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advice on Forum Hosting
Can folks here offer some advice on Forum hosting?
I know there are plenty sites offering to Host forum software, and I am looking to set up a probably long running Forum environment as part of community building for a new non-profit organisation.
I have not been involved with Forums for a very long time and see that the world has moved on some.
What software and / or Hosted Services do people here use / prefer?
Is it still a major admin hassle to deal with self hosting, updates, migrations etc. ?
Are the 'new' kidz on the block worth using e.g. a 'node' hosted service instead of PHP?
( I am old hand unix sysadmin / netadmin / software developer but would prefer to minimize the workload if possible)
I am aware that some people seem to have a strong dislike for discord, how about FOSS alternatives like e.g. revolt or discourse, is it/they 'good enough' to host communities, or is it/they really 'just' for chat and notifications?
Is there much to actually be gained from having the new 'federated' hotness, and what are the pitfalls if I do that?
I realise these are quite open ended questions, but some of you will have a lot of experience and current knowledge, which I don't!
Thanks in advance!
;-)
Comments
https://flarum.org/
its easy to use
Easypanel is easy to deploy on your server, one click setup for Flarum (including SSL)
https://easypanel.io/docs/templates/flarum
https://open.vanillaforums.com/
what LET is currently on, cannot find any open source platforms that offer this template
I hate Discord and Discourse equally, for what it's worth.
Discourse just has so much going on, it almost takes you out of the conversation altogether. Just feels really disconnected vs something like Vanilla or phpBB
I setup a discourse server a few weeks ago and it was really easy to setup the server and get everything configured. I've used a lot of forum softwares before, so I'm used to enormous settings panels, I was surprised at how efficiently laid out discourses settings area is, very intuitive and easy to config, not overly complicated or endless options.
Overall very happy with it. I wouldn't go back to an old style forum like phpbb after having tried discourse.
Pretty good mobile too, which is so important nowadays.
My use case was a local community site for my city, similar to Nextdoor, but with live chat and less strict censorship, and no ads. It needed to be simple enough for those kind of low-tech users, so it was nice to be able to strip down a lot of things so easily to make a more simple/streamlined frontend.
I really can't complain about it, it checked all my boxes and totally free other than the VPS to run it. Id say spin it up and take it for a test drive, see how you like it.
I personally would not recommend Discourse. It's probably the most fancy forum software among others, but very complicated to set up, optimize, and maintain, involving lots of trials and errors. I had one set up 4 years ago and it's a pain to work with. Unless you are very familiar with this specific tech stack including Ruby on rails, PostgreSQL, Sidekiq, etc., or would like to put lots of effort learning them, I would suggest to go for Flarum, PHPBB, Vanilla, or even BuddyPress instead, as those are much easier to work with.
One other thing about Forums is that this specific type of website tends to attract a lot of DDOS attack, so get prepared for that; at least you should have Cloudflare or something similar in place.
Reddit-style: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
Hi
I shot a video that shows you how to install Flarum on your server. I can recommend using it because it is very simple, as I understand it, to install and operate. I will add a video here, but if the admins suddenly remove it, I will also add commands here.
To install and use it, a VDS or Cloud with at least 2 GB of RAM and 2 processors is enough.
Commands Used:
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install apache2 mariadb-server php php-common php-mysql libapache2-mod-php php-gd php-curl php-json php-xmlrpc php-intl php-bcmath php-zip php-apcu php-mbstring php-fileinfo php-xml php-soap php-tokenizer composer git
sudo systemctl is-enabled apache2
sudo systemctl status apache2
sudo systemctl is-enabled mariadb
sudo systemctl status mariadb
php -v
sudo -u www-data composer -v
sudo nano /etc/php/8.3/apache2/php.ini
sudo systemctl restart apache2
sudo mariadb -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE flarum;
CREATE USER flarum@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON flarum.* TO flarum@localhost;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
SHOW GRANTS FOR flarum@localhost;
mkdir -p /var/www/{.cache,.config,flarum}
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/{.cache,.config,flarum}
cd /var/www/flarum/
sudo -u www-data composer create-project flarum/flarum .
ls -ah
sudo a2enmod ssl rewrite headers
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/flarum.conf
VirtualHost *:80
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/flarum/public
ServerName forum.howtoforge.local
Directory /var/www/flarum/public/
Options FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
/Directory
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
Directory /var/www/flarum/public/
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*) index.php [PT,L]
/Directory
/VirtualHost
sudo a2ensite flarum.conf
sudo apachectl configtest
sudo systemctl restart apache2
I really enjoy running my Flarum forum, but it has quirks as do all other forum software choices.
Anyone considering Flarum today should know that 2.0 is soon on its way -- supposedly the first 2.0 beta will be available for initial evaluation in the next couple of weeks. Based on my experience over the past almost two years, it will probably take many months before it is stable enough to be production ready. And the dev team is pretty thinly stretched -- don't expect them to support 1x very much after 2.0 is formally launched.
If you only know one thing about Flarum, know this -- the core is intentionally very sparse, and most features that are obviously basic, expected "features" of all other forum software have to be hunted down from many hundreds of poorly explained and sparsely documented options, and added manually as "extensions".
Extensions are developed by some of the official Flarum devs, but also by a wide array of random users. Most are awesome and free, but they can also disappear without warning.
As an example, there is still no functionality as of 1.8.9 to require a simple approval of new registrations by a moderator (other than via a very cumbersome workaround). Yet there are also mind-numbingly complex caching extensions and other incredible feats of programming in some of what is available. And it's generally "wait and see" for non-devs to find out what is changing in 2.0.
Despite my desire to evangelize, if you go with Flarum it will not likely be "easy". But, you may find yourself, like me, to love the constant need to figure out how to achieve tweaks and make it work to your expectations.
If you're looking for a long run, hence stability and maturity, I'd definitely go with phpBB.
Despite the years passed, IMO nothing is still close to it, except SMF probably.
Dealing with phpBB shouldn't be an issue for you then.
Modules are installed via file uploading these days, no need to edit any code.
Default template is mobile-friendly, numerous converters available in case if you decide to migrate to something else.
A shared hosting plan should be enough to host it, so no need for admin work as well.
IMO again, but no.
They're for those, who prefer "fancy and trendy" to real-world functionality.
Also, should you decide to go this way, better choose nodeBB instead of Discourse.
But you'll still need a VPS for that.
Also check this thread, a lot of options and feedback from Discourse forum admins there:
https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/193277/seeking-recommendations-for-self-hosted-community-forum-software
if i have a perfect server in ispconfig3 how is composer implemented?
that's the main reason why flarum was discarded for my forum
I understood, well, I think in any case everything can be configured to work and Flarum can be a very good solution in my opinion.
flarum now works without composer with zip installer. isn't?
Yes, but it doesn't support forum software updates without composer.
At least to my knowledge, although I don't follow the project closely these days.
Stop the senseless flushing!
I think it's probably a matter of habit. It's like peeling potatoes, someone is used to using a knife and someone with a special tool, that's the same in Databases
TBH I still type it sometimes myself.
Even if, it is for a non profit org, I would suggest you to get a paid solution like Xenforo or Wotlabs. Get a small VPS and you are good to go. XF has strong development team, has a good feature set and has a positive future.
I have a pipe-dream of starting a piefed server one day... Although I accept that it's in alpha so a bit clunky... and I don't really understand how best to host image/media files for it. Would you ever use a federated platform?
Free: Flarum
Paid: Xenforo
Pain: Discourse
Thanks all, a lot of useful responses there.
Which leads me to some more questions. ;-)
From the response overall I get the sense that it would be better from the perspective of some users to not pick Discord / Discourse type servers.
From the free options Flarum seems popular although the experience from user @225Thinker does give me some pause.
There does not seem to be much love for Vanilla forums, despite it being used here on LET.
I don't think that we will want to dive straight in to the financial commitment of paying for XenForo every month because this is starting as a low-end-money proposal.
Thanks to user @DataRecovery for that and mention of Simple Machines Forum.
What do people think about that as I have not used it?
Not suprisingly, longstanding oldtimer phpBB gets favourable recommendation.
And the link to the previous thread was very helpful. Thanks! :-)
https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/193277/seeking-recommendations-for-self-hosted-community-forum-software
I am a bit put off by the idea that there is little support available for Flarum and no exporter for forum data, if the experiment is not successful and we need to migrate user data and content to another platform. :-(
Also what do people think about the usefulness of modern federated features?
I am not really up to speed on that and it was not much discussed.
From the other thread
"If a "discourse-like" forum is a must, then NodeBB is the best of a bad bunch."
Looks like I shall have to find out more about Flarum, phpBB and SMF with nodeBB as an outside possibility.
From what has been said so far, at least I can rule out where not to look!
[edit] On re-reading this thread, perhaps one question should be:
"Why would I NOT just use phpBB? "
Thanks all, all input appreciated
When you take a big dump, always flush. That’s good manners.
Something happened with Vanilla. There's still some open source releases, but there's not much support anymore. Maybe somebody can fill in the details.
We love Vanilla. IMO, it was(is?) the most promising forum script.
And we love it even more, since
The primary issue is below.
Vanilla was sold to some company called higher logic.
At first it was like there was this topic:
https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/38707/vanilla-higher-logic-an-update
But then:
https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/39558/official-releases-have-ended
So there are open source releases still being published, but they aren't official.
Higher logic's stance is unclear, they seem to be busy with "integrating AI into their products".
SMF is solid. I used it for a few years but it then went downhill for a while. I haven't used it lately, but my memory of it was overall very positive. It does have that nostalgic look from what I can see even now, but If I were starting a new forum in this day and age, and depending on the target user age, I still think Flarum is the safest bet.