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SMF & Admin Settings - SMF Hosting

SMF & Admin Settings

Being an administrator of a forum is a big commitment. Having to monitor your resources, content and membership can almost be a full time job depending on the size of your forum.

Your admin settings need to match your host's capabilities

One thing I try to get my clients to understand is that you cannot expect to run a forum on free or shared hosting. Free and shared hosting is mainly for static sites (sites that just show HTML pages and not make many calls to a database). In order to display dynamic content or for instance a SMF site you need a server that is capable of not only reading an interpreting PHP content but accessing a database.

If you must use shared hosting then you need to know the limits of your host. Do they have a set CPU limit for queries? Do they stop you from sending out so many Emails per hour or per day? Do they have a memory limit? Any genuine host that cares about its customers WILL be able to provide you with that information.

Here is an analogy... You have a pickup that can only carry 2 tons of cargo but you load 4 tons of cargo on it. Will it work? Not likely... The truck might attempt to move it but very slow and eventually stop - this is the same with having SMF (your load) on inadequate hosting (your pickup).

Is there lag on the load time of pages?

Now that we have the hosting issue covered we need to look at your admin settings vs your page load time. SMF on its own can load very fast so long as you have adequate hosting, which I referred to above, and do not ask it to do 300 tasks just to load a page. For instance, in admin there is an option for hostname look ups - is that really necessary? Most likely not. Turn it off. Is it necessary to have items from your portal turned on every page? Most likely not. Do you really need to have tons of media files and large animated graphics on pages? Most likely not. When it comes down to it SMF is about interaction but there does not need to be a lot activated in order for people to interact with each other. If you think having your shoutbox, media files and large graphics are a must then get adequate hosting. Do not try to be cheap on hosting and then expect SMF to run all your options - remember the pickup analogy.

Beware of portals, bells and whistles.

Adjusting just one setting in admin can bring you peace of mind or hell if you don't know what you are doing. Anyone wanting to be serious about running SMF or any CMS for that matter needs to know what all the controls do. As an example, permissions are very important. You can change a couple of settings for guests and spammers will be on you like bees to honey.

Portals allow you to place various blocks of information on your site but remember for each block you add there is a load factor involved. Going back to the pickup analogy - You load your pickup up with its maximum of 2 tons of cargo but then decide to attach a trailer to the back. This trailer is like having a portal. The pickup has to pull its own load AND the cargo resting on the trailer too. The more blocks you activate is the more on the trailer attached to the pickup.

Now do note, I have absolutely nothing against portals, shoutboxes, media albums, etc. They are all things that can enhance your site IF you have the hosting resources to do so.

Hosting SMF Settings Admin and SMF

What I wish SMF had was a way of warning you about the consequences of saving certain settings. I've seen this done on other sites where as you press the save button a little box asks you if you're sure because this or that could happen.