Skip to:
Content
Pages
Categories
Search
Top
Bottom

BuddyPress on hosted shared server


  • cvtbrian
    Participant

    @cvtbrian

    Sorry if this is kind of a newbie/generic question, but here goes.

    I am building to WordPress site to replace my existing group site on Meetup.com, which has around 500-1000 active members. Members RSVP to events (5-10 per week), post photos and comments, email each other through the site, and use a message board. Some events require online payment, and we use Meetup’s WePay for that. The main plugins I plan to use to reproduce these features are BuddyPress, Events Manager Pro (with Paypal Gateway), bbPress, rtMedia, MailChimp, possibly NinjaForms, and a few others. I am developing this under GoDaddy’s shared hosting (planning to switch to SiteGround or something similar). I have read that BuddyPress in particular can be a challenge for shared servers, so I am concerned that performance will be an issue when we go live.

    1. Any thoughts on the use of WordPress/BuddyPress with shared server host? Any recommendations on shared server or managed server providers? What price point should I looking at?

    2. With the number of photos members would be uploading/sharing, I am afraid we will quickly exceed the basic plan’s 10GB limit. Any recommendations for a storage CDN? Or would a cacheing plugin be sufficient?

    3. Any other plugins/extensions I should consider to increase performance?

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

  • danbp
    Moderator

    @danbp

    @cvtbrian,

    1) if you plan high traffic, don’t use a shared host but a VPS. You may also need access to php.ini, as the memory_limit often lacks on shared host (you need at least 128mo for this to get BP running in good conditions).

    2) difficult to answer. What the difference between 10GB of space(on your host or on a cloud) and 10GB of cached files ? Not the space, but the speed. I presume you will need space AND speed.

    3) to increase performance, you have first to install correctly WP, theme and plugins. Set up some rules about image size and a lot of other little things related to what user can do/or not on the site. Wait for traffic and compare to know if it worth to go further with performance (as this may be a paid service). WP Rocket (premium plugin) may be one of such a tool.


    cvtbrian
    Participant

    @cvtbrian

    Thanks for the quick reply! I guess I don’t know what constitutes high traffic. I suspect we will have spikes of activity, such as when new events are announced, followed by quiet times. Also not clear on the difference between cached space vs what I know of as space on a physical drive.

    Shared hosting is not suitable for large community sites. Also, WP Rocket isn’t going to help much here and that is because it only supports full page caching which isn’t suitable for community sites (you can’t serve cached pages to logged in users).

    If you have some experience you can grab a cheap $10 digital ocean VPS
    https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/

    Then you will need to either do server side caching (Nginx, varnish, something). Or if you want to setup something more simple setup like Redis (kind of the opposite but) and then grab the W3TC Fix Plugin and setup Object and DB caching.

    https://github.com/szepeviktor/fix-w3tc

    As for a CDN. This can vary if you are looking to replace storage on your server get something like Amazon S3 if you want more performance run CloudFlare you could run them both at the same time if you know how to configure it.

    Finally, you want to combine all of your site’s assets and do a bunch of on-page optimization.


    cvtbrian
    Participant

    @cvtbrian

    Thanks Destac. Hostgator advertises a cloud based managed WordPress plan with CDN and unlimited storage for around $10 per month. Would something like that be sufficient to get started? I’m expecting 200-300 visitors per day at most.

    It’s quite possible since most managed hosts use Varnish or some variation of server side caching. Just remember the traffic is not the biggest issue per day it really comes down to the amount of concurrently logged in users.

    But its definitely worth a shot for that little amount of traffic if I am expecting little concurrent users. Remember though just because they have caching server side it doesn’t mean to ignore the frontend optimization and also look at running CloudFlare (even though they have their own CDN).


    cvtbrian
    Participant

    @cvtbrian

    Interesting…thanks again!


    cvtbrian
    Participant

    @cvtbrian

    Sorry, me again. I’m a little confused, because after chatting with several hosting providers, I’m being given vastly different answers on what plan I need. Some have recommended a dedicated VPS plan starting in the $30-50 range, while others like BlueHost and HostGator assure me I would be perfectly fine with a cloud hosting plan with unlimited storage and bandwidth in the $5-10 range. Either I’m not being clear in what I’m asking, or they are trying to lure me in by starting me out with a cheap plan.

    Just to clarify…I’d probably be looking at 250-500 visitors per day at most, with a small fraction of those using the site at one time (on average…possibly a few spikes during the day where we have more traffic). And again, we would have members uploading/sharing images (possibly a few hundred per week).

    Does this still sound doable for $5-10/month? We are just a local hiking club with small budget…I’d hate to spend time developing a site and then find out we don’t have the budget to support it! 🙂

    I can say this I have seen some sites with several thousand views a day do just fine on shared hosting. Since this site though will have a few concurrent users (logged in with BuddyPress) you will want the server side caching with varnish.

    I think you should be just fine a simple managed hosting for this site go with the HostGator host \0 you will save some money and time


    cvtbrian
    Participant

    @cvtbrian

    Thank you!!!


    vivekmathur1969
    Participant

    @vivekmathur1969

    Hi, I’m even newbier (?) than @cvtbrian in that I’m just starting up with a brand new community (ie zero traffic), and plan to use Buddypress + Woocommerce, plus maybe 20-25 other plugins. I was planning to sign up for Managed WordPress hosting by Godaddy, but then i read in the BP codex/ getting started that “WordPress should be installed manually i.e. via FTP, cpanel, etc. and NOT via webhost scripts (fantastico, softalicious, etc.)which bring about numerous issues when BuddyPress is activated” – and apparently teh managed hosting doesnt allow that, so the Godaddy rep told me then i need to look at Linux hosting.
    Has anyone tried BP with Godaddy Managed hosting, and would it be okay to start with shared hosting considering traffic will be very low initially (but BP+WC+plugins would need to work reasonably fast)?
    If i take shared hosting now, will it be easy to move to VPS later as traffic increases?
    thanks a ton for any inputs!


    Varun Dubey
    Participant

    @vapvarun

    @vivekmathur1969 you can migrate site or upgrade to VPS anytime just like regular WordPress website migration.


    vivekmathur1969
    Participant

    @vivekmathur1969

    thanks,Varun. Would you also know if Godaddy Managed hosting is good for Buddy Press or it will have troubles as mentined in the codex?

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Skip to toolbar