Server

[.eclipse]

Hi everyone, I'm new to this site, and I was thinking of buying a server in the future, and I'm wondering, how much space would a forum like this take up?

And if you have any suggestions on servers, like what brand is the best, or what would be the best plan for me, please tell me. I'm unfamiliar with servers so I could use any help, thanks.

[Twey]

No idea about the brands. I do know Dell was doing a rather nice server for £400 (~700 USD) at one point, which I drooled over for a while.

Make sure you don't, whatever you do, run Windows on it. I suggest OpenBSD, or Linux if you're a little less technical a user (and the server isn't managed). The overhead from all the many unnecessary things Windows foists off on you slows a server down no end. See this thread for some of the pros and cons of the two approaches. Also, having had a nightmare of a time trying to help someone install Apache with PHP (which can be done with two commands in most distributions of Linux) I have to conclude that it would seem Linux is much easier to set up and manage as a server than Windows is as well.

I don't know about this forum, but, uncompressed, phpBB comes to 2.8MB for me. Allow another 1-10 megs (depending on the intended usage of the forum) for the database.

[.eclipse]

So you would suggest lest say 15 GB?

Now the OP, do I have to install that on my server or the computer? And if the server, then how would one go about doing that?

And thanks so much for the links!

[Twey]

So you would suggest lest say 15 GB?

Um?
2.8MB + 10MB == 12.8MB

do I have to install that on my server or the computer? And if the server, then how would one go about doing that?

Install what? The forum? Your server. You'd install the forum -- probably -- simply by extracting it into your webserver directory and then running an "install" script from your browser.

[.eclipse]

Megs!! I'm sorry, I read GB, my bad.... well then, nevermind.

And by the installation I meant the Linux OP, what would I do with that?

[Twey]

And by the installation I meant the Linux OP, what would I do with that?

Presuming you mean OS ("operating system" ), you'd simply download the CDs, burn them, put the first one in the server's CD drive, reboot, and follow the installation procedure. As you don't seem to know very much about this kind of thing, I'll recommend Fedora (wait a while if you choose Fedora, there's a new version out in a few weeks) or openSUSE. These are probably the two most user-friendly free distributions I've come across. They have support forums here and here, respectively.

If you really do want a Linux OP ("original poster"), I'm afraid I can't help you.