Banished Forum Hosting - I can't reply in the other thread.

[theonlywanderer]

I saw where the site hosting is now in question.

I have access to hosting, however I don't wish to moderate or be involved in day to day operations of the site.

At the very least I can host the site to give more time until somebody else steps in to take it over.

I don't have a lot of experience with forums, but I can usually figure things out.

So....   if somebody decides to take it over let me know.   I will give it a week or two for somebody to come forward and if nobody does I'll work with @The Big Chihuahua to start getting things setup.

[galensgranny]

@theonlywanderer that is wonderful that you are willing to host!

I have experience with being an admin/moderator of forums. I actually have my own forum that is this same Simple Machines forum program, but an earlier version and not heavily modded with a picture gallery.   I would be willing to be an admin to do things like clean out any spam and porn posts that might show up, delete spam accounts, and just in general look out for problems, move posts to the correct section if needed, etc.   But, I do not know how to fix problems with programming.

[Abandoned]

  yes, wonderful, you are both giving us hope    Thank you

[Nilla]

It sounds great that someone is willing to take over. I sometimes have bad periods with my illness that makes me unable to make any obligations to do something on daily basis but if some money is needed for hosting fees or something like that, I'm willing to contribute.

[banishedsanni]

It maybe isnt needed that u do all the work. It would be great if you can host this forum and im sure there r a few ppl willing to take over moderator and admin tasks. Splitting work and responsibility should work.

[theonlywanderer]

@Nilla

The hosting is already in place for other sites so no cost involved in that aspect at the moment.  The only cost at this time would be in the domain name renewal every year, which shouldn't be much.   I'm guessing $10 to $15/year, domains tend to fluctuate.  Not really a big deal at this time either.   Maybe down the road I'll setup a paypal account for people who want to contribute a buck here and there.   If enough contributions come in, it may support the site being moved to it's own hosting and be self sufficient.   A decent enough host is usually going to run a minimum of $6 or so a month.

[theonlywanderer]

@galensgranny

I can't imagine any issues where major programming knowledge would be required to resolve since these forums are similar to content management systems where it's a packaged deal.   I did run a forum many years back for our car club before Facebook took over as the easier format.

I would hope if any problems did come up that people would be understanding until it was resolved.  After all, it's not a life or death forum, so a little down time shouldn't cause a problem.

One concern is the storage requirements.    We don't host heavy sites so we don't have tons of hosting storage space.  If this site takes 10gb to host, not sure how long I can keep it on our hosting.   If it's over that, may not even be possible.

@The Big Chihuahua
Can you give me some information on the size of this forum?

[galensgranny]

@theonlywanderer There shouldn't be any problems with programming.  My forum has been fine for years.  If this Simple Machines forum is kept, and all is working fine, probably nothing will ever need fixing, not with the base forum program.  It's added mods that can have problems if the forum program itself gets updated, but a mod is no longer compatible, or if the mod program had an error, of if two mods are not compatible with each other but ok on their own.  That is an easy fix- delete the mod, or don't add any.
There is a Simple Machines help forum by the people who made this forum program, so there is some place to get some advice.  The link to their forum is at the very bottom of this forum's page, if you click on the words, "Simple Machines". 

Storage size is a concern.  With my forum (about cats), I did not have a gallery.  So if people wanted to share images, they had to have their own place to store them to then add to a post, or just upload them from their computer. Oh, but then I added a mod to allow uploaded images, though a few cat pictures don't take much storage space.  My forum was not the kind where people add pictures very often, unlike this forum.

[Goblin Girl]

I've been a moderator for forums before, and would be happy to assist if needed.  I don't know anything about programming, but I can certainly assist @galensgranny with booting out spammers and so forth. 

Just let me know if you could use my help!

[Gatherer]

I also have some limited moderator experience from couple of years ago. It was a small community discussing WW2 tanks and battles. We had some trolls and spambots popping up from time to time. Not much to do really but to delete the posts and ip ban them. If it's something as simple as that I'm willing to help.

[taniu]

That's good news - I'm so glad there are volunteers who can lead this page - there is hope  .I can also throw in a few dollars from my retirement, that's the only way I can help - unfortunately I don't know much  but I think you accept me as a fan. I have a question, will our logins be the same - will we have to change? I am afraid that I will need help - I know some English! @RedKetchup helped me when logging in - thank him with all my heart for being able to participate in this forum as well. Best regards to the entire Forum community

[catty-cb]

.... I have a question, will our logins be the same - will we have to change? I am afraid that I will need help - I know some English! @RedKetchup helped me when logging in...

It shouldn't change, back in about 2012 my hosting company did something stupid which stuffed up my website and then despite the fact I had proof it was them they denied all knowledge of it, so I organized to re-host my website with Hostpapa I even changed my domain name and it didn't effect any of my users .... I think a few of them ended up having to reset their passwords but otherwise it was pretty pain-free for everyone.

[Jinxiewinxie]

I can put forward some dollars to help with costs too. @theonlywanderer would you be able to upgrade hosting or find another service if the storage is too much for your current set up? Has there been any definitive updates about what is going to happen from @The Big Chihuahua ?

[Admin]

I can put forward some dollars to help with costs too. @theonlywanderer would you be able to upgrade hosting or find another service if the storage is too much for your current set up? Has there been any definitive updates about what is going to happen from @The Big Chihuahua ?

When someone who is able decides to take over the forum, I will keep this site up and running until the export/import, domain name transfer, and successful testing is complete.

[galensgranny]

Goblin Girl and Gatherer, being as the people on this forum behave nicely, it seems that we would just need a few eyes to be on the lookout for inappropriate/spam posts to then be able to banish them.  We are on at different times so one of us would more than likely be around in case some spammer or troll shows up.  That doesn't seem to happen on this forum so it wouldn't be anything time consuming. But, one never knows when a spam attack might happen.  I am glad you two are willing to do this.
Years ago, I was on a forum when a mischief maker made several posts having large graphic porn images just to bother people.  I wished I could have deleted them as soon as they showed up, but, I didn't have that ability.