Perhaps I'm putting the cart before the horse, but I would like to place as little time as possible in setting up the server, then don't mind spending as much time as it takes to make the forum successful, and as it grows, then expand to the more expensive, better suited plans to accommodate the bandwidth, etc. That's the game plan anyway.
One thing that concerns me a little bit, is I don't want to go too cheap, and have various problems with the server which could occur I guess using the old time adage of "you get what you pay for." However I don't wish to overspend either, wasting money on bandwidth, etc that won't be used. In the beginning, I think I will have room for error because most of the new members I will already personally know. The major concern is finally getting high up on Google search, then if the website goes down or whatever for too long, any potential new members who do not know how "wonderful" is the forum, would see that and possibly never go back to it again.
The worst thing would be a hacker attack, in my opinion. For example, it's not a XenForo forum, but there is a forum out there, I think it's probably free software forum, in which I was a member for about a month, some years ago. Then one day I logon, and it totally froze up my computer with one of those ads saying to click on this link to remove the malware. Of course I did not click the link, we all know what would have happened, and fortunately I was experienced enough to know how to do a safe mode startup, then a system restore to remove the malware, but nevertheless it did scare the crap out of me. I will never click on that forum again, even though I really liked it. Actually back then I thought it was the website that got hacked, but learned later that it was actually likely the server is what got hacked. I'm figuring a large company such as godaddy, getting hacked is less likely to happen versus a small server. But then again perhaps it's more likely to happen because they are so big, hackers might be more attracted to them verses a smaller server. Oh well, I sure have got a lot to learn, and frankly, I believe I will enjoy the ride even though I fully expect some bumps in the road.
