I would just use Flarum, but it's still in beta. I don't really like any of the other options as much. If someone can find a good alternative, it would hurry things along.
Why don't there seem to be forum softwares written in sane languages? It seems like they're all built with this:
WordPress is written in PHP. WordPress was used by more than 23.3% of the top 10 million websites as of January 2015. Problem?
If I have to write a web application, I'm not going to choose PHP. It sucks to write. All the bad things people say about that language are true.
However, if I'm going to download and host a web application written by someone else, I sure hope it's written in PHP. The ease of setting up and deploying a PHP app is miles ahead of something written in any other language. Python, node, and Ruby devs all have to resort to shit like Docker containers because nobody can configure their apps.
The ease of setting up and deploying a PHP app is miles ahead of something written in any other language.
Is this still actually the case, though? To get something resembling a modern webapp running, you probably want some combination of reverse proxy, server, DB, and execution environment.
Does it matter so much whether that's Apache/mod_php/MySQL or nginx/gunicorn/postgres? Hell, sqlite comes bundled with Python if you really wanted to minimize setup.
The ease of setting up and deploying a PHP app is miles ahead of something written in any other language.
Is this still actually the case, though? To get something resembling a modern webapp running, you probably want some combination of reverse proxy, server, DB, and execution environment.
Does it matter so much whether that's Apache/mod_php/MySQL or nginx/gunicorn/postgres? Hell, sqlite comes bundled with Python if you really wanted to minimize setup.
How to setup an Apache/mod_php app
sudo apt-get install apache mod-php mysql put files in folder in your browser visit http://yourserver/setup.php DONE
How to setup nginx/gunicorn/postgres/python app
apt-get install nginx write an nginx configuration file put files in a folder write a gunicorn config mess with your django/ruby app settings write some kind of launch script with supervisor or upstart or something run some commands to make database tables Now, MAYBE you can visit your site?
PHP has the main advantage that you can just put files in a directory and visit it. All the setup and configuration can be done from the web interface because you can get pages to load without doing anything.
With any of the others, you need to set things up before any pages will load. Automatic configuration options are limited because the minimum architecture has more moving parts.
I'm looking again at alternatives to the expensive and not-as-good-as-it-used-to-be Vanilla.
Still waiting for Flarum to get out of beta. Even if we close this forum and start fresh, still need to keep all these URLs and pages around. At minimum that means getting DB export from Vanilla and hosting it using the open source Vanilla code on a server.
Not a fan of discourse, which is the popular solution these days.
Discord is promising, but isn't something we host ourselves. There isn't some way to back it up.
Yeah. There is a terrifying wealth of Google Juice, great threads, information, etc... here that we want to keep on the Internet. This place gets a surprising amount of traffic.
If Google Spaces or Google Plus was guaranteed to live it could work as a zero cost alternative but it does not match the criteria of moving all posts across. Actually a bad idea.
If Google Spaces or Google Plus was guaranteed to live it could work as a zero cost alternative but it does not match the criteria of moving all posts across. Actually a bad idea.
I'm not working all week, and my top priority is to stop spending $150 a month on this forum. Here is my strategy:
1) Make a new blank forum. Which one shall we choose? Flarum? Anyone know any others? 2) Disable commenting on this old forum to put it into archive mode. 3) Using a backup of this forum, get that archive to run on my own hosted server instead of on Vanilla's cloud that costs $150 a month.
I'm starting with #3 first because that's actually the only difficult part. I have a backup of the forum from a few moons ago that I will use to test this out. Vanilla is actually very quick to respond when you ask them for a backup of your forum. I just have to get it running.
Comments
If I have to write a web application, I'm not going to choose PHP. It sucks to write. All the bad things people say about that language are true.
However, if I'm going to download and host a web application written by someone else, I sure hope it's written in PHP. The ease of setting up and deploying a PHP app is miles ahead of something written in any other language. Python, node, and Ruby devs all have to resort to shit like Docker containers because nobody can configure their apps.
Does it matter so much whether that's Apache/mod_php/MySQL or nginx/gunicorn/postgres? Hell, sqlite comes bundled with Python if you really wanted to minimize setup.
sudo apt-get install apache mod-php mysql
put files in folder
in your browser visit http://yourserver/setup.php
DONE
How to setup nginx/gunicorn/postgres/python app
apt-get install nginx
write an nginx configuration file
put files in a folder
write a gunicorn config
mess with your django/ruby app settings
write some kind of launch script with supervisor or upstart or something
run some commands to make database tables
Now, MAYBE you can visit your site?
PHP has the main advantage that you can just put files in a directory and visit it. All the setup and configuration can be done from the web interface because you can get pages to load without doing anything.
With any of the others, you need to set things up before any pages will load. Automatic configuration options are limited because the minimum architecture has more moving parts.
Not a fan of discourse, which is the popular solution these days.
Discord is promising, but isn't something we host ourselves. There isn't some way to back it up.
It's more of a new irc with voice chat for playing video games.
I'll mention that it exists on the show tonight, remind people, see if interested grows.
1) Make a new blank forum. Which one shall we choose? Flarum? Anyone know any others?
2) Disable commenting on this old forum to put it into archive mode.
3) Using a backup of this forum, get that archive to run on my own hosted server instead of on Vanilla's cloud that costs $150 a month.
I'm starting with #3 first because that's actually the only difficult part. I have a backup of the forum from a few moons ago that I will use to test this out. Vanilla is actually very quick to respond when you ask them for a backup of your forum. I just have to get it running.