vBulletin 3
Once we switch to vB3, we're on vB3. Moving vBulletin from one server to another is a matter of backing up the database to a file and copying the Avatars, Smilies, and Attachments folders. There's no complex installation so-to-speak.
My concern about running with vB3 here is that vB3 uses more RAM than vB2 and we're already bumping into the RAM ceiling on here.
Hosting
I can't reiterate enough that "Virtual Private Servers" are a failed experiment.
A regular web hosting account or "virtual hosting" ($9-30/mo) is typically on a computer shared by 50-100 websites. Busy websites can trip over each other or hang the whole machine.
A dedicated server ($99-199/mo) is a single PC used for just 1 web host. 60GB hard drive, 512MB RAM, 1GHz CPU. Overkill for our needs.
A "virtual private server" is where they take a high-end PC and split it up into partitions and each person has their own dedicated "slice" of the machine with a fixed amount of RAM, hard drive, and bandwidth.
Sounds like a great idea, but I guess the cost of overhead is such that a VPS with 1/16th the resources of a dedicated machine costs almost as much as a dedicated host. Now don't get me wrong, the tech support is invaluable, but still, the price is just out-of-control in my opinion.
I just don't understand why nobody has found a way to split a dedicated server 4 ways and allow 4 people to use the server for a cost of ~$50-70 a month.
Now, I could do what is called reselling. Once we switch to the dedicated host, I could parcel out parts of the server and people could put their own .com name on their part of the server. If I ever set up an independant business, I'd run it as a secondary account on the same server as FeldonCentral.
I considered setting up a photography site where people can host their photos, but
PBase.com is already established, cheap, and seems to be running a good, stable set of software.
Icons
The problem with the
.ico files is that you can only have 1 per server. So the logo for the entire FeldonCentral site would be a fish (not that that's bad!).