Free forum software / hosting?

[Arwen]

While adding to my various on-line presences, (Linkedin, Blog, Cloud VM), I tried to see if there was easy to use free forum software for Linux. (Maybe for my Cloud VM.) Or just a free forum hosting site. Probably advertisement supported, but hey, I want free for now. (Our beloved XenForo used by FreeNAS forums is not free.)

I came up with;

• Wikidot
• ProBoards

Both seem like they can get the job done. But the first seems pretty manual, (at the HTML level). While the second I was able to get a forum site going in 30 minutes.

1. So, do any of you have a forum you started / manage?
2. And was it hosted?
3. Or on Linux?

 

[Ericloewe]

That Simple Machines Forum thing is so atrociously bad yet ubiquitous that I can't imagine it not being free.

phpBB is also pretty popular and pretty terrible.

 

[danb35]

Discourse is free software and pretty popular lately, though I'm not aware of anyone doing free hosting for it. Instructions fot self-installation are here: https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL.md It'll run on a pretty low-end VPS if you don't expect a lot of traffic.

 

[Jailer]

There are plenty of free roll your own options out there. The one you choose depends entirely on what you want for a look and feel to your forum. If you just want free, FreeFourms is one you could check out. Just be aware that any free hosted option you go with you will not own the forum and you can't take it with you. If you decide later you want to go out on your own you'll have to start from scratch.

I personally hate the discourse style of forums and many seem to be going to those. Blame facebook for that one.

I host a small private forum using Simple Machines Forum. From the free options out there I found this one to be the best. It's easy to set up and maintain and it runs pretty fast.

 

[Arwen]

Hmm. Been a long time since I bothered to install a database, and support structure, (aka LAMP), so perhaps Simple Machines Forum is out for the moment. That probably means I am not up to the effort of installing and maintaining my own board. So, looks like I am going for hosting.

FreeForums does look interesting. Weirdly enough, they use this as the base domain name;

.free-forums.org

While ProBoards uses;

.freeforums.net

For the moment, I guess I will stick with ProBoards. They have a more active, (and recently active), support forum. While FreeForums seems that the last support forum post was June 22nd, 2017. (Of course, FreeForums could be so perfect that the users don't need support :).

 

[danb35]

Been a long time since I bothered to install a database, and support structure, (aka LAMP), so perhaps Simple Machines Forum is out for the moment.

The Discourse installation is pretty easy on a clean Ubuntu VM/VPS: install Docker, git clone the Docker image, run the installer script. I've done it before, just for s&g, and it's about a 20-minute process. It will notify you when updates are needed, and those are a point-and-click process.

Of course, if you don't like Discourse, that's fine--I'm not a big fan myself. But it does seem to be pretty popular lately.

 

[danb35]

I've even registered on this forum just to ask a question about what to do with my hosting.

Um, why? What thought process reached the conclusion of "I'll register on this forum that has nothing to do with my question, to post a reply in an off-topic thread that still has nothing to do with my question"?

That's not much of a welcome, and I apologize for that, but I just can't fathom the thought process that would have brought you here. Whatever software you use for your online store has a support forum, right? That would seem like an infinitely better place for your question than this forum.

 

[Tigersharke]

Ok.. on Ganz großes Kino -dark it remained visible as a link (the way I have links displayed, or at least it was NOT "hidden"), so I must have set something in the css that would guarantee override. Perhaps I need to investigate and do the same for the other theme(s)?

 

[danb35]

Of course, if you don't like Discourse, that's fine--I'm not a big fan myself.

How things change...

I've now been running a small Discourse forum for about 6 months. I was a member of a Yahoo group for nearly 20 years until Yahoo pulled the plug on them late last year (and the group owner had died almost a year earlier, complicating things a wee bit). I didn't want to lose the message history. And rather than pay the $200+ to migrate to the same experience at groups.io, I decided to set up a Discourse forum and migrate the ~40k messages into it. The users who want to keep using it as a mailing list can do so, while those who would prefer a more modern web interface (rather than Yahoo's which was stuck in the '90s) can do that. Administration is easy, software upgrades are easy, and there are lots of plugins and themes out there to make it work the way you want.

I'm hosting it on a Contabo VPS at about $5/mo, and storing backups and uploads on Digital Ocean Spaces for another $5/mo. But if you're on a tighter budget, reports on meta.discourse.org suggest that Oracle's VPS hosting has a free instance that will manage a small forum.

 

[danb35]

Administration is easy, software upgrades are easy, and there are lots of plugins and themes out there to make it work the way you want.

...and I forgot a really important point: support on meta.discourse.org is outstanding. So while I'm sure Arwen has done whatever she's going to do, even if I'm not a complete convert to the Discourse forum model as a user, I'm a pretty big fan as a small-time admin.