Babble V2 / V3 Questions

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Our chat will typically have 20ish people in it on event days and can spike to 30 - 40+ on some occasions.  What kind of load does this put on the server in addition to regular web traffic on the forum?  I run on a Digital Ocean VPS with 2 GB ram / 2 CPUs

the current node i am using for the node trial is a 1 cpu/512mb digitalocean droplet, its had around 100 ppl on it at times and its been about 60% usage (but that was with a modified version of the original node script, with the new script, I've never seen it go above 20%).

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If I purchase the current version will the upgrade to V3 be included when it is released?

yes.

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Do you have an ETA on when V3 will be released?

I hate giving ETA's, there is still quite a bit of work left to do on version 3 (lots of little things broken still). hopefully it is before IPS chat goes the way of the dino. 

I'm trying to figure out how complicated this is going to be for me to setup node.js on my server.

I use a service called ServerPilot.io to help monitor, segregate web sites, and keep software up to date.  It is really like a cPanel light.  They don't officially support node.js, but you can use their concept of "apps" to setup a node.js app here https://serverpilot.io/community/articles/how-to-run-apps-in-any-language.html.  An app is basically a way to segment different domains or subdomains and can run different php versions between apps, etc.

Sent a ticket to support to see what their thoughts would be on getting a php app talking to a node.js app, this was their reply:

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Our articles shows how to use the app's .htaccess file to send the request to whatever port the non-PHP language is running on. You could theoretically use a rewrite condition to send the request to the port only on specific pages, instead of every request.

Which I'm not sure is the right approach.  Can you tell me if my line of thinking here makes any sense?  I've never really installed or configured node.js before.

1. I would need to install node.js on my server
2. Create the new ServerPilot "app" and setup your node.js chat application there.
3. Rather then use .htaccess files as they suggest, I'm wondering if I setup the node.js application as a subdomain like chat.domainname.com
4. When configuring your chat application on the IPBoard side, is there a configuration where I tell it or point it to where the node.js application lives?  So in this case I would goto chat.domainname.com

To top things off, I also run everything through CloudFlare, which your support page mentions I need to be careful which port I setup the node.js chat application on?

The short answer for 2-4 I think is Yes. The config in Babble allows you to point to a different server, so you can run node on a stand alone droplet if you want.

 I had to open up CloudFlare on the port that node.js is running.

PS. How does IPS run on Digital Ocean...? How big is your file structure and database? 

On 2/1/2017 at 9:58 PM, Wryval said:

I'm trying to figure out how complicated this is going to be for me to setup node.js on my server.

I use a service called ServerPilot.io to help monitor, segregate web sites, and keep software up to date.  It is really like a cPanel light.  They don't officially support node.js, but you can use their concept of "apps" to setup a node.js app here https://serverpilot.io/community/articles/how-to-run-apps-in-any-language.html.  An app is basically a way to segment different domains or subdomains and can run different php versions between apps, etc.

Sent a ticket to support to see what their thoughts would be on getting a php app talking to a node.js app, this was their reply:

Which I'm not sure is the right approach.  Can you tell me if my line of thinking here makes any sense?  I've never really installed or configured node.js before.

1. I would need to install node.js on my server
2. Create the new ServerPilot "app" and setup your node.js chat application there.
3. Rather then use .htaccess files as they suggest, I'm wondering if I setup the node.js application as a subdomain like chat.domainname.com
4. When configuring your chat application on the IPBoard side, is there a configuration where I tell it or point it to where the node.js application lives?  So in this case I would goto chat.domainname.com

To top things off, I also run everything through CloudFlare, which your support page mentions I need to be careful which port I setup the node.js chat application on?

 

babble uses socket.io (js) and elephant.io (php) to talk with the nodejs, you shouldn't have to do any port redirect on a domain, unless its for ssl and you can't configure babble.js (the nodejs script) to use ssl and/or can't configure a proxy. as to what it is involved, i only have experience with editing apache and niginx itself. any interface in between the two, be it cpanel or another admin panel i do not know.

3 hours ago, Pit said:

PS. How does IPS run on Digital Ocean...? How big is your file structure and database? 

I am currently running the trial service from a droplet, i have plans to move the final to aws. DO is pretty nice little service, for $5 a month you can setup a droplet that you can test on and do whatever you want on it pretty much and when you are done, just delete it and start again later  

5 hours ago, Pit said:

The short answer for 2-4 I think is Yes. The config in Babble allows you to point to a different server, so you can run node on a stand alone droplet if you want.

 I had to open up CloudFlare on the port that node.js is running.

 

PS. How does IPS run on Digital Ocean...? How big is your file structure and database? 

No complaints with Digital Ocean.  Been there about a year now.  I moved over after I had a more "fully managed" VPS web hosting solution which underwent a full week outage.  I had already decided I was going to leave by the second day, but they didn't even offer any financial incentives dues to the outage.  Also taught me a good lesson about having offsite backups, as I couldn't move anything until they were back online as all my backups were with them and those were not accessible during the outage. 

Database is about 850MB,   file structure is 200MB.

On 2/4/2017 at 0:33 PM, Wryval said:

No complaints with Digital Ocean.  Been there about a year now.  I moved over after I had a more "fully managed" VPS web hosting solution which underwent a full week outage.  I had already decided I was going to leave by the second day, but they didn't even offer any financial incentives dues to the outage.  Also taught me a good lesson about having offsite backups, as I couldn't move anything until they were back online as all my backups were with them and those were not accessible during the outage. 

Database is about 850MB,   file structure is 200MB.

On 2/4/2017 at 10:50 AM, Michael said:

I am currently running the trial service from a droplet, i have plans to move the final to aws. DO is pretty nice little service, for $5 a month you can setup a droplet that you can test on and do whatever you want on it pretty much and when you are done, just delete it and start again later  

Thanks, I'm familiar with Digital Ocean, I have 2 $5 droplets myself for various small things. But am a little scared to move the IPS forum to Digital Ocean because I do like the backup of having it 'managed' - they do help when I mess with caching and more complex stuff that I'm not familiar with. And the IPS instance I run is 20+ GB, not a fast migration, don't want down time.

And since we're on that note, I've started using Google Cloud Engine for a VPS. Their system is very robust, but I really like their management console and pricing. You pay only when the server is on. And you can make images and restore them like Digital Ocean. It's less than $5 month if you leave it on the whole time, and if you boot it up only when you need it (which you can do direct from you phone without logging in), it could literally be penny's a month depending on what you use the VPS for.

oh, another question, do you use WHM/cPanel on you digital ocean? or just run a basic form of LAMP?

Basic form of LAMP but I use a service called serverpilot.io to help manage some of the stuff that cPanel or WHM would do.