UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Chit Chat UBB.Classic Limitations

Does anybody know what the limitations are?

I'm a bit worried as I seem to be pushing UBB.Classic beyond what's expected of it.

The only thing I could find online was a recommended limit of 10,000 members but something I read the other day suggested an active topic count of 20.

I'm currently serving 240,000 page views per month from UBB, 3,600 members and around 100 active topics per day.

It's all still working but can I expect it to go BOOM!!! at some point.

I'm currently looking at replacing it in around 9 months time as I approach the 10,000 member limit. Should I be looking to move away sooner?

20 active topics? I know of many sites with more and they still use UBB... About 10,000 members, when you reach this level you can just upgrade your hosting account to better CPU, less shared accounts on that computer, etc until you get a dedicated host, then it can stay a UBB just about forever

That number is grossly incorrect.

It mostly depends on the power of your server and how many other sites are hosted on it. For a decent virtual host (read: not one thats free or charges under $20 a month) 10,000 members seems about right. If you're on a very good virtual host or a dedicated server it can handle much more than just 10,000 members.

Keep your membership pruned. Get rid of all the members that registered but haven't ever posted within 30 days of registering. Also remove any members that haven't posted in over a year. Also archive old topics and close topics when they get very large.

BTW, you should consider moving up to at least 6.3.1.2 as there have been several important fixes, including an important security patch.

I think you can safely go higher than those figures by a fair amount assuming the server can cope with it.

I know there are a few forums that are a fair bit more active than this running on UBB.classic, but as an example, the forums over at UD currently have in excess of 30,000 members, an average of 70-80 active topics per day and we've had 120,000 page views in the last week.

The only thing which I've noticed becomes an issue as size increases is the search function .

Thanks guys for your answers, at least I know it can survive until the next redesign when I can work out something better for the task.

Thanks usr bin geek for your suggestion about 6.3.1.2, I'll have a read but I'm very reluctant to upgrade all the time as upgrading a hacked board is a pain for us non-CGI/Perl people. I'd probably keep skipping until the next redesign.

The site is on a shared server at the moment but as far as I know there aren't any other clients on there as my bandwidth demands are excessive.

I can assure you that your board is nowhere near pushing the limits of the UBB. What makes you believe you're doing so?

I would highly advise immediately upgrading to 6.3.1.2. Yes, it's a hassle, but there are a number of very important updates that have been made...

I was looking for a hack that gave me a list of the last 24 hours worth of active topics and came across this post.

I seem to recall Infopop suggesting that UBB.Classic was aimed at communities with less than 10,000 members.

Given these two bits of information and the content of the topic, I figured that perhaps my UBB was running towards the top end of its capability. I was using the 10,000 members recommendation as a line in the sand by which time I'd redesign the site and design this issue away.

The topic URL is https://ubbdev.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=000794#000005

Okies, I'll really seriously look at upgrading to 6.3.1.2, honest.

Actually, I can't upgrade. I decided to save some pennies by not renewing my licence until I needed it. :rolleyes:

I think the number is closer to 20,000 on a decent server... limits are mostly hardware-based. The lod comes from concurrent users more than total number of members too... I've seen 300-400+ online on a dedicated server

If you want the 24hour active topics, upgrade to 6.4... it's in there. A mod was never made for it

Search has been fixed in 6.3+ UBB Graham... time for an upgrade?

Graham, version 6.3.0 brought a huge reduction in memory usage by the search and also adds the ability to tailor your search indices.

I know UD is loathe to do frequent updates to that board (they have better things to do) but moving to the most recent version will really allow you to make a difference in the search features. It also adds a bunch of x-site scripting protection. that in itself is worth it.

AA types faster than I.

hehe.. as Stilgar likes to say: Great minds think...

Probably, but it's not something I can do, and on the usual approach over there of skipping versions unless there are major holes in the one we're running, I'm holding off on suggesting an upgrade until 6.4 goes Gold because I want some of the features in it

Out of interest, can someone explain what's changed with the search, because it does seem to be a regular rant amoung the users about the problems

As for the quote further up, I seem to recall that was me referring to the old version of UBB we were running at the time, and we're still going strong 6 months later.

The search is merely faster and more memory effecient - rather than reading the search index into memory, then searching it, it searches it as it's being read. There are also more tools in the control panel, such as a killfile for common words and the max indexed post size that you can tweak to gain more accuracy.

The *OFFICIAL* max member advisory is 20,000 (after which performance is unacceptable, regardless of hardware), but performance really starts to decrease when you have more than 3,000.

How do you archive old topics now?

Use the Mass Move feature and create a Read Only forum.

What mass move feature?

The one in 6.3.1, of course.

Mass Move is to like the name says, move a whole lot of topics in one. If you were looking for a definition.

That explains it - I'm still using 6.3.0! Thanks for clarifying Charles.