Hosting support

I am having problems with my current set up supporting Comixpedia.com which runs on Drupal 4.7 and I was curious as to what the consensus of Drupalistas is as to how much hardware I need to run it. Primarily I've run into MySQL problems lately although I think I've had CPU issues too. (Currently I've got it on a box with an Intel Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.70GHz, Memory: 514872k/524224k available) It could be that I've just got my server set up poorly (I'm pretty untrained at server stuff) but maybe I need more resources?

Hi everyone,

My hosting company informed me of changing their server's PHP configuration by turning off the Register Global... and I am lost what are they talking about. I am not technical and I appreciate any hint. They said I have to work on php.ini file and I am not sure if drupal has something to say about this?

This is the email sent to me:

"We will be making a server configuration change related to PHP Register
Globals at the date below. If you are NOT using PHP for your website you can
disregard this notice. Currently PHP Register Globals is set to ON across our
entire network of servers and will be changed to OFF.

"Why are we making this change?

"When Register Globals is ON, you can overwrite variables in PHP scripts by
appending them to the URL, e.g. script.php?myvar=42 would define a
variable myvar with the value of 42. Depending on how your script works this
could be a security risk which was the case with many of the scripts within
Fantastcio being hacked/compromised.

"PHP has set Register Globals default value to OFF since version 4.2.0 as noted here in the first
line: http://us3.php.net/register_globals.

"What can happen as a result of this change?

"Old/outdated scripts still depending on Register Globals to be ON will have
problems as those scripts need Register Globals to be on in order to work.

"What can be done to prevent/resolve any problems caused as a result of this

Oh man, I got this email today:
Should I be worried?

During the overnight hours of October 3rd, 2006 through October 8th, 2006 Site5 will be upgrading MySQL on the servers listed below. We will be removing MySQL 4.1.x from our servers and replacing it with MySQL 5.0.x. This upgrade will correct several bugs that remain unfixed in the MySQL 4.1 tree. The upgrade to MySQL 5.0.x will also show speed improvements due to a new engine as well as increased reliability and stability.

The upgrade to MySQL 5.0.x will take approx. 10 minutes per server. Following the successful upgrade to MySQL 5.0.x we will recompile Apache and PHP on each server (required due to the change in MySQL libraries). Both the MySQL upgrade and the Apache/PHP compile will be customer affecting. Each server will see approx. 15 - 25 minutes of MySQL and Apache (web) downtime. Unfortunately this is a requirement for this upgrade--all other services (POP, IMAP, SMTP, FTP, etc.) will remain online.

Please be aware that this upgrade should be seamless for all web applications currently installed within your account(s). However, as a precaution, please check with your webmaster and script/web application developers to ensure your sites/scripts/web applications are MySQL 5 compatible. As I mentioned above, generally, most web applications will function just fine using MySQL 5.

In order to publish my website to the web using Drupal do I need an existing hosting plan? I don't wanna pay monthly for a server or whatever you need, and if this is the case, then I suppose Drupal is not for me...

What kind of hosting should you expect to need if your running a drupal (Vbulletin too) site with ~350 nodes, 3000 active members (monthly), about 800,000 posts on Vbulletin and typically 300-400 people on the site at once?

Im running Vbdrupal, but what would kind of server or hosting plan would you think would suffice this kind of site?

Thank sincerely,

I'm in the process of moving my hosting to 1and1... seems that they are somewhat drupal friendly based on posts I've read. I was a little taken back while setting up my databases when I read the following:

The MySQL database may not be used for log evaluation operations, ad clicks, chat systems, banner rotations, or similar applications putting extreme loads on the database under any circumstances.