Questions Regarding the Eligiability of a Forum

[QoI]

Hello everyone

I'm new to the web hosting world, and I have a couple of questions before I go ahead and purchase hosting for a forum I'm running on a free host.

It is a forum which is dedicated to writing. There are a couple of categories for original fiction, poetry, essays, and fanfiction. There is also a section for character critique and sections for general discussion.

There is also a role play section where users can engage in play by post role play with one another. Within this section is a hidden, member group only adult board where any writing with sexual content goes.

At the bottom of the forum is a chatango chat room, and a couple of buttons that link to other sites (as part of affiliation).

Statistic wise, the forum has been going since around April of last year. It currently has 23 registered members, whereas maybe six or seven of them are active at any given time, at the most. There are around 4,100 posts cumulative posts.

The reason I have provided all of this information is that I want to be absolutely sure before I sign up for any hosting plan that my forum would be acceptable. If it isn't, I could then try and make any necessary changes before actually signing up for a domain and a hosting package.

Since I'm completely new to paid hosting, I have no idea what would constitute unfair CPU usage or what would cause those, er... mysql things to go over 25.

Sorry to be a pain; I'm just a confused little n00blet here ^^'

Thanks in advance ^^

[dewt]

I don't think it is likely that you will run into any problems with resource usage based on the figures you gave. However I think that your chat room is a problem.

From the TOS:

User may not:
...
4) Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.

Hope this is of some help.

[QoI]

Yeah, I'd seen that bit in the ToS, but I wasn't sure if it applied to the *program* IRC or any chat room at all. It shouldn't be a problem to remove it, as it has its own link and is hosted on chatango's servers, but I thought it was best to be sure first. Thank you ^^

[EarlyOut]

Wow! This thread has become a real magnet for Cyrillic spam from France. I wonder what the attraction is?

(Once a mod takes out the garbage, of course, this post won't make any sense at all.)

[lleal]

I'm surprised that a free web host provides you with so many options for your website, may I ask why you are leaving and who the current host is?

Also, if you could provide us the current website it may be easier for us to help. If you know any of the scripts it uses, that would also be great so we can check the server requirements. Do you have FTP access at this current free host?

[QoI]

Unfortunately, I was using SMFNEW... I guess there were a lot of options, but only from mods they'd installed themselves, and, turns out, they're sort of holding my data hostage. They want 60 dollars just to have the forum backed up, and there's no guarantee they'd even provide *me* with it once it is backed up...

I don't know if it used any scripts or a FTP (not even sure what that is ^^') so I can't provide much detail there.

Ah well. Thanks anyway guys =/

[eurgbp]

yeah, 99% of web hosting providers do not like idea of IRC, they associate it with hacking, warez and something illegal i guess
if your forum takes a lot of resources then it is time to go on VPS, nobody will bother you ever again, and you are going to be your own boss, and can back up sql every day via ssh cron go VPS!