Off-Shore Hosting for Forums

[sn0rt]

I have a project that I'm currently working on in which I need some of you guy's input.


Part of the project involves a forum.

Basically this forum will consist of a nulled/patched version of vbulletin, preferably patched or in combination with a keygen.


Now the hosting companies themselves can see if the software is nulled, hence the preference in a patched/keygenned version where the hosting companies themselves can not tell the difference. It would require the software company and hosting company to verify whether or not that version belongs to the domain.

As a back-up, I'm considering an off-shore hosting company, just in case vbulletin decides to take a look under the hood.

On another note, I'm under the impression that this is only a concern if you get reported by someone. In which the off-shore hosting should still cover that angle.


Questions:

• Is the off-shore hosting even necessary? Or am I looking into it too much?
• I need a couple of off-shore hosts that would be good for this part of the project. Something ideal for a forum. Something that would handle plenty of bandwidth.

Please suggest only providers that you have worked with before. A list of random providers won't help.

Feel free to ask questions in order to help gauge your answers accordingly.

 

[KVChosting1]

What location are you interested in?

 

[sn0rt]

That's a good question.

How does location effect the hosting?

 

[matsta]

Some providers in Canada don't care about DMCA's, which is probably the only thing you will be affected by.

If you want to go properly offshore, you can look at some DC's in The Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Isle of Man, Ukraine, Iceland etc. Of course your latency is going to get much bigger if the bulk of your traffic is from the US.

Heaps of Torrent Providers use these guys, so you should be fine with them http://www.netelligent.ca/

 

[sn0rt]

Some providers in Canada don't care about DMCA's, which is probably the only thing you will be affected by.

If you want to go properly offshore, you can look at some DC's in The Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Isle of Man, Ukraine, Iceland etc. Of course your latency is going to get much bigger if the bulk of your traffic is from the US.

Heaps of Torrent Providers use these guys, so you should be fine with them http://www.netelligent.ca/

Thanks for the input matsta.

Let me make sure I understand your point.

The farther location is from where it's getting traffic from, the longer it may take to load?

 

[RMX]

That's correct. However, you can use CDN (Content Delivery Network) that would cache things like Javascript and images on their servers globally, which means that you will save traffic (as scripts and images will be downloaded from the CDN) and therefore shouldn't see any noticeable slowness.

Thanks for the input matsta.

Let me make sure I understand your point.

The farther location is from where it's getting traffic from, the longer it may take to load?

 

[oxonbeef]

http://cyberbunker.com/web/index.php

 

[sn0rt]

http://cyberbunker.com/web/index.php

Thanks Ox but they aren't offering shared hosting. I don't think this would require something dedicated.

(btw, that site looks a little sketchy)

 

[ChapoGuzman]

Your biggest problem here is neither the being reported or offshore rather using a nulled version of vbulltien, I gurantee you, you will be hacked and site taken down.

I had vBulletin nulled and never had one problem with licensing (till the end) only with hackers, site got hacked a few times by groups who just go out and search for nulled vBulletin I don't know how they find them but they do must have a unique footprint. But didn't bother me cause I just hop on support and get it fixed, but then I guess they reported me and finally got the DMCA that took my forum down, had to finally break down and buy a license.

So if you can keep the hackers at bay, then any offshore hosting that will ignore dmca will do.

 

[sn0rt]

Your biggest problem here is neither the being reported or offshore rather using a nulled version of vbulltien, I gurantee you, you will be hacked and site taken down.

I had vBulletin nulled and never had one problem with licensing (till the end) only with hackers, site got hacked a few times by groups who just go out and search for nulled vBulletin I don't know how they find them but they do must have a unique footprint. But didn't bother me cause I just hop on support and get it fixed, but then I guess they reported me and finally got the DMCA that took my forum down, had to finally break down and buy a license.

So if you can keep the hackers at bay, then any offshore hosting that will ignore dmca will do.

That may be a problem with nulled versions as they may leave holes in the code during the nulling process.

A keygenned copy should be fine I'd suppose..

 

[sn0rt]

-bump.

I'd like to get some more info on this.

Thank you to all who've already tried to help.

 

[KOrnuol]

I know koddos company provides quality offshore hosting which is stable and cost not much.
Uptime is high and support is quality.

 

[umerjutt00]

Yes the offshore host is necessary as you will be using a nulled version of vbulletin. Go for a hosting company having servers in Netherlands, Switzerland, France or Germany. All of these locations are perfect for hosting your forum.