. There's also been some plugins I couldn't use because I was unable to install things like pngquant.

So I'm just seeking advice on where to start? I've heard good things about DigitalOcean and the prices won't be crazy. I was hoping to maximum pay a 50 usd a month. So far I know I need something I can run some type of linux on, storage and am mail service kinda like SES from AWS. And maybe somekind of mysql database, which is either just hosted on the cloud/vps or a seperate service. I'm not sure on what would be the best.

I'm also interested in know how I can move my forum from a shared hosting(currently using namecheap stellar plus) to the new "place" in safe and smooth manner.

Thank you.

 

[Artonn]

If you use Lightsail, bandwidth is included in the price (2TB if you use the $5 instance). I was referring to bandwidth inside AWS proper being 100GB.

AWS proper? like in using EC2 instance ?

 

[Suzanne O]

Try xf cloud mate

 

[lanbin]

If you have a limited budget, I would likely recommend Contabo to you. They offer a minimal VPS for only 5 euros with the following specifications:

• 4 vCPU Cores
• 8 GB RAM
• 200 GB SSD

However, in your place, I would also consider purchasing DigitalOcean Spaces for an additional $5 and create a combination of Contabo and Spaces for $10 per month.

 

[lanbin]

I suggest the protonmail Mail Essentials for business plan so that you can send and receive mail using your domain into your mailbox and XF can also send mail using SMTP.

For over 6 years, I have been using ProtonMail (Visionary), and only now have I learned from you about SMTP. Although I searched for it before and never found it, only ProtonMail Bridge. Thank you for the information. But the question arises, do they have limitations on the use of SMTP per hour, per day, per week, and so on?

....
I checked how Proton Mail's SMTP works, and the email quality, according to mail-tester, is 10 out of 10. This is quite good. However, there are some minor drawbacks, as it turns out. If there are users on your forum using Yandex and Mail.ru, they won't be able to receive emails and recover passwords; Russian services block Proton Mail. Still, there is a question regarding limitations. If my forum has 50k+ users, and I send out a newsletter, how well can Proton Mail handle this task? Will it start blocking SMTP sending?

 

[Miri]

I've come around issues with my emails landing in spam, and my website sometimes getting the error "XF\Db\Exception: Too many connections

I have the same hosting too. I experienced the same issues. It's okay for websites I use as a hobby, but I also have a site for a family business and I was always having problems with spam and Hotmail inboxes. In a way, I solved it by adding a dedicated IP address (because they offer this service even if you're on shared hosting). The situation has improved a lot, but Hotmail still occasionally blocks it.

 

[fly]

SES is free but not quite as intuitive as protonmail.

My advice: Just skip S3, and use https://xenforo.com/community/resources/digitalpoint-app-for-cloudflare®.8750/ because Cloudflare R2 is not only cheaper but gives you some free storage and AWS' permissions system is just complete nonsense. Cloudflare R2 your bucket either has a public domain and is public or it's private. AWS S3 was just a nightmare.

Why do you want to use lightsail? If you start using AWS' fancy offerings they will find ways to empty your wallet for nothing,

For example, if you want to use elastic beanstalk they try to force you to use a load balancer which is $15 per month by offering an easy SSL setup that way. Cloudfront also doesn't play nicely if you want to skip the load balancer because they wont connect to custom SSL certificates.
And their RDS database is also a mean $15 per month or so.

So yeah best to skip doing what they want you to and just setup manual ec2 instances if you're using aws and user cloudflare for R2 storage and CDN capabilities. Did I add that cloudfront wants you to pay for their WAF while cloudflare offers a free one?

Edit: It looks like lightsail is just a ribbon around all the ways you can empty your wallet on aws

Beanstalk is terrible and Cloudflare is awesome, we'll agree on that. But Lightsail is all he needs (or DO, doens't really matter). Certainly no need for an external RDS instance. And S3 permissions are super easy these days, just like R2.

edit: And SES is indeed awesome too.

 

[Artonn]

Beanstalk is terrible and Cloudflare is awesome, we'll agree on that. But Lightsail is all he needs (or DO, doens't really matter). Certainly no need for an external RDS instance. And S3 permissions are super easy these days, just like R2.

edit: And SES is indeed awesome too.

So what I am hearing is Lightsail/DigitalOcean, CloudFlare and SES/proton mail would be an very ideal solution for me.

already looking into using this extension

[DigitalPoint] App for Cloudflare®

Features Everything is available from within XenForo (you do not need to go to Cloudflare for things) via the Cloudflare API. This allows you give admins permission to do certain things (for example block IP addresses within Cloudflare without...

xenforo.com

 

[Artonn]

If you're comfortable with running your own server, get a droplet, install Centminmod, and go to town.

FWIW, if you start with AWS instead, you can pretty much get hosting free for a year with their Free Tier.
Disclosure: I'm an independent AWS consultant.

Is there a specific reason for going with Centminmod, compared to any other? currently I only see CentOS as a possible option.

 

[fly]

Is there a specific reason for going with Centminmod, compared to any other? currently I only see CentOS as a possible option.
View attachment 294075

Centminmod is maintained by the amazing @eva2000. It's something you install on top of CentOS 7, and now preferrably Alma or Rocky Linux.

CentminMod.com LEMP Fully Optimized Nginx web stack for CentOS

CentOS Nginx installer for LEMP web stack. Shell Menu based install and management for optimized Nginx, PHP-FPM and MariaDB MySQL performance fork

centminmod.com

 

[Artonn]

Centminmod is maintained by the amazing @eva2000. It's something you install on top of CentOS 7, and now preferrably Alma or Rocky Linux.

CentminMod.com LEMP Fully Optimized Nginx web stack for CentOS

CentOS Nginx installer for LEMP web stack. Shell Menu based install and management for optimized Nginx, PHP-FPM and MariaDB MySQL performance fork

centminmod.com

What would be special about using centminmod? compared to just running instead of just going with one of these on ubuntu. Also why Nginx over Apache?

 

[fly]

Cent is super fast and secure, easy to configure, and well designed/supported. But you absolutely could just select that.

 

[⭐ Alex ⭐]

Nginx was written specifically to address the performance limitations of Apache web servers.

 

[Artonn]

Thank you for all the responses guys!

I've decided to run with the digitalocean and the lamp package, cloudflare and their r2 for image storage and SES for mail service for now, since it's will probably remain free for me atm.

Anything I should prepare for, when moving my forum from namecheap shared hosting to digitalocean droplet?

 

[fly]

You mean LEMP, right?!?!

 

[Artonn]

You mean LEMP, right?!?!

I chose LAMP lol, I know apache and I guess moving over to nginx won't be a big issue, if the need arises some day.

 

[Korsch]

I’ve ran into problems with my digital ocean droplets being blocked by most email providers as there’s a high turn over rate with DO. Often bad actors using their service for spam stuff. You might end up with a black listed IP address and this would only further your email issue you’re having now. IIRC you can add a dedicated IP address and email support to ensure it’s whitelisted but idk if that’s within your budget. I personally moved away from DO and just run from a dedicated server which is running me $386 CAD/year or $32.25/month.

 

[Artonn]

I’ve ran into problems with my digital ocean droplets being blocked by most email providers as there’s a high turn over rate with DO. Often bad actors using their service for spam stuff. You might end up with a black listed IP address and this would only further your email issue you’re having now. IIRC you can add a dedicated IP address and email support to ensure it’s whitelisted but idk if that’s within your budget. I personally moved away from DO and just run from a dedicated server which is running me $386 CAD/year or $32.25/month.

Yeah I believe this is an issue in most places, and the solution would be SES or some other kind of mail service. SES probably remaining free for me for a couple of years as I'm not sending 1000 of mails out a month, mostly and max a 100.

Where do you host a dedicated server for 32 usd a month? I need mine to be hosted in amsterdam or frankfurt

 

[Korsch]

Where do you host a dedicated server for 32 usd a month? I need mine to be hosted in amsterdam or frankfurt

Im using OneProvider which I believe I read is just a reseller of OVH, Not 32 USD…32 CAD you’d be sitting at like 26 USD. I’m using an Advanced Series Xeon E3-1245 v2 which provides way more then enough resources for Xenforo and my control panel with plenty of room to scale

Amsterdam
Frankfurt

 

[fly]

I chose LAMP lol, I know apache and I guess moving over to nginx won't be a big issue, if the need arises some day.

There's a reason that NGINX is now the most used webserver.

 

[Artonn]

There's a reason that NGINX is now the most used webserver.

Anything I should be prepared for when moving from apache to nginx ?