PhpBB Hosts and Support
How does one decide which Host to invest their time and effort into when creating an online community based on the phpbb open source application? Over the last 8 years I’ve joined many phpbb hosts, established and supplied a basis for my forums to grow and of course, dealt with the administrators and moderators of the host’s Support Forum.
Even though how simple choosing a host may sound, it’s a little more difficult than making a Google search and clicking on the first one with FREE in the title. These days, anyone with a few bucks and minimal coding experience can be a ‘Free phpbb host’. The goal of this article is to educate you on what to look for, what to look out for, and immediate warning signs to indicate a poor host.
Host Support Forums are usually open to the public! Before creating a forum with any host, consider browsing through the support forum. Not only is it a good place to learn a few basics about phpbb forums, but you can also see, not only the consistency in duplicate problems, but the quality of support coming from the moderators and administrators. A good Support Forum will have an easily navigable structure to help get the member’s and contributor’s questions answered quickly and efficiently. If you notice that there are lots of posts ranging over a few days regarding the same problems, then the host probably isnt stable.
Stability in a host is KEY! Members of your communities will not stay if your forum lags (freezes), posts are displayed immediately after submitted, or their new messages alert displays a rediculously large number (in the millions for example). The main goal of most online forums is to get as many members to accumilate as many posts as possible. The higher the numbers, the more successful the forum appears to be. This is NOT the case with a support forum!
If a hosts support forum has thousands and thousands of posts in the General Support section, and is only hosting a few hundred forums, it’s safe to say the host is not stable. I’ve signed up with many forums where the support forum is rediculously off the charts in posts and members.
One other side-fact: Features of a forum are not always good to have. Since phpbb forums run from a my-sql database, any database intensive modifications (mods/features/etc) will cause the forums to slow down. A host which advertises dozens of modifications most likely will run a little slower than one with a few.
Host provided services: database backups. Perhaps the single most annoying thing about phpbb forums, is when an upset moderator (or worse, another administrator) of your forum decides to go A-Wall and deletes all the forum posts, threads, categories, etc. ALL FORUMS except for ONE which I’ve associated myself with charge to create a backup for you. PROPHPBB.COM is the only forum which offers this service for FREE. I can not stress to anyone reading this how important it is to have a backup of your database. There are so many things which could go wrong, and a backup is your key to escaping those stressful times. Below is a breakdown of the perfect example of a BAD HOST.
FreeForums.org: Claiming to be the #1 Free phpbb Host on the web, they have surely proven themselves wrong with their arrogant owner/developer/administrator, lack of knowledgable moderators and their inability to successfully run/operate/manage a phpbb host. This is not a vendetta i have against them, but a reflection on their service.
I guess to start this off: Not everyone can be #1! Anywhere that states they are #1 probably is not (unless backed up by proof linked on their homepage). It’s generally safe to stay away from these hosts.
Moderators are as young as 14 with the moderator status given to them from both a lack of interest from other members, and their personal ties to someone already on the Moderator list. Adequate support is not given half the time, and they believe they can never be wrong. Any dispute between a moderator and member ends in a temporary or perminent ban of the member from the Support Forum! (This is not a professional approach to handling the situation)
Freeforums.org has been blacklisted from many ISPs! This means that email programs such as gmail, hotmail, and yahoo view the emails from Freeforums.org to be SPAM, therefor creating a perminent block of their emails. This is a blatent sign that the owner/developers do not understand how mass email works. By allowing the members to email as much as they want to whomever they please, they set theirselves up for failure in that department.
To add to the endless list of failures, Freeforums.org created a Graphic Request forum in their Support Forum. This was a GREAT idea! Now people would have a place to request a custom banner for their forum, however FF.org placed a rule that only Graphics team members could fill the requests (at the time, they had 1 member who wasn’t all too familiar with photoshop and how to optimize coloration/ flow and design techniques when creating graphics. (over 200,000 members, and 1 Graphics Moderator… do the math – not one of FF.org’s smarted moves).
Being a graphics designer for over 50 clients worldwide, creating more than 1000+ graphics over the last 9 years, I’ve found a sense of happiness and fulfillment in creating graphics for other people. I’m currently a Graphics Creator on a few different forums here and there and a freelance webdesign and graphicdesigner. I created a few graphics for the other members (not being a Graphics designer on Freeforums.org) and that account was perminently banned without warning. One rule of Hosting: If you are going to ban someone, first, make sure its a legitimate reason and second, tell them why they are being banned. I had to email the Ownder over 15 times before I finally got an answer a couple months later.
Now you know what not to look for, lets go over some things which point to a great host. Prophpbb.com is an example of a continually growing host run by the previous owner of EAmped.com! If any of your are familiar with the service given during the time of MdValdosta’s participation, you will already begin to get a sense of nostalgia.
First, the forum if running off the latest phpbb3 package which is fully stable. Unlike other forums, mdvaldosta picks and chooses the mods before installing being careful not to have anything too database intensive. Also, only fully stable mods are being considered as he wishes to avoid hosting problems. (Downtime is at an all-time low. Compared to other hosts, prophpbb.com is flawless in that area).
The support team is impeccable (as stated from the other members) giving complete answers in a timely and efficient manner. 99% of the support tickets are regarding How-To’s (how to make a link, and other instructional questions). Occasionally a newly installed template will have a glitch, but nothing that wont take an hour or so to fix.
MdValdosta also does an extrodinary job at informing the members of any work, installations which are going on (especially if its going to cause some down-time). Since most of the forums are based in the US, he will do database work late nights and early mornings when the lowest number of people will be online. He hired a Moderator in the UK so we can have semi-round-the-clock service.
Overall its a great host. It does lack in features compared to other hosts, but the forums run much quicker, there are minimal problems associated with the host, and of course the database backups are completely FREE.
Please leave replies with any questions, concerns, comments, or suggestions and I hope this proves to be useful to someone.
Posted by Tatum 