New forum ideas

Hi all.

Hopefully, this forummotion thingy will be a temporary home.

One big lesson of EF is that trying to monetize a forum is fool's errand. If anything is setup, it has to be based on collaboration. It's a damned hobby  

Just made a checklist of what we need to continue somewhere else:

1) Users: a new thread was created in englishforum.ch. Any ideas welcome.
2) Mods: thanks for your past work and volunteers welcome. We'll have to come up with some training of where to click to move, close, block, delete, etc.
3) Forum software: thinking about phpBB. GPL license, it's free, we may find people with admin experience on it. Or, any better alternative?
4) Hosting: any suggestion? 15 years ago I used dreamhost, it's possible to install the forum software on this company servers without much trouble. Or anyone is already paying for hosting where we can host it for a while?
5) Domain: englishforum.ch is taken and who knows what will happen with it. We need to find a new one.

There is no recovery of the old forum on this checklist. I'd suggest to open a new thread/topic and discuss what can be done.

One more beer and I'll practice tomorrow with a local install of a forum on my computer.

Nice evening.

@Axa, as for the domain I've seen 'expatforum.ch' is available - shall we snatch this one?

Hey, good topic

Re hosting, a few years ago when I was hosting a personal project website, I used siteground. Dunno for something bigger, but very reliable, great interface and surprisingly good support.
Re domain name, why not internationalforum.ch? Its (still) available

And responding to st2lemans in the other thread, we definitely need the groan button. It was here last night, so I guess the mods are still exploring the functionality.

edit: just saw Jaceq has proposed "expatforum". For me, his name sounds better.

I suggest no off topic international ...

NotAllThere wrote:I suggest no off topic international ...

Naah, the most controversial topics were always "which is better...Zurich or Geneva".

If you do want to have a look at a more old school type you could look at Simple Machines. We used that for the new Titan Quest forum.

Current hosting is done by ICDSoft.com. Domain name and hosting costs me just under $90 a year.

gaburko wrote:

NotAllThere wrote:I suggest no off topic international ...

Naah, the most controversial topics were always "which is better...Zurich or Geneva".

Basel, silly.

Medea Fleecestealer wrote:If you do want to have a look at a more old school type you could look at Simple Machines. We used that for the new Titan Quest forum.

Current hosting is done by ICDSoft.com. Domain name and hosting costs me just under $90 a year.

Domain itself is cheap like 10-15 usd / year. and this forum here seems to work so far and it's free... I think we can stay here for now...

btw. I see expats.ch is for sale, minimum offer seems to be 100 usd - now that's a sexy domain... should we try to get it (we could chip in a couple / few $ to try to get it) - I'm happy to 'own' this if nobody else wants

Hey axa, thanks for creating this thread. Excellent idea! I admit, I'm not terribly fond of the interface in this new forum, so ideally, it would be nice to have a more user-friendly forum up and running at some point. So maybe this new one will just be temporary. I am not an IT whiz of any sort, so I will leave all of that stuff up to you guys. And thank you again!!! As for the groan feature -- I think that was removed by an admin here. The groan function seemed to cause problems in the old EF and some people would abuse it, etc. I wouldn't mind just a "like" function, though. But that's just my take on it. I'm fine with whatever. Just want to say thank you to everyone who is helping out here and trying to help keep us all in touch, etc.

I'll pitch in for whatever domain we decide to use (should we not be able to use englishforum.ch). I don't mind buying it myself, however we've got to reach a consensus on that somehow.

Also, this forum software is pretty thin - I don't care about the Groan Button, but I definitely liked the Like Button, for instance, which I cannot find.

Also, I'm in IT, I can donate some time to setup and/or maintenance as well.

Agreed re: the like button, it's a nice touch. We can do without the groan one, I think.

I created a poll about domain name: https://englishforum.forumotion.com/t20-domain-for-a-forum

Also @pancakes we need to make sure this engine can be associated with custom domain name before buying anything (if not we could still bypass this via a free CDN like cloudflare but that requires a bit more setup - I can do that though)

jaceq wrote:I created a poll about domain name: https://englishforum.forumotion.com/t20-domain-for-a-forum

Also @pancakes we need to make sure this engine can be associated with custom domain name before buying anything (if not we could still bypass this via a free CDN like cloudflare but that requires a bit more setup - I can do that though)

I'd like to add to this a few thoughts:

* If we're really going to do this thing, I think we need to select a forum provider or forum software where the data collected is something we control more closely, so that we as a community own our own data and can migrate as we need to. I don't know how to do it from a legal/GDPR/whatever Swiss law perspective, perhaps aSwissInTheUS joins us and can say as he sounds quite lawyerly.

* I think we should figure out how we wish to moderate ourselves, because I've seen folks banned for simply taking the wrong position on a matter, and that makes me pretty uncomfortable.

* Perhaps we can figure out a sane way to distribute the costs of running our own forums, as well as the efforts to maintain and upgrade.

Man, I'm glad you guys are handling all the techie stuff, because I know nothing about that kind of thing. So thank you all for handling this stuff and discussing it! Just let me know if there is ever anything I can do from my end It dawned on me: One thing I would like in a new forum is the ability to add people to an "Ignore list." I'm not sure yet if that's possible in this place, as I still haven't had a chance to explore all the features, etc. But anyways, I know that's a long way off until we can potentially get a new forum up and running. As for banning... If I continue to be an admin here, I don't plan on banning anyone unless they create a pattern of harassing people. But I certainly wouldn't ban someone for having an opinion that is different from my own, etc. It doesn't make sense for anyone to come to an online forum full of people and expect everyone to share their opinions or perceptions and to get mad at other people for not having the same opinions.

Medea Fleecestealer wrote:If you do want to have a look at a more old school type you could look at Simple Machines. We used that for the new Titan Quest forum.

Current hosting is done by ICDSoft.com. Domain name and hosting costs me just under $90 a year.

The titan quest fans forum dot net? Looks nice.

Can you tell a bit how it works behind the curtains? I just checked the first embedded image in a post and I see it's hosted externally on freeimage.

My current preference would be to have a structure similar to english forum, order with thread topics. I see it's possible with phpBB. As example look for the mozillazine forum. Sorry, I cannot post links here yet.

Is there a way to make sub-forums on here, like before?? You know, daily life,  permits, education etc.

@Island Monkey... Not that I've seen, but I'll check over the admin settings to see if anything like that is an option. There are also some options in there for how this forum appears but I haven't made any changes in there yet, as I'd be hesitant to without talking to the other admins first. One thing I wouldn't mind is for the font to be a bit larger. Not sure how this place appears on a phone, as I've only used it on my PC.

3) Forum software: thinking about phpBB. GPL license, it's free, we may find people with admin experience on it. Or, any better alternative?

I guess vBulletin could make sense as it is what people are used to. Though it would be a shame not to take the opportunity to move to something more modern and free.

I used to hate using the Discourse software that Mustacianpost uses, but now that I got used to it, I find it actually very nice to use.

4) Hosting: any suggestion? 15 years ago I used dreamhost, it's possible to install the forum software on this company servers without much trouble. Or anyone is already paying for hosting where we can host it for a while?

Easiest and most expensive is to host with a bulletin board provider.

Otherwise, you could just rent a virtual server and install the forum software on it directly.

Island Monkey wrote:Is there a way to make sub-forums on here, like before?? You know, daily life,  permits, education etc.

There is, but it's a bit clunky. I'm working on it, while trying not to make a mess of things. It will take a bit of time to get it right, so please be patient as things get moved around. Apologies if there are a ton of automated messages. I know EF has them just about any time a mod moves something, but I have no idea if this platform is the same.

gaburko wrote:

NotAllThere wrote:I suggest no off topic international ...

Naah, the most controversial topics were always "which is better...Zurich or Geneva".

North of the Alps sucks!

Tom

A mandatory Fr. 1 or Fr. 2 fee per yr should be more than affordable to everyone, and could cover most or all running costs, right?

Ha, I found the right tutorial:

Installing and Setting Up Your Own Web Server - Installing developmental server on Widows so you can use phpBB on a local machine for testing purposes.

Time to play with my laptop.

Axa wrote:Ha, I found the right tutorial:

Installing and Setting Up Your Own Web Server - Installing developmental server on Widows so you can use phpBB on a local machine for testing purposes.

Time to play with my laptop.

The problem with running our own server/BBS is not the initial setup and configuration, it's the ongoing maintenance, updating, upgrading, and management. That can be a time sink which is thankless and boring. Ultimately SaaS costs more money but gives you time, reliability, and peace of mind.

I registered a domain name and set up a forum here: swissforum co uk

I'd be glad if people could join, test it and give feedback.

I'm still waiting to hear back from The Local to see if they will agree to access to the database so that the forum can be pre-populated with old threads.

If not, I saved all my own threads/posts and if we have enough people willing to allow their old posts to be transferred over, we might be able to save a proportion of the old content.

For continuity, it would be great if the prior EF moderators would be willing to continue serve as moderators in the forum.

Island Monkey wrote:Is there a way to make sub-forums on here, like before?? You know, daily life,  permits, education etc.

This - you need a structure pretty quickly or the forum will rapidly become an unreadable mess and the appointed muggins - sorry, mods - will have a real job on trying to sort it all out.

I hope the mods/admins didn't have any plans for the weekend...