Why not have a simple forum for discussion?

[DeathStalker77]

This would seem very easy to do, and VERY helpful.

[parg]

What would you suggest that is free to use (both in terms of software and hosting)?

[DeathStalker77]

Unfortunately not my area of expertise.

[parg]

But you said it would 'seem very easy to do'...

[DeathStalker77]

By that I mean that a lot of inexperienced people can set up forums or blog software that is open source. This is not my area of expertise - mine is in design UI/UX.

[sallek0]

get something thrown up on some $9 a month resold vps service somewhere or on a free azure account, I know you can get phpbb servers for free if you turn over ad revenue its just been years since I bothered. I would offer space but my vps is down for about a month

[user8446]

If you want to go the free route, you can use www.nabble.com . Then, just make it a subdomain such as forum.biglybt.com . I did just that in a few minutes: itus.accessinnov.com . You can also use google groups. I'm sure there are others out there.

[dbareis]

Google forums, Google+

[mblauser]

I went ahead and created a discussion forum because the Google Groups suggestion sounded like a great idea. I have functionality questions but lack a place to address them. It was easy enough to create a discussion forum for BiglyBT. The group is set as public to join and requires joining before posting. Provide me details on who should be promoted as owners/moderators after joining.

Google Groups Forum: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/biglybt

Here is the code for embedding the discussion forum into biglybt.com's website:

<iframe id="forum_embed" src="javascript:void(0)" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" width="900" height="700"> </iframe> <script type="text/javascript"> document.getElementById('forum_embed').src = 'https://groups.google.com/forum/embed/?place=forum/biglybt' + '&showsearch=true&showpopout=true&showtabs=false' + '&parenturl=' + encodeURIComponent(window.location.href); </script>

[TheBestPessimist]

If there's a forum software which i love, that would be: Discourse! (any sort of ***BB is just a bunch of bad ux --to put it mildly-- and i won't use it after trying discourse :( )

Here's the discourse meta forum (where discourse devs participate in the community): https://meta.discourse.org/. For another example, here's a second forum, to which i am an admin of: https://forum.duplicacy.com/, for a specific software (so it fits the same category as BiglyBT). (note to repository owners: if this second example is too much/should not belong, please edit my comment as appropriate).

As for costs: if you wanna self-host you can go with the cheapest VPS you want, as long as it has at least 2GB of ram (i'm using scaleway's 2gb "dev instance": https://www.scaleway.com/en/pricing/). On the other hand, i think BiglyBT may be eligible to have free hosting from discourse itself as per here: https://blog.discourse.org/2018/11/free-hosting-for-open-source-v2/. This means no headache, no need for administration, free and automatic updates and support by those who make Discourse!

[skycommand]

GitHub has recently added a forum feature that could be activated per-repo.

[parg]

My previous experience of running a forum is that the management of it was way too much effort.

[TexMcc]

Found this list with just a basic search, could do a bit more research if this is a real possibility. I would LOVE a dedicated forum

Forumotion – http://www.forumotion.com/
Lefora – http://www.lefora.com/
ProPhpBB – https://www.prophpbb.com/
ProBoards – https://www.proboards.com/
Nabble – https://nabble.com/
Former – http://www.forumer.com/
FreeForums – http://www.freeforums.org/
BoardHost – http://boardhost.com/
CreateAForum – http://www.createaforum.com/
IcyBoards – http://icyboards.com/
SMFNew – http://www.smfnew.com/ (This one is a bonus for people looking for SMF forum – if you unaware of what SMF is, its Simple Machines Forum open source forum software).

[jeffward01]

If the creators / maintainers @parg, @dbareis, @sallek0 (sorry for not tagging everyone), I can create a Discord server for this.

Currently I am active on a few Discord Servers for GitHub projects such as MudBlazor (scroll down to the bottom to view the discord link)

Another option that I can create is a 'Self-Hosted' Discourse Server

• Self Hosted: Server Costs, approx $50 - $200 per month (probably around the $50 - $100 mark)

• Server Requirements
• Server Pricing (Vultr) - I recommend at least 4 CPU, more is better

• Discourse Hosted: $100 - $300 per month depending on userbase size (We'll probably be in the $100 - $200 range).

Of course the Discourse hosted is 'better' to fix problems, such as if the Self-Hosted server goes offline, a volunteer needs to fix that... and the community will be 'offline' during down-time. But its more expensive

[jeffward01]

On the other hand, i think BiglyBT may be eligible to have free hosting from discourse itself as per here: https://blog.discourse.org/2018/11/free-hosting-for-open-source-v2/. This means no headache, no need for administration, free and automatic updates and support by those who make Discourse!

If BiglyBT qualifies for free 'Discourse Hosted' Forums, I vote for this. - Unless there are somewhat dedicated team members who are 'server savvy', the Self-Hosted solution will become time-consuming to fix issues (We are developers, we all know that DNS issues and self-hosting is 'easy', until something goes wrong... This is why we write code, and the DevOps gurus deploy it 🙃 🙃

Example use-case for a dedicated 'forum discussion area'

For example, I have some questions such as this question that I just opened an issue for #2532

Before I opened an issue I did these actions:

• I have searched the Wiki and various websites and do not have an answer to my question
• I want to ask more knowledgeable community members a question, my current options are either asking on Reddit, or opening an issue on GitHub as I have done

[butter100]

Hey, I noticed r/BiglyBT on Reddit was inactive so I requested Reddit admins give it to me and eventually got it. Reddit is a hosted platform with many built in tools for moderation and automation so it works well out of the box and has easy optimization. Many open source project use it for community interaction too. If contributors or anyone want to help make it the project's forum please feel free to PM me on Reddit. If you're a contributor I can make you head of the subreddit (and remove my account) so you have full control.

[parg]

Thanks for grabbing it! I have answered some posts on r/BiglyBT and r/torrents when prodded but don't have a huge amount of time to devote to support. My worry would be that if we pushed users to r/BiglyBT and then couldn't put enough time into answering stuff it'd become less than useful. It would need a community of BiglyBT users willing to pitch in and help out and I'm not sure we have that.

[jeffward01]

Honestly this is the best Torrent Client out there for the active user. Yes, some things on it are rather Opiniated "this is the way we do things" but at least you can do the things.

this is a much better built client than QBT, Deluge, and the others. Only thing I wish was that it was in C# 🙃

[parg]

Not sure C# was a popular programming choice in 2003!

[parg]

@butter100 I'll link to the reddit from a few places, see if we can drive some traffic there and see how it goes