UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads 6 Version 6 Support Bandwidth increase after upgrading to 6.5.5

Hi

At the back end of last year, I upgraded a site from (around) 6.3 to 6.5.5. Since then I've noticed a massive increase in bandwidth use, going from a typical 19-22gb/month for most of last year, to 28gb in Jan, 25gb in Feb and 34gb in March. 45% of the traffic is being generated from the ubbthreads/showflat.php page.

Is it usual to get such a large increase ? I'm not aware of an increase in users (the opposite if anything). I took a hell of a financial hit last month because I exceeded my allowance, and based on the volume so far I'm likely to do the same in May.

Any suggestions / comments much appreciated.

Thanks

Mike

http://internettreehouse.infopop.cc/ubbthreads/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=UBB1

I would think that there should be no appreciable difference between them at all. it's just HTML that is being sent.

Are there more images being posted in pics or is activity just generally higher? Have you added new banners or Ads or anything else that would have essentially added a 25-35% increase in average page size?

Increase in BW is expected for increase in Users/registrations; keep in mind that just because you haven't recieved more registrations doesn't mean you haven't recieved more users...

You should look into installing some sort of statistics program to monitor things.

Also, you should look at a VPS if you're pulling such large ammounts of bandwidth, $40/mo will likely be cheaper than your bw overages with your host.

Thanks for the comments.

Gizmo, what's a VPS ? (sorry !). We're currently hosted by Groupee, so I may upgrade my package with them to see if that lowers the cost by buying the extra bandwidth upfront.

Below are March's and November's figures for my usage. I upgraded mid December, so these are "before and after" figures. It's reporting a drop in visits and pages (massive drops ?) but an increase in files and hits. As I said, I can believe a 10-20% swing in users/visitors, but that's all.

KBytes Visits Pages Files Hits
34050433 418 809 768990 2395066
18106095 1555 18038 571124 1673466

Sorry, just googled VPS. Virtual Private Server.

We also got an increase when we upgraded to 7.1 Turned out we forgot to enable zlib compression.

Thanks, I'll try that.

A VPS is indeed a Virtual Private Server, you're allocated resources on the machine and they're soley yours and no one else's; additionally you get a HEFTY ammount of bandwidth, and a lot of services are under $50/mo. I myself have several clients at www.webintellects.com and even some of the boardies here use them (Allen for instance).

Thanks Gizmo. I'll see what impact the compression has, and if that doesn't solve my problem I'll look at them.

You mention you have some clients on that host - are you/they running a UBB board with them ? Any feedback on speed or reliability. I'm currently hosted with Groupee, but obviously I'm paying for the Eve system which I'm currently not using so there are some savings to be made.

Be sure you have zlib compression turned on - will save 30-70% on your bandwidth (depending on how much is related to images or not).

Also, the newer versions of .threads were made 'search engine bot-friendly', you probably rec'd a good dose of google, yahoo, and msn. You would have rec'd more showflat hits because you normally have way more topic pages than forum and index pages to index.

The majority of my clients are UBB.Threads users, so plenty of them are running UBB.Threads7+

Massive drop in bandwidth yesterday - from 1.3GB to 0.5GB (rough calc). This should bring me back within my limit of 20GB per month. Thanks for your advice.

Good to hear. Don't forget to turn it on again when you upgrade to 7.1.

'eh the setting should remain in the config file, which shouldn't be changed during an upgrade

Not when you upgrade to 7.x

:slaps head: perhaps I should read what forums I'm in before dispensing UBB.T7 advice :X