I want to add a forum / collaborative work area to a website that is self-hosted and does not require a per-user fee. I know the likes of Slack have a free option but it is limited and anyhow I want it on my site, not theirs.
Does anyone know of suck a stack or embedded page that will offer this, I don’t mind an upfront fee or even a monthly sub, but a per user sub.
I suppose it depends on the type of collaboration you want to do. If it’s all sharing files (of any kind) then the Repository stack could be a great option.
If it’s for discussion mainly then a forum probably is the best way to go. There’s lots of free one you can install. Do a search and see what you like best. The forum that integrates best with a RW project is Vanilla. But if you want a standalone forum then there are lots of other options. Free options.
Thanks, I will look around but Google does not show me them when I search for Rapidweaver stack for forum (and similar) is the a better search term I could use? I do want to share files but it is more a forum to avoid endless trails of emails going to all and sundry in a small group of around 50 people.
There is no RW stack for forums of any kind that I know of. Vanilla has some code for embedding their forum. So search for forums in general.
More on Vanilla
You’d want the free open source version.
This article might be helpful:
and/or this:
really helpful, thanks so much
@jwDave This specific forum at RW is Discourse. It’s fantastic. But it is also a paid product. Cheapest option at $100 per month. So spendy, but great.
Probably too much for my client but will check it out, thanks again.
@jwDave Oh, I agree about the “too much” for Discourse. I just wanted you to know about the option.
I don’t know the product that @instacks is recommending, but seems quite interesting. Realistically there may be a lot of nice options out there for you. But obviously not as simple as using a stack. You’ll need to setup, perhaps customize, etc. But doable.
And sometimes, it just doesn’t make sense to integrate it into your own website.
Choose a product, put it on a subdomain, and link to it.
Discourse software is open source and can be self-hosted for free. You will need to be a little technically savvy.
@instacks Yes, great point. I’ve never really liked the look of Vanilla integrated into RW. Having a simple standalone forum seems to be cleaner and clearer to use.
@teefers Wow, I had no idea! Really nice.
That’s really great folks, thank a lot for the info. I had no idea discourse could be self hosted!
You can, if you are comfortably with Linux and command line it’s not hard. You will need at minimum a VPS server. It’s best to set this up as a sub-domain.
If you aren’t comfortable doing it yourself, you can have it set up for you for a onetime fee($150-$300 depending on the install options) . I think you will have to host at DigitalOcean for this and pay the monthly hosting cost $5 or $10 depending on the options.
My domain is hosted at ionos, so I guess this would not work?
If you are talking about them setting it up for you, I believe that they only use Digital Ocean. Since the forum software would run as a subdomain you can run that anywhere you want. Subdomains don’t have to (and often don’t) be at the same hosting company as the main domain.
It’s the same as if you paid for the hosted forum plan ($100.00+ a month), you would just set up DNS to point the subdomain to a different IP address than the main domain does.
If you are asking if you could install it yourself on ionos, I couldn’t say for sure (I haven’t used ionos), but most hosting companies offer a variety of vps plans and Discourse’s requirements aren’t out of the ordinary, so I would bet that you can.
The biggest difference isn’t really where you host, but are you willing to be your own system administrator. It’s not difficult to learn how to do this, and it can save you a lot of money every month.
Thank you, very useful.
Choose a product, put it on a subdomain, and link to it.
Yep. While I’m always impressed and amazed by what new things developers manage to integrate completely into Stacks, sometimes things are just better when they’re NOT integrated.
I think that forums and chat are probably one of those things.
But I used to say that about blogs – and now there are some really great blogging solutions in Stacks – so check back in a couple years, maybe we’ll crack this nut too, someday. 
Isaiah
So, Isaiah, a challenge for you to create one? LOL, got enough grey hairs already? I’d like to see a thread where those using chats and forums can relay their experiences on GUI, ease of use, etc. It would be nice to compare, since getting the choice right from the beginning is wiser than having to jump ship and convert to something else a year to two later.
Well as I started this thread I feel obliged to say that I ended up using the open vanilla forum which is free. Self help is obligatory but hey ho, the user forum has been very helpful though. First impressions are that it is the dogs’ dangly bits 