We've just today noticed that the size of our new database is a lot bigger than before we imported it. Before import it was 42 megabytes, and now it's over 70 megs (after optimization).

After 50 megs, our provider charges us by the meg, and given that we're a non-profit website, this is rather concerning. The main jump has been in the size of the index.

Has anyone else noticed this? Any suggestions?

BTW - On a more positive note, the forum really flies now!!

This is totally normal behavior; posts are stored in the database twice, once as it was posted pre-parsed, and again as parsed.

Also, if your host charges at 50mb, I highy recommend you move (it's absurd to charge, let alone at 50mb, 500mb would be one thing)

Thanks Gizmo .. we didn't know if it was normal or not. So does that mean that the double-storage only applies to posts that were imported, or new ones too?

And yeah .. we'll have to figure something out about the provider database charges.

all

yeh, charging by the meg for over 50meg is insane; there are "modern" webhosts which don't have an overage charge, and don't limit your MySQL size...

Curious who your host is now lol

Tell them that your considering leaving as there are a million other hosts that don't charge.

See it they change there mind, and then you dont have to move,
but if you do i'm sure we can chip in and help you move.

With the new features with threads,
uploads, a gallery and who knows what else,
being charged for + 50mb is as Gizmo says Crazy.

If your community is large enough, I'd recommend a VPS, else there are millions of "shared webhosts" that don't charge for MySQL space

I looked at your webhosts prices, they are insane... $35 for 250mb space/3gb bw is insane... i've seen reputable hosts at more space for a fifth of the price... heck, a VPS for 15gb space*300gb bandwidth costs about the same as you're paying for what is likely oversold reseller space

Hey guys, thanks for your comments. I didn't realize that we were getting such a bum deal. We've been with them for a couple of years, and not once has there been any down-time, and they are excellent with their maintenance services.

However, like I said - we are a non-profit website, and we rely on donations to cover the costs, and even then we usually always pay some out of pocket.

The database size thing has nearly become out of control. We're finding we're stripping posts at an accelerated rate, just to keep below 50 megs. Gizmo, thanks for your recommendation. We're going to look into that host.

One last thing - and this is just out of interest. We were wondering why the double-up of post bodies? What are each of them used for? And are both of them needed at all times?

Even if we do go with another host, we've got problems in the meantime.

Thanks.

I don't recall Rick's reasoning, I think it was to save time in parsing encoding; I'm sure theres a few topics on it via the search.

Myself on my scripts I create I store bbcode and parse the output through a php function but I think Rick referenced a lot of overhead when doing such for forums with as much data that's stored and retrieved

The double storage is basically so we can offer more complex ubbcode. For example, the php markup. There is no way we could "uncode" that and end up with what the user typed in exactly.