Server plans going forward

[SigSauerP226]

That is a double-edged sword. On one hand you are probably right it would filter out a lot of the problems and take care of some of the high traffic issues. The flip side is that it would probably eliminate some of the people we want here. If we had a policy like that in effect close to 20 years ago when I joined, I would not have done that. Now I know there are a few members that would probably say they wished that were the case for me ? in all seriousness I would not have paid for a membership back then. Now in my early 40s I look at things a little bit differently and would not hesitate. That said, even now there is no way I would pay even that amount for a new community I was not familiar with. I think we would at a minimum have to have a trial membership available.

Thats a good point, I joined at 20, and would not have paid haha. I was only thinking of current members likely paying up if they enjoy it, but it definitely would affect potential good new members. Tough situation without an easy answer.

[MattS01]

Thanks for the update! Taking this community off the cloud also reduces your dependency on cloud vendors politics. Appreciate all you do behind the scenes for this community.

[Sgt Raven]

Thats a good point, I joined at 20, and would not have paid haha. I was only thinking of current members likely paying up if they enjoy it, but it definitely would affect potential good new members. Tough situation without an easy answer.

IDK, maybe a plan like ARFCOM.
A basic free membership for all and then a multi tier paid membership with more benefits at each level.

[TheGood]

I'd love to take you up on that but I have zero access to the server to make any optimizations, one of the major reasons I want to leave the cloud hosting with vBulletin.

Right now I'm looking at the 'Essential' dedicated server plan from In Motion Hosting. The RAM and storage look good, I am a little concerned about the 4 core/8 thread cpu not being enough but I'm told it should be okay.
https://www.inmotionhosting.com/dedicated-servers

I don't understand "4 Core/8 Thread CPU". That's very low throughput if each core can only handle 8 threads. I'm running an Intel 4-core CPU circa 2004 (20 years old) and it's currently processing 1460 threads and the CPU utilization is 20%. It's an obsolete back-up computer for my main desktop PC, it's not being pushed, and it's doing way more than 32 threads of data.

Edit:

OK, I looked up the processor that they are using. 8 Threads means 8 logical processors (2 processors per core). Passmark gives that CPU a performance rating of 9,224, which is pretty slow by today's standards of CPUs. My 'gaming' desktop has a rating of 39,135 and it's about 3 years old (12Core/24Thread). I don't know if a server for text/graphics to the web needs to have the level of performance of a gaming desktop but I would expect it to be at least 1/2 of that speed (benchmark of 20k or higher).