XenForo with GoDaddy

Brian Mak

Member
Will all the features of XenForo such as email, addons, themes, etc. work with GoDaddy's Shared Linux Web Hosting. I am currently using the economy plan. Are there any special configuring I need to do to set up the emailing, addons, or themes with my host plan. GoDaddy claims to have put Exim as the MTA on the shared host.
 
Xenforo works well on shared hosting. Definitely want to configure the email for Xenforo, so users can get emails, but addons and themes you work with the software. Xenforo is pretty easy to install, once you get a license, and I would definitely go for it.
 
I plan on buying XenForo shortly. I would like to get away with the hosting as inexpensively as possible in the beginning. But of course I want to make sure it will work basically 100% well. I contacted godaddy, mentioned using the XenForo forum, and the chat representative recommended a $53.95 a month hosting plan. Of course the rep is going to oversell if possible. In your opinion is this $53.95 the dollar amount hosting plan I should begin with, or would a less expensive hosting plan adequately handle XenForo in the beginning. Naturally, if my forum takes off great, and the google clicks start coming in nicely, I won't mind the more expensive hosting plan upgrades.

Any other thoughts or possibilities recommended would be appreciated.

Thank you for the help - as always.
 
For 50+/mo you can get a dedicated server. Lol, they really suggested a 50$/mo shared hosting plan? You could even get a 1-5$ plan for shared hosting, which will work equally good as that of godaddy. Of course it depends on your location, your requirements etc.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=4

My first question on live chat at godaddy, was will the XenForo forum work well with godaddy. The immediate reply was "Definitely." I then asked for a suggested hosting plan, and he replied with the $53.95 offer suggestion. Perhaps it was my fault, maybe he assumed that I was transferring a XenForo forum from one server to another, and already had a lot of posts on the forum. I didn't mention that it was a new project.

I've read a number of the posts throughout this forum about godaddy, no real accolades, but no real intense dissatisfaction either it seems from the posts I read. I figure I will start out there, do it as inexpensively as possible, and then later perhaps step up to Nimbus VPS or some other if the forum does well, needs much more bandwidth, and if godaddy is not doing a satisfactory job. I figure godaddy is quite large, so they must be doing something right.

I've just registered the domain name, but haven't bought godaddy yet. I'll wait to see if there are any other replies here with any better suggestions, and if not I'll do as mentioned. Then right after that I am just going to purchase the XenForo license rather than do the demo. Since the demo info is not transferable, I don't want to put 3 days of hard work into it, only to have to repeat it. I looked at the list here of the top XenForo websites, quite impressive indeed, and that sold me on not really needing the demo. Besides, one of those forums on that list, I am a member of and I post on there, so as a forum member there, I am familiar with the XenForo member user format, and I really like it a lot.
 
For a new forum, basic shared hosting will work fine - I used to use it myself.

Be aware though that with cheap shared hosting, you stand the risk of the server being oversold or other sites on the server sucking up resources, affecting your site.
 
I was going to sign up with Linode, then I read this posted from Wiki:

The accounts of eight Linode customers that held Bitcoin electronic currency were compromised in March 2012.[11][12] Roughly 40,000 bitcoins were stolen.[11][12]
Hack The Planet accessed the Linode’s web servers in 2013.[13][14][15] The group exploited a technical vulnerability in Adobe’s ColdFusion application server.[13][14] Linode said that HTP could not decrypt any financially sensitive information and reset all account passwords.[13][15] Linode announced plans to introduce two-step authentication for its services in May 2013.[16]
Starting Christmas Day 2015 and continuing until January 10th, Linode was hit by large and frequent DDoS attacks, which were being caused by a "bad actor" purchasing large amounts of botnet capacity in an attempt to significantly damage Linode’s business.[17]

I am green to all this, but I figure since godaddy is a large company, perhaps they have the capability to better fight off attacks such as this which unfortunately seem to be more prevalent as our enemies use the internet to attack and harm us. Admittedly, I may be completely naive about godaddy being able to fight this off better than say any other server.

I registered the domain name at namecheap based on some suggestions here, and intentionally am going to use a different server company based on some suggestions here to not use the same domain name company and server company. So I'm walking thru all this. One thing for sure, I am 100% sold on XenForo after doing a lot of research about this. My viewpoint is that if you are serious about doing a forum, XenForo is the best choice, and I am quite serious about my forum. Hopefully one day I will have enough active members to be on your top ten list.
 
The question is, how much "work" you want to invest in setting up/maintaining on your server.
Cause a VPS is definitely a better solution, and as much cheap/expensive as a shared hosting solution. But with a VPS you need to do everything by yourself, except you use sth like centminmod, but there is still a learning curve for that.
If you don't want to be bothered with server side stuff, go with a shared hosting provider, godaddy or not doesn't matter. They will take care for everything server side stuff. With a cpanel it is very straight forward to install a forum and do backups of it.
Just as Brogan says, if that server is oversold, then you will have problems. So try to find a good one. Here on XF there are also some ppl you could try out, see.
And Linode is as good as the others, like DigitalOcean, Vultr, etc.
 
But with a VPS you need to do everything by yourself

There is often confusion between VPS services:

Fully Managed
Partial Managed

Fully managed is very expensive and not suggested unless you have a company paying for it. Partial managed is what most VPS services offer is and it's identical to a shared hosting in that all installed server software is managed by the web host.
 
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.
 
Well, you can go with a dedicated server if you are worried, but I think that is not necessary when you start up a forum. A shared hosting plan will suffice. And then as your forum grows, you can look into moving it to a dedicated or vps server. If you do not know how to manage it, then you might want want to look into the fully managed plan.
 
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