2 short questions

[Homeless]

I noticed the shared hosting accounts have "unlimited" bandwidth. In my experience there is no such thing as unlimited. I ask because I am interested in hosting a linux distro for students to download and a forum where they can talk to one another about how to use it. Hypothetically let's say this file (600+ megs) gets downloaded a few hundred times a day, is that too much?

Also this may not have a definite answer, but how many phpbb users will it take before I should consider upgrading to something other than shared hosting?

Thank you for your time.

[RainbowViper]

You'll run into the CPU and Resource limitations before your bandwidth, or space used, would become a concern for HG, I believe. (Read the Terms of Service carefully.)

And it's not the *number* of users, but what the online users are *doing*, as a group.

An expert will probably chime in here, but I suspect that in order to do what you want, you'll need a dedicated server.

[seovb]

Originally Posted by Homeless

I noticed the shared hosting accounts have "unlimited" bandwidth. In my experience there is no such thing as unlimited. I ask because I am interested in hosting a linux distro for students to download and a forum where they can talk to one another about how to use it. Hypothetically let's say this file (600+ megs) gets downloaded a few hundred times a day, is that too much?

Also this may not have a definite answer, but how many phpbb users will it take before I should consider upgrading to something other than shared hosting?

Thank you for your time.

You'll definitely either need a VPS or Dedicated machine to do this especially if your getting a few hundred downloads daily. You'll probably want to get a 10mbps unmetered line, or if you can afford one a 100mbps unmetered line to serve the hundred+ daily downloads

[gwyneth]

Although your signature image is now visible, seovb, it's dropping a cookie for seotips4.com. Please don't do that.

[seovb]

it shouldn't be, it should just be an image located at http://seotips4.com/imgs/signature_hostgator.jpg which is how it should be linked in my sig, checking it out now dd:

[gwyneth]

seovb, don't be disingenuous. You removed it, which is appreciated.

Otherwise, you should check into whoever has using been sneaking into your domain/site and putting them there without your knowledge.

I am certain that forum readers who viewed your signature before you changed it--and have never visited your site-- will now find a cookie on their computer from seotips4.com.

[RainbowViper]

Yes, indeed, there is. Or, rather, WAS. Your cookie has been removed.

And you've been reported, Robert.

[striddy]

Originally Posted by seovb

it shouldn't be, it should just be an image located at ... which is how it should be linked in my sig, checking it out now dd:

How novel. To be showing an advertisement for Hostgator in the pre-sales forum for... you guessed it... Hostgator.

Surely that's inappropriate Mr. Seovb. For new visitors to the forum you appear to be wanting to divert direct HG sales via one of your sites. You should stick to showing an affiliate banner on YOUR sites not here.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by striddy

How novel. To be showing an advertisement for Hostgator in the pre-sales forum for... you guessed it... Hostgator.

Surely that's inappropriate Mr. Seovb. For new visitors to the forum you appear to be wanting to divert direct HG sales via one of your sites. You should stick to showing an affiliate banner on YOUR sites not here.

He has been warned about hidden images in several posts, so probably thought we might not notice this attempt.

[regentronique]

Originally Posted by JessR

its not the amount of users but the activity on the forum. If there are 1k user and they are posting and responding like crazy you may end up with problems.

http://google-analyticz.com/img/832/...yr/tracker.gif

Why are you posting a hidden image in all your posts?

Your domain was just created from the whois : 07-nov-2008

You are hosted at 69.77.171.72 and your site google-analyticz.com do not seem ligit, so what are you expecting to get as information with your false hidden image?

You did this in all your posts, you have been reported...

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by regentronique

Why are you posting a hidden image in all your posts?

Your domain was just created from the whois : 07-nov-2008

You are hosted at 69.77.171.72 and your site google-analyticz.com do not seem ligit, so what are you expecting to get as information with your false hidden image?

You did this in all your posts, you have been reported...

He was dropping a cookie with his affiliate ID. Unless you changed the text/path of the hidden image in your quote, it might have kept doing it after he was removed, so readers may want to check their cookies to see if there's one from google-analyticz (sic).

[regentronique]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

He was dropping a cookie with his affiliate ID. Unless you changed the text/path of the hidden image in your quote, it might have kept doing it after he was removed, so readers may want to check their cookies to see if there's one from google-analyticz (sic).

If any user here want to be on the "safe side", it would be better to recommend to them to uncheck in their User CP options all "Visible Post Elements" in "Thread Display Options", like i did more than a year ago.

That way they will never be affected with these "hidden image" problems ...

I did that, after trying for days to make HostGator staff understand the security problems attached with that, offering them solutions for still being able to display safe images. A lost cause...

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by regentronique

If any user here want to be on the "safe side", it would be better to recommend to them to uncheck in their User CP options all "Visible Post Elements" in "Thread Display Options", like i did more than a year ago.

Very good advice, but the people who are most affected by this would be new readers considering the purchase of an HG account...and other affiliates who might lose a legitimate sale to the cookie stuffers.

The first aren't likely to even discover their CP until later, and, of course, the second have no control over how readers set their forum views.

I'm not an affiliate of HG (or anybody) but this is not fair to honest affiliates. Until a few weeks ago, however, I also thought that--because I'm not buying a new HG account--cookies on my system couldn't reward the perpetrators. Then I discovered one of them was also stuffing his/her affiliate ID for other companies, such as Godaddy and Newegg, into the cookie.

[regentronique]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

Very good advice, but the people who are most affected by this would be new readers considering the purchase of an HG account...and other affiliates who might lose a legitimate sale to the cookie stuffers.

The first aren't likely to even discover their CP until later, and, of course, the second have no control over how readers set their forum views.

...

Like i wrote precedenly, the BEST way would have been for the Forum administrator and developper to disable URL refered images globally and allowing only uploaded images (like attachments) to be displayed!

But this need to be done on the HostGator side with the proper expertise and willingness.

Meantime the only solution left is to motivate the new users to disable the display of those images for their own security. Because, beside the cookies problems with affiliates, there can be other types of even worse problems caused with those images links...

[peter_anderson]

Originally Posted by regentronique

Like i wrote precedenly, the BEST way would have been for the Forum administrator and developper to disable URL refered images globally and allowing only uploaded images (like attachments) to be displayed!

But this need to be done on the HostGator side with the proper expertise and willingness.

Meantime the only solution left is to motivate the new users to disable the display of those images for their own security. Because, beside the cookies problems with affiliates, there can be other types of even worse problems caused with those images links...

Or disable the IMG tag.

[regentronique]

Originally Posted by peter_anderson

Or disable the IMG tag.

They do not want to do it, they want to leave users able to display their own images.

[txitcs]

In phpBB 1.x I found a bug so you could post a broken image and gain administrative access to the forums.

Those were the good days.

[gwyneth]

I have attached pictures of three cookies this thread is dropping. Seovb has been very clever, because there is apparently a hash that depends on every nth view.

The cookie called 'secure.hostgator.com' also appears to be his/her work, judging from the picture "shortquestions2.jpg"...the content line contains "seovbaff". Note that "shortquestions1.jpg" clearly references this thread.