Invision is just another form of forum software, its free or very cheap to licence due to it being more open source (which means its software is free to be reprogrammed/added too). We don't think its as secure as vBulletin, or as well supported. But that's down to choice.
Server load means exactly that, the more stuff the server has to do, the more load it has to bear. We have a large amount of visitors to the site and several large database's. Lots of connections always requesting pages to be loaded.
Were not maxed out, but were getting there. We currently rent our server, and this has become hugely expensive, several thousand pounds a year.
We have recently decided to stop renting, and buy our own server. Much higher spec than we can afford to rent. We have now just set up a colocation deal, (this means we rent some space from a server company).
This is still pricey, but far less so than renting the actual equipment from them, and we have much greater control over what the server does, and what software it runs. Because its ours.
So we can make it more efficient for our requirements.
Bonus is, that next year we can hopefully buy a second server, and spread the growing load across 2 machines. so one machine can run the forum, and the other the website. Where as our server currently has to bear the burden of both.
As we have always promised every penny that comes into SCN, is for SCN and nothing else.
