$2400, huh? With 1000 registered members we should be able to do that fairly easily.

Hell, even 100 regular posters could come up with that pretty fast. And we already have $700 in the account, right?

The question I have is: would this solve our technical problems? Because I'd hate to sign to a year-long contract and then discover that having a dedicated server doesn't fix it.

One thing I'd like to solicit up front -- how many accounts can we switch? How much savings would we get for every five minimum-sized accounts opening?

I'd like to know the TOS for individual accounts.

I have a few, one that I may leave for the moment, and a couple I may decide to move if it helps.

I might be able to move a couple -- I'll have to check.

Yeah, I'm sure we *could* raise that much money. Can we figure out by Friday noon if it'll allow us to solve the connections issue?

I might have an individual one to add as well, though it's not fan related. Would than be a hindrance?

On a semi-dedicated server we won't have issues with a limit to the number of connections. The only issue will be if the server has enough horsepower to handle Phoenix while still providing acceptable quality of service to any other customers hosted on that server.

I think the system described can support Buffistas, with proper tuning. I wouldn't want to have to guarantee that it will enough extra horsepower to support anyone else.

For comparison, Dreamhost offers a totally dedicated server for $200 a month, if paid yearly, and no setup fee. They give less memory, a little more disk space and only 3/4 of the monthly bandwidth offered by FanGeek.

Okay, here's how it works. These are our hosting plans. If you get someone to buy an Economy package, I would discount your account by $10 per month and remove 200 MB from your storage allocation. You can sign up as many accounts as you want as long as you keep enough space and bandwidth in your Buffista account to actually run the board. You get to decide what that number is.

Our Terms of Service are the same for all accounts. However, I don't think I'll be agreeing to take on any other message forums, especially ones that run off MySQL databases. Sites that use PHP and MySQL should be fine but we might want to discuss that before we say yes.

As for will this solve our issues, the answer is yes. Right now, you have a piece of the MySQL resource pie. Under this new system, you'd have the whole pie. Monique and I don't run sites that use it. That could change down the road, if we resolve these connection issues in a satisfactory manner, but that would be pretty far down the road. And again, we wouldn't even consider it unless we knew that the connections issue was a thing of the past.

The server we'd running on is not as powerful as the one we're on but more powerful than the one we were on before this. Also, there would fewer sites to deal with. Right now, we manage 9 other sites. You're the most popular, followed by NickBrendon.com.

Servepath is a dedicated server package I've had recommended to me "If you don't need much tech help."

40 GB hard drive, 100 GB bandwidth, if I'm reading the descriptions correctly, and they only do dedicated servers; starting at $89 a month. I don't see anything about MySQL, but I'm at the edge of my knowledge right now, so I'll let y'all discuss specifics.

ETA: also, there is no contract with them. Even on the annual package. 30 days notice to change plans.

I also have a friend who was very happy with Dreamhost as the host of her site, but I do not believe she had a dedicated server as she didn't run a msg board or other resource heavy feature.

As for will this solve our issues, the answer is yes. Right now, you have a piece of the MySQL resource pie. Under this new system, you'd have the whole pie. Monique and I don't run sites that use it.

The reason our previous hosts have given for limiting our MySQL connections is that they are very expensive in terms of memory and CPU usage. Giving us unlimited connections could cause us to use 100% of the CPU and memory available to the server. I can't see how you can offer us that while still giving good quality of service to the rest of the customers on your server.