Webmasters: A Question About Forum Scripts

[Menard]

I have been looking around at some php forum scripts (that would be the free kind ) to find one for a site of mine.

The three scripts I have it narrowed down to are Phorum, BBPress, and SEO Board.

All three seem to meet my primary requirements: low resource usage and speed.

Although there are features I am looking for, I can get that information from the sites themselves.

What I am curious about is if any of you have had experience with these scripts with regard to any security issues.

One thing that will get you p**sed off quicker than anything is having your site hacked. I've had this happen before (and of course it's never the hosting service's lack of security that is at fault  ).


What I am using the script for is a private forum on a small web portal. This is primarily for people with whom I work or come in contact (no, not everybody wants to kill me on the first meeting; often it's on the second or third ). I'm just looking for something that's fast with few graphics and not a lot of bugs with which to contend.


Any other recommendations would be appreciated.

[Andrew]

You probably remember, but Phorum was the original version of the forum here.  The real reason I changed it to SMF was not related to security.  Phorum was very light on resources when we were using it, and I do not remember ever having a security issue related to it.

[Menard]

You probably remember, but Phorum was the original version of the forum here.  The real reason I changed it to SMF was not related to security.  Phorum was very light on resources when we were using it, and I do not remember ever having a security issue related to it.

Yes, I remember very well, and that's probably why Phorum has become somewhat of a yardstick in what I am looking for. I like the flatforum style of just seeing the topics (though, I guess you could so that on about any forum if you only used one forum). They've added quite a bit to the script that brings it up to par with more full-featured scripts, but still maintains its...uh...lightness.

Question: Being that all of these scripts use a MySQL database (I have looked at some flatfile scripts too), would there be much difference in how the scripts handle concurrent connections to the database?

[Andrew]

Question: Being that all of these scripts use a MySQL database (I have looked at some flatfile scripts too), would there be much difference in how the scripts handle concurrent connections to the database?

Probably not, though I am not a MySQL guru.  However, from what I know you usually have a choice between persistent connections or not.  By default, you probably want to go with not. 

Something that you can use in a database that has a lot of insert operations (like view counts, # posts in thread, etc) is use InnoDB vice MyISAM tables.  InnoDB uses row-locking, so it is much better at dealing with lots of changes to a table.  MyISAM is faster at select statements, and is much more graceful about shutdowns and recovery.  InnoDB does not like being shut down dirty, and can be a pain in the butt.  You also need to allocate more memory in your my.cnf file, because InnoDB needs memory allocated to it.

I use InnoDB for a number of tables on the forum.  However, it might not be feasible if you are using a shared account, vice a VPS or dedicated server.  The server admin on a shared server would have to turn it on for you.  Most do not enable InnoDB by default.

[Menard]

That is good to know. I am on a shared host, but at least I am on one-to-one speaking terms with the server admin.

Aside from making the forum more accessible to visitors, another reason I wanted a script that uses low resources is to not bog down my alloted cpu resources.

Seen this Fantastico installer they include with a lot of hosting packages? A lot of the scripts in that would get a shared account suspended in a heartbeat if they actually got used with any frequency. Even some of those scripts are resource heavy for a VPS account.

[Andrew]

Unfortunately, the shared hosting market is also swamped with oversellers.  You simply cannot offer 600gb of disk space and 6,000 gb of bandwidth for $8 a month.  Soon as somebody uses a fraction of that the host suspends them for exceeding CPU limits, or RAM, or something.

[Menard]

Unfortunately, the shared hosting market is also swamped with oversellers.  You simply cannot offer 600gb of disk space and 6,000 gb of bandwidth for $8 a month.  Soon as somebody uses a fraction of that the host suspends them for exceeding CPU limits, or RAM, or something.

Ever read the TOSs of some of these oversellers?

Its like a laundry list of things you could possibly do as a webmaster that could get your account suspended. Of course, the idea is that the majority of webmasters will use a fraction of a percent of what they promise, and any that even begin to use more than that will find their account suspended.

5% of CPU resources translates to 5% over a period of 180 seconds; not 5% concurrent. Hosting hundreds of accounts on a server and there is no way each account can use those resources concurrently.

What I calculated, after having been with one for a while, is that what I was using was less than what a host was offering that was not overselling; but it cost less with the non-overseller.

I can't afford a dedicated server. Right now, I can barely afford what hosting I have and have made some cutbacks. When I can, and when I get back to work on my project site (the CargoShip was a prototype for it, and is tiny compared to it; but the project site will not use frames) I am considering VPS hosting for the primary site and a shared account or two (or file hosting) to host files for the site. I have the dotcom, dotnet, and dotorg for the project site; the dotcom will be the main site with the others being used for resources.

By the time I get that up and running (probably both of us will be using canes by then ), I'll inquire about chaining multiple databases for use with a forum.

[Menard]

I have the forum up and running. I ended up going with SEO Board. It was close between Phorum and SEO Board, and the reasons for choosing SEO Board over Phorum were really trivial but worked out for me.

http://z54.org/forum/

If anybody wants to test out the forum to see how this script works, feel free; I have included a test forum on it just for that.

[Menard]

P.S.  Only the home page and forum are up and running on the site. I am still working on the homepages and notebook scripts. Sorry about not mentioning that before.