GZip into Database

[Iridium]

The board I run has recently been kicked off its web host because, according to them "During a recent audit, your domain's database files were more than 64MB, and produced more MySQL queries than any other site we host" They obviously considered this grounds for cancelling our hosting.

I then thought that one way to cut down on the amount of data stored in the database would be to gzip certain large fields (basically post and IM bodies). This could quite dramatically reduce the size of the database files, and would help to please some of these webhosts who are rather picky about how much DB space you can use.

This would require some sort of database query abstraction, which would enable specific fields to be transparently compressed/decompressed as they are put into/extracted from the database. Of course, this would cause problems with the search system, but I personally would be quite happy to sacrifice that in order to not have to move my board every few months when the host gets sick of its large database footprint.

[David]

This would create much more server load since it has to compress and uncompress information on the fly.

[Iridium]

I am aware that server load would increase, but it's not that intensive. Also, I would imagine that most hosts don't keep records of things such as server load, but they do keep records of disk space.

[[Unknown]]

You might look into my Remove Click Log mod.

It would decrease the traffic with the database, which they seemed to say was an issue.

-[Unknown]

[Spaceman-Spiff]

if your database is really that big, and your forum is very active, maybe it is a good time to search for a better hosting, one that offers more bandwidth/cpu power

[Iridium]

A new host would be great, however as the saying goes: "You get what you pay for". We don't have banner ads or popups, an so have no way of generating cash to pay for hosting, and so we rely on one of the generous admins to pay for it, which she does out of her own pocket. Thus, we simply can't afford to buy more expensive hosting.

Having just tested this out on a copy of an old database backup I have, the messages table with a gzipped body was 20% smaller than the original table.
When this saving is measured in MB as it is with the messages table, I think that it's a worthwhile.
I would in fact create the mod myself, only, if I did, I'd never bother releasing it, which, considering the advantage that it could have for other people in similar positions with picky hosts, that's a little unfair.

(If this were car insurance, and you were saving 20%, you'd not be needing encouragement to integrate it. You'd be practically fighting to be the first to integrate it)

[Greg Robson]

It might be smaller but searches and other operations are going to be more intensive - gzipping should only be used if the table is very big (4MB fields for example).

[Iridium]

As I said, I'd be prepared to completely sacrifice the search feature for the sake of not having to pay ridiculous fees for hosting.

[Anguz]

look, I think that getting a better webhost is the best solution too...

I'm using http://www.dathorn.com, paying the $13.5/month plan with 20GB of disk space and 30GB of bandwidth with unlimited domains

this is the complete list of features fot the hosting plans:
http://www.dathorn.com/hostingplans.php

my forum is pretty big and active, with thousands of hits a day and I never received a complaint from my webhost

they have THE BEST support you'll ever find, or that I've ever found at least, and I know I won't move from there while they're around

I hope this is a solution for you

they just don't use YaBBSE yet, cause they had another one running before I found them, but hey, they HAD to have something wrong lol