Forum?
So it is summer again and for me, summer is usually a time I spend on catching up with a few things that I have been thinking of doing but have unfortunately no time to do yet.
And as it turns out, the top issue on my to-do list for 96MB.com, based on the number of requests that I get (other than the requests to review VPS products and services) is to have a forum. Obviously there is the Big Brother (WebhostingTalk) in the realm of hosting-related forums, and then there is LowEndTalk, which I have personally benefited more than a dozen times from it and 96MB.com is never meant nor will ever be a competitor to any of them.
So, here are some questions that I would like to throw to the readers of 96MB:
1. What is the direction do you think the forum should go in order to have its own path that does not cross with WHT nor LET?
2. What forum software would you recommend? I have experimented with Vanilla Forums, which is what LET uses, it is pretty impressive however getting it to work with Nginx is not exactly straight-forward. I have also experimented with OSQA a while ago, which is what V2 of LET had, but configuring Python on a low end VPS environment was not exactly the best idea either. Do you have any other recommendation? Of course, the forum software has to be “low-end” and therefore please do not recommend VB or similar.
3. Who are willing to help me with the moderation effort? On both LET and WHT, moderators are very active on the forum and besides taking part on the discussion, they play an important role to ensure anything that should not be in the forum gets removed/closed quickly. It is a quite time-consuming task and quite frankly speaking beyond what I can offer at the moment. Therefore, I am definitely looking for a few helping hands, who, ideally, have some experience and interests in the industry and are willing to donate their time for this effort (unfortunately there won’t be any salary paid for this job).
Feel free to comment below and appreciate any help/idea in advance!
P.S.: I have not thought about a name for the forum yet, LET was an easy one for LowEndAdmin, but I guess 96Talk sounds more like a radio station to me. So feel free to give some ideas on the name as well.
PunBB and FluxBB are both light, excellent PHP-based forums.
@t: thanks a lot, I am actually working on setting something up right now, they are indeed pretty light-weight which is definitely something I like 🙂
Simple Machines Forum. The best free forum software.
@Steve: Thanks for your input, I actually have been using SMF for a few years on another project that currently have no active users but just spam bots once a while. To be honest I think SMF is definitely very powerful, however just like many of the major forum hosts, it is also a resource hog, which is something I guess pretty difficult to set up and justify right now.
I think you should go for it, perhaps focus on more detailed information as you always have which is why I read all your new posts not just because you get xx MB for $xx p/month.
Happy to help out in any way from moderating to providing resources.
probably just a sub domain would be fine e.g. forum.96mb.com
@Anthony: Thanks so much for the input, I think I will try to make the forum somewhat detailed and if I can enlist your help, that would be great, I’ll send you an email in a bit with a little more info. Thanks a lot!
Perhaps a forum will be good 🙂
Forum is definitely good. I am willing to moderate. Personally, I love OSQA but its a resource-hog and definitely not a lowend script
@Asim: That’s great! Thanks so much in advance, I’ll shoot you an email in a moment with some more info, thanks so much!
since 96mb is review based, let’s make the forum review based? maybe also add tutorials on what can be done on a 96mb box.
but generally, it’s very hard not to cross with LET. because you are bound to low end vps topics.
@jon: Thanks for your suggestions, there will definitely be a section on the forum that is based on the VPS reviews that I wrote (so that people could throw stones and rotten eggs at the silly things I say 🙂 ) and definitely a few more sections for people to post their own reviews. Tutorials will be there for sure and we’ll see what are the interesting stuff to be done in low end and ultra low end boxes.
I agree it is difficult not to have any overlap with LET, however I am really hoping to complement what LEB/T does not have yet, which was really the idea for me to start off 96MB, as I could find great deals on LEB and review them and LEA back then would quote one or 2 reviews that I wrote for some of his postings. I hope that would be the relationship between the proposed forum and LET as well.
Tutorials on using a 96mb box are a must-have, but why not publish them within the blog?
another point, i hope you don’t mind. but LEA moved away from LET/LEB because of lack of time. You are posting review less frequently now. Can you keep up and spend more time when you try to expand and have a forum?
@jcaleb: I understand your point and that is exactly one of the reasons, among many others, that I am considering starting this forum so that rather than having everyone waiting for weeks for one of my reviews (which I know and understand your frustration), people could discuss about other issues and perhaps post their own reviews to the forum.
@jcaleb: And thanks a lot for bringing the issue up, I definitely apologize for the long wait in writing the posts.
thanks 96mb. can i raise another point again? i hope you don’t mind. how about you add more editors to your blog to post review? then you just moderate for approval? I would love to post some of my experiences, and I think others would too. But most of us don’t have the energy to create our own forum. But just post something from time to time.
my thinking is that, it’s natural not to be able to cope with the demand because time is the most scarce resource around. So a natural remedy is to duplicate yourself to expand.
@jcaleb: I’ll ask around to see if I can clone myself somehow 🙂
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Vanilla is all nice and well until you want to mod it. Or leave it. Then it is hard to do. Nothing that can’t be overcome but still requires work.
Speaking from personal experience, of course.