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BS: advice on creating a private forum
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BS: advice on creating a private forum |
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Subject: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Dani Date: 23 Sep 17 - 03:28 PM This is a general appeal to all you brilliant designers and users! I am a techno-idiot, and am looking for a place or way to create a private forum for my business. I use squarespace for the website, which apparently does not have this functionality. I could do a closed facebook group (I administer one for another purpose) but that lacks the professional polish I would like to project. It's also important to me that the page be clean, attractive, and not dissimilar to my webpage. There also needs to be some kind of interface to allow people to suggest updates to attached/posted documents. Here's my website, for reference: Bigger Tables Culinary and Service Consulting I like the look and functionality of quora, for example. Your ideas? Dani |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: DMcG Date: 23 Sep 17 - 05:09 PM It is a bit of a problem if you are as non techy as you suggest but one solution would be something like myBB which gives the functionality and customisable themes. I haven't used it myself because i would either write it myself or find a php library and then use css to get the appearance as i wanted. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: DaveRo Date: 23 Sep 17 - 06:03 PM There are forums, on which people can discuss topics. And there are 'Question & Answer' sites on which people ask questions and others can answer them and discuss the answers. Quora is described in wikiP as a Q&A site. Q&A sites often allow users to vote on the answers, which determines the display sequence. Forums can be used to ask questions - indeed they mostly are and Mudcat is one such - but Q&A sites are usually not good for discussion. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Stilly River Sage Date: 24 Sep 17 - 11:17 AM Look at Wordpress, both .org and .com. You can use the free site or host a site and download the software. Set it up so remarks are possible, and if you want, moderate them so they're approved and added when they're appropriate (in case you're worried about spammers). |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Amos Date: 24 Sep 17 - 12:25 PM MyBB looks like it would fill the bill. A. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: DaveRo Date: 24 Sep 17 - 12:50 PM I suggest you look at 'Discourse'. It's a modern successor to the 'bulletin board' systems that have been around for years. It works well on mobiles devices, and has a clean 'mostly white' look rather like your website. I know it from using this forum: https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/add-ons/development There are other examples in the references at the bottom of wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_(software) The main drawback, I suspect, is that it's over the top for what you need. It's free opensource software if you have a tame techy to configure it for you. But paying to host it is probably too expensive. I second wordpress if it'll do what you want: very easy to use. It's not really a forum, but can include a forum. You could move your site to wordpress and add a forum to it. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Mr Red Date: 25 Sep 17 - 04:13 AM Wordpress has a "posts" facility. Not sure how it works, I think participants have to register. There would be hundreds of free add-ons that would address a lot of the features you require. A bit techy but the whole point about Wordpress is that a lot of the real techy is dealt with up front. And it comes free from a lot of providers. Stroud Folk Weekend is configured for people to get e-mail notifications of anything posted - which as far as I can see - the posts are instigated by admin personnel. Like me! But I didn't set up the system, I took it over because I have a Wordpress site eleswhere - Stroud Voices (.co.uk) ( post/bulletin board not configured) I have had experience of Drupal websites and am glad I don't experience it now. Definitely techy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Stilly River Sage Date: 26 Sep 17 - 11:58 AM Drupal is a content management system, and Wordpress has a lot of templates already worked out. You can manage your content if you wish to develop for Wordpress, but if you don't, the consumer facing part of that business lets users pick and choose what features without having to design it for themselves. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Mr Red Date: 27 Sep 17 - 04:39 AM Drupal is complex, and for techies. Wordpress add-ons will manage content, but it starts from a far lower tech level. FWIW I couldn't find a Wordpress management add-on for my stories website that would manage and present any way I warmed to. So I wrote my own, in JavaScript. But when you can, and enjoy it, you do. Wordpress has a lot of stuff, the trick is finding the one bit of frippery that answers. And there is a healthy user-based discussion forum. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Jack Campin Date: 27 Sep 17 - 07:48 AM Max has a long rant about the inadequacies of Wordpress somewhere here. I didn't understand most of it, but if I was about to do something serious with forum software I'd make the effort. I didn't realize Q&A sites had a name. I just figured there was a certain kind of forum that never seemed to generate productive information and was well worth avoiding. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: DaveRo Date: 27 Sep 17 - 08:30 AM I suppose the grandaddy of all Q&A sites is Stackexchange, which started as a technical site and seems to have expanded into all sorts of subjects: https://stackexchange.com/ It relies upon users separating answers and comments. SE is a good source if technical solutions, code snippits, and such like. But it needs disciplined users or ruthless mods to keep it on-topic and stop it becoming a forum. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Stilly River Sage Date: 27 Sep 17 - 08:31 AM There are people developing new applications to work with Wordpress all of the time. Drupal is actually as much tedious as it is techie (we use it to manage the pages in my department at work. It's better than Cascade that we used before. Wordpress allows for remarks in various formats - wide open, moderated, or closed. I have used them on blogs so the site owner has to approve the remark and send it through. What lots of newspapers and others are going back to. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Jon Freeman Date: 27 Sep 17 - 01:54 PM I suppose the grandaddy of all Q&A sites is Stackexchange, [...] From a user who on and off ventures in to programing bits and pieces, I'd say StackExchange is fantastic. Lots of useful help there and their voting system usually enables you to pick out the most likely solution easily. Far from sure it would work out for the OP though. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Jack Campin Date: 27 Sep 17 - 02:22 PM I've used the StackExchange mathematics stuff and it's very good. I didn't think if it as the same sort of thing as the innumerable product-support pages where a typical thread dates from 5 years ago, raises a problem, suggests a solution which didn't work then, and nobody's come back with anything that does work in the interim. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Dani Date: 27 Sep 17 - 08:06 PM Thank you all, am following. Probably should have mentioned that I would like for people to register/have usernames and passwords. Dani |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Mr Red Date: 28 Sep 17 - 04:38 AM I use Yahoo to find techy answers but invariably end up searching on stackoverflow.com Wordpress seems to have started out as a blog oriented site builder and grown from there. I know there are facilities/Add-Ons that pluck posts from Fakebook and plant them in Widgets (Wordpress terminology for "text/HTML side panel) here you go - Top 11 ways to use Wordpress as a forum On Stroud Folk Festival site only admin peeps are allowed to post. we use: Subscribe2 - Notifies an email list when new entries are posted. ie posts Custom Facebook Feed -Add completely customizable Facebook feeds to your WordPress site |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Jon Freeman Date: 28 Sep 17 - 06:01 AM Mention of StackOverflow had me worried or a while, thinking I'd confused 2 sites and in a sense, I probably had, but it is the programming part (and the bit I've found most useful) in the StackExchange set up. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: DaveRo Date: 28 Sep 17 - 07:51 AM Just about any forum will allow for nembership, signon, etc. Some will allow you to sign on using another site's signon method(s) - Facebook and Google are common. This is useful but it may deter people who do not use those sites. You may know whether your customers are likely to be Facebook refuseniks, and you can decide whether you care if they are excluded. Discourse is the best forum software I've used, though it's only been around for a couple of years. Most Discourse forums seem to be technical - but all new software is picked up first by techies before it becomes more widely available and is offered by hosting companies. I found this non-technical-ish example: http://forum.xprize.org/ There are Discourse hosting companies too. You could use Discourse alone or integrate it with your website. I'm not an expert in Wordpress - I've only used it for a blog - though I've seen hundreds of small Wordpress websites. Wordpress has plugins to integrate with forums: there's one for Discourse: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-discourse/ I would expect that Discourse hosting companies would be able the host Wordpress too - it's very common. Be aware that more effort is involved in maintaining a forum than a promotional website. Spammers, trolls, personal data... |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Mr Red Date: 29 Sep 17 - 05:07 AM more effort is involved in maintaining a forum something I keep banging on about with listing sites. The admin is ongoing and relentless. Something I see with other listing sites. The concept is simple - tell people what is there. The reality is that nothing stays the same. With a forum: people bicker, troll and spam. And people who you converse with easily, argue with someone other than you. And if you get in between, you are the agent provocatuer to both. Best of luck. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Dani Date: 02 Oct 17 - 04:56 PM Still looking, and thank you again! Wordpress stuff looks hopeful, but no plans to leave squarespace; I like what else is there too much to change right now. Is it just me? I still find the stackoverflow difficult to look at, like many other fora I use for various things. Dani |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: DaveRo Date: 02 Oct 17 - 05:37 PM Stackoverflow is not a forum - it's a Q&A site. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: Jon Freeman Date: 02 Oct 17 - 05:40 PM Stackoverflow to me is great but if get there, I'm probably hoping for a coding snippet. One thing you may not get there is that it can apply something called syntax highlighting. To a person using a computer language, it can be useful to have things in different colours but it might look difficult without some programming knowledge. To me then, well suited for a purpose but i doubt if its yours. |
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Subject: RE: BS: advice on creating a private forum From: DaveRo Date: 03 Oct 17 - 05:54 AM The OP mentioned Quora. Here's a piece from 2014 on the Quora site, which is a Q&A site, about Forums vs Q&A sites: https://www.quora.com/Which-better-and-why-a-Q-A-website-or-a-forum- I don't think it's just a matter of age, as that first answer says, and the bit about 'IT people's preference' is rubbish - look at Stackoverflow. And Q&A sites are certainly not 'better' as the third answer alleges; they meet different needs. But it's true that some forums look old-fashioned. And some of the older ones are poor on mobile devices. That Quora page shows the characteristics of a Q&A site: answers, obviously, ranked by users, usually. Sometimes a 'correct' answer. That's useless for a discussion forum. Forum to me means duscussion and debate, as in the Roman Forum. Also the ranking and voting of answers can introduce unwelcome side effects - nastiness even. A 'modern' forum - or Q&A site - will often not split discussions or questions into pages. Each page is 'infinitely long' and continously loads more as you scroll down. If you return to a page it will just load that part of the discussion, not everything from the start. That's particularly good on mobile and better generally because it reduces data transfer and makes it quicker. You can imagine that on the Mother of all BS threads: no pages, and it would be as fast as any other thread. I don't know whether the OP wants a forum or a Q&A site. But it's a fundmental choice. |
