A sort of Forum?

Forums › Social networks, social media, and tools › A sort of Forum?

gnfb

1927 posts

Uber Geek

#222924 4-Sep-2017 11:38

We are looking for a suitable open source (ie free) piece of software. Will act as a questions, answers and comments re NZ for our Secret Wellington group about 2-3000 usage. It needs to be what I call an easy install ( I setup a phplist yesterday that was easy). No where as complex as geekzone! in ability. I tried the flarum software , way past my pay grade! I have used vanilla before but hoping there was something with a more modern, user friendly feel? Suggestions?

Is an English Man living in New Zealand. Not a writer, an Observer he says. Graham is a seasoned 'traveler" with his sometimes arrogant, but honest opinion on life. He loves the Internet!.

gnfb on trademe

Email Me

Stu

Hammered
5356 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1858031 4-Sep-2017 11:56

Moved to a sub-forum that will hopefully be more in tune with the tools required. Not a start-up discussion, and also not really a developer discussion as you're after an easy option. It is about social networking tools, so let's see how it goes here.

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

amanzi

936 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1858038 4-Sep-2017 12:01

Discourse appears to be the favourite platform at the moment. You can pay for a hosted account or self-host it for free.

timmmay

15682 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Subscriber

#1858050 4-Sep-2017 12:12

A Facebook group is super easy, but has limited features. We use those just to share photos of our family, so we don't spam all our facebook friends.

gnfb

1927 posts

Uber Geek

#1858209 4-Sep-2017 15:11

Stu: Moved to a sub-forum that will hopefully be more in tune with the tools required. Not a start-up discussion, and also not really a developer discussion as you're after an easy option. It is about social networking tools, so let's see how it goes here.

Cheers I never know where to place my posts sometimes

Is an English Man living in New Zealand. Not a writer, an Observer he says. Graham is a seasoned 'traveler" with his sometimes arrogant, but honest opinion on life. He loves the Internet!.

gnfb on trademe

Email Me

gnfb

1927 posts

Uber Geek

#1858211 4-Sep-2017 15:15

amanzi:

Discourse appears to be the favourite platform at the moment. You can pay for a hosted account or self-host it for free.

Ha! I saw this and thought it was only available as a paid option ie hosting as you mentioned it I looked again and found the github link Thanks

It actually looks similar to the flarum look ...lets go play!

Is an English Man living in New Zealand. Not a writer, an Observer he says. Graham is a seasoned 'traveler" with his sometimes arrogant, but honest opinion on life. He loves the Internet!.

gnfb on trademe

Email Me

gnfb

1927 posts

Uber Geek

#1858221 4-Sep-2017 15:33

gnfb:

amanzi:

Discourse appears to be the favourite platform at the moment. You can pay for a hosted account or self-host it for free.

Ha! I saw this and thought it was only available as a paid option ie hosting as you mentioned it I looked again and found the github link Thanks

It actually looks similar to the flarum look ...lets go play!

Just started to read some info on discourse this is way out of my comfort zone will have to keep looking...

Is an English Man living in New Zealand. Not a writer, an Observer he says. Graham is a seasoned 'traveler" with his sometimes arrogant, but honest opinion on life. He loves the Internet!.

gnfb on trademe

Email Me

amanzi

936 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1858253 4-Sep-2017 15:57

gnfb:

Just started to read some info on discourse this is way out of my comfort zone will have to keep looking...

I don't know what your comfort zone is but they claim you can "Set up Discourse in the cloud in under 30 minutes with zero knowledge of Rails or Linux shell"

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md

gnfb

1927 posts

Uber Geek

#1858262 4-Sep-2017 16:16

amanzi:

gnfb:

Just started to read some info on discourse this is way out of my comfort zone will have to keep looking...

I don't know what your comfort zone is but they claim you can "Set up Discourse in the cloud in under 30 minutes with zero knowledge of Rails or Linux shell"

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md

I read that .... usually when developers say 30 minutes I multiple that by 10 for us mere mortals!

Is an English Man living in New Zealand. Not a writer, an Observer he says. Graham is a seasoned 'traveler" with his sometimes arrogant, but honest opinion on life. He loves the Internet!.

gnfb on trademe

Email Me

darylblake

986 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1858268 4-Sep-2017 16:24

Having a look around it looks like Discourse (Ruby) or phpBB (PHP).

xpd

SysOp
10328 posts

Uber Geek

Mod Emeritus

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1858271 4-Sep-2017 16:30

Do you have a web host offering PHP/SQL ? (I assume so as you said you installed something recently)

If so, then its relatively straight forward to install the more popular forum packages, and some even offer automated installation of the packages.

XPD / Gavin / DemiseNZ

marpada

317 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1858318 4-Sep-2017 17:05

Maybe you can try Slack or any other team chat hosted app?

gnfb

1927 posts

Uber Geek

#1858695 5-Sep-2017 09:56

Ok the guys at webhostingnz have a auto install of phpbb which I have used before. I then see that there is a multitude of multipurpose responsive themes available which should get me to a user friendly screen.

Is an English Man living in New Zealand. Not a writer, an Observer he says. Graham is a seasoned 'traveler" with his sometimes arrogant, but honest opinion on life. He loves the Internet!.

gnfb on trademe

Email Me