Zetaboards Migration Options
Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2018 3:20 pm
Given the death of Zetaboards by absorption into Tapatalk, we need to decide what we're going to do next. I've done some research on what we can do, and since there are pros and cons for each choice I don't think there's a clear, obvious answer. I'm happy to make all of this happen (to the extent of my abilities) but I don't think it should be up to me what we go with. Look through what I've got and share your opinions so we can collectively make a decision on this before the switch is forced on us.
<big>Tapatalk</big>
The default choice if we do nothing. It has a free version with ads and paid versions ($5/10 per month) which remove the ads and Tapatalk branding.
Features: https://www.tapatalk.com/tapatalk_groups
Pros: All of our content (in theory) will be ported over by Zetaboards. It's free.
Cons: It's got a "mobile first" interface, ads, and there are no tools to scrape our content off of it if we wanted to move later (as far as I know.)
<big>Self-hosted Options:</big>
This one is not free, but we'd have control over our database, no ads, no forced moves, no locked features, etc. There's lots of different hosting services to choose from, and $5 per month is probably about as low as we can go there (more expensive hosting wouldn't be all that useful anyway since our community is pretty small.) For all of these we'd be able to have our own domain name as well (I'd be happy to pay for that part.) We'd need to figure out how to pay the monthly hosting fee, though.
There are a bunch of free, open-source software options to choose from:
phpBB
The most popular one, I think. Old-school forum style, like we have now, with skins to choose from.
Features: https://www.phpbb.com/about/features/
Pros: Still actively maintained and supported. Fully featured and customizable.
Cons: It may be possible to bring over our content, but it will be tricky for me to pull off if so.
Simple Machines Forum
Another popular option which is quite similar (at least superficially) to phpBB. Has skins, customization, etc.
Features: https://www.simplemachines.org/about/smf/features.php
Pros: I was able to move over a lot of our data into this format for my https://attackfrog.com/arc test. (The City Limits section didn't get scraped, for some reason, but it may be possible to get that too if I can figure out how the script works and fix it.)
Cons: Not as actively maintained and supported as phpBB, I think.
Discourse
A much more modern and fully featured forum option. It's popular and has a lot of cool stuff. The website says it costs $100 per month, but if you set it up yourself it's only $5 per month.
Features: https://payments.discourse.org/features
Pros: Tons of cool features, looks cool. Has mobile access as well.
Cons: We won't be able to migrate any of our content into it. Its interface is pretty different from Zetaboards so that will take some getting used to.
Flarum
Another modern option. This one also has free hosting at https://www.freeflarum.com with ads.
Features: https://flarum.org/features/
Pros: Same as for Discourse
Cons: Same as for Discourse.
<big>Free Hosting options:</big>
There's also a bunch of free hosting options out there, with ads, just like Zetaboards has been. They pretty much all have their own software. None of them (unless I missed something) are going to be able to import our data. They all also could suffer from the same fate as Zetaboards at some point in the future. We wouldn't have our own domain name (we don't now either though.)
Free Flarum
It's Flarum, above, with some ads. They're going to start offering a paid ad-free plan sometime later this year.
Jcink
Lots of features, classic forum style. I'm not sure if you can change the theme.
Features: https://jcink.com/index.php?p=features
Proboards
Classic forum style, apparently has lots of customization. Ads.
Features: https://proboards.com/free-forum-features
...and more! There's a ton of these things.
Then there's some other options as well: going to Reddit, or joining with GTM. I don't think those are good options, but they're options.
So what do you think?
<big>Tapatalk</big>
The default choice if we do nothing. It has a free version with ads and paid versions ($5/10 per month) which remove the ads and Tapatalk branding.
Features: https://www.tapatalk.com/tapatalk_groups
Pros: All of our content (in theory) will be ported over by Zetaboards. It's free.
Cons: It's got a "mobile first" interface, ads, and there are no tools to scrape our content off of it if we wanted to move later (as far as I know.)
<big>Self-hosted Options:</big>
This one is not free, but we'd have control over our database, no ads, no forced moves, no locked features, etc. There's lots of different hosting services to choose from, and $5 per month is probably about as low as we can go there (more expensive hosting wouldn't be all that useful anyway since our community is pretty small.) For all of these we'd be able to have our own domain name as well (I'd be happy to pay for that part.) We'd need to figure out how to pay the monthly hosting fee, though.
There are a bunch of free, open-source software options to choose from:
phpBB
The most popular one, I think. Old-school forum style, like we have now, with skins to choose from.
Features: https://www.phpbb.com/about/features/
Pros: Still actively maintained and supported. Fully featured and customizable.
Cons: It may be possible to bring over our content, but it will be tricky for me to pull off if so.
Simple Machines Forum
Another popular option which is quite similar (at least superficially) to phpBB. Has skins, customization, etc.
Features: https://www.simplemachines.org/about/smf/features.php
Pros: I was able to move over a lot of our data into this format for my https://attackfrog.com/arc test. (The City Limits section didn't get scraped, for some reason, but it may be possible to get that too if I can figure out how the script works and fix it.)
Cons: Not as actively maintained and supported as phpBB, I think.
Discourse
A much more modern and fully featured forum option. It's popular and has a lot of cool stuff. The website says it costs $100 per month, but if you set it up yourself it's only $5 per month.
Features: https://payments.discourse.org/features
Pros: Tons of cool features, looks cool. Has mobile access as well.
Cons: We won't be able to migrate any of our content into it. Its interface is pretty different from Zetaboards so that will take some getting used to.
Flarum
Another modern option. This one also has free hosting at https://www.freeflarum.com with ads.
Features: https://flarum.org/features/
Pros: Same as for Discourse
Cons: Same as for Discourse.
<big>Free Hosting options:</big>
There's also a bunch of free hosting options out there, with ads, just like Zetaboards has been. They pretty much all have their own software. None of them (unless I missed something) are going to be able to import our data. They all also could suffer from the same fate as Zetaboards at some point in the future. We wouldn't have our own domain name (we don't now either though.)
Free Flarum
It's Flarum, above, with some ads. They're going to start offering a paid ad-free plan sometime later this year.
Jcink
Lots of features, classic forum style. I'm not sure if you can change the theme.
Features: https://jcink.com/index.php?p=features
Proboards
Classic forum style, apparently has lots of customization. Ads.
Features: https://proboards.com/free-forum-features
...and more! There's a ton of these things.
Then there's some other options as well: going to Reddit, or joining with GTM. I don't think those are good options, but they're options.
So what do you think?