WordPress MU

I've finally got wordpress MU up and running on virtual hosting with 200 GB of space and 2,000 GB monthly bandwith! I was able to configure both apache and wildcard DNS so subdomains are working. So far so good!

However, my host restricts out accounts to a maxiumum of 50,000 inodes (individual files/folders). Does anyone have a rough idea of how large I can allow my community to grow before I'm nearing that limit?

Thanks

Your host is going to run you off way before you start nearing 50k files. 200gB/2tB accounts are the equalizent of a server. If you're not paying at least $150 for that account, chances are you're with a host that's overselling their boxes and will run off anyone coming near those limits, usually with an excuse that it's your fault and you're overmaxing their box. Please remember "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

To answer your question though, it really depends on if you're going to open up your site to the public and how much space you're going to allow for uploads. I think for most of us here, only about 5% of signups actually stay around longer than the first month.

You start to run into problems near the 1.5k mark of blogs. By then, your database will then have 36k files within it if you're not removing sblogs. That's probably where the limit will be reached first if they also count the files that make up the database. You'll probably want to ask them that.

Do also note that changes are reselling or giving out subaccounts is usually against most hoster's standard account ToS'es. I would also double check that. If you;re going with a cheap host like you appear to be doing, I would be alomst 100% sure that it is.

Hope this helps,
-drmike

Thanks very much for the informative reply. I'm hosting with hostgator, if anyone has any experience with them...

Most likely what I'll do is stay here and see if the site takes off. If it does, then transfer over to a managed dedicated server before my host flips out.

My day job is at one of those big hosts that offers ridiculous amounts of space and bandwidth, and yeah, nobody is ever allowed to actually use it all. More so than space though, hosts tend to hit for MySQL and CPU usage. So watch out for that.