AWS

Also good advice. Gave me an idea for later.

That is a good strategy. Make your saite the best it can be. Yuor competitirs will be watching you set the trends.

Now running Invision Community 5 beta 3.

I have to say the new theme editor is great. Been playing with it. Making a theme is very easy.

Content is king. We all know this. If you have good content you can expect a steady flow of traffic which will mean more users. Here are some tips to generate content for your forum. I especially like the education content part. On my tech sites tutorials and guides bring in a ton of traffic and new users. Generating content for your forum involves several strategies to encourage engagement and provide value to your community. Here are some effective methods: Create Engaging Topics: Start discussions on trending topics in your niche. Ask open-ended questions to encourage responses. User-Generated Content: Encourage members to share their experiences, stories, or expertise. Host contests or challenges that prompt users to create content. Regular Updates: Post regular updates on relevant news, events, or changes in your niche. Create a weekly or monthly roundup of popular discussions. Educational Content: Share tutorials, guides, or how-to articles related to your forum’s focus. Post FAQs or troubleshooting tips based on common questions from users. Polls and Surveys: Use polls to gauge opinions on various topics and encourage participation. Share survey results and discuss them in the forum. Guest Contributions: Invite experts or influencers in your niche to write guest posts or participate in discussions. Feature interviews with knowledgeable individuals. Resource Sharing: Create a section for sharing useful resources, such as articles, videos, or tools related to your forum's theme. Maintain a curated list of links to valuable content. Encourage Feedback: Ask users for feedback on forum features or topics they want to see. Create threads specifically for suggestions and improvements. Highlight Member Contributions: Recognize and showcase valuable contributions from members to encourage others to participate. Create a "Member of the Month" feature to celebrate active users. Utilize Social Media: Share your forum content on social media platforms to attract new users. Encourage discussions that start on social media to be continued on your forum. By implementing these strategies, you can foster a vibrant community and keep the content flowing on your forum.

According to Google AI these are the top rated forum software packages. I can somewhat agree with this. Discourse has gained traction and it doesn't surprise me it's number 1. phpBB has been around very long and it's free so I agree with that also. Not sure I agree with Vanilla Forum since it is no longer being actively developed. Although it was very popular with big companies and been around for a long time. Any here is the list. What are your thoughts? Here’s a ranked list of popular forum software based on general usage and community feedback: Discourse: Known for its modern design and features that promote engagement and discussion. phpBB: One of the oldest and most widely used open-source forum platforms with extensive customization options. XenForo: A premium option that offers a rich set of features and strong community support. Vanilla Forums: Popular for its user-friendly interface and flexibility, available in both open-source and paid versions. Simple Machines Forum (SMF): A robust and flexible open-source forum software with a long-standing user base. Flarum: A newer, lightweight, and modern forum software that is gaining popularity for its simplicity and speed. MyBB: A free and open-source platform known for its ease of use and variety of plugins. Invision Community: A comprehensive, premium forum solution that offers a suite of community-building tools. This ranking can vary based on specific needs and preferences, but these platforms are consistently recognized for their features and user satisfaction. GPT-4o&Web Access

We’ve made a recent improvement to allow users to Watch chat threads. This lets you keep a close eye on threaded conversations that are important to you. To Watch a thread, click or tap the bell icon in the thread header area and select Watching: Like with topics, when you Watch a thread, you’ll get notifications for all replies and will see a count of new replies in your thread lists. 5 posts - 2 participants Read full topic

We’ve made a recent improvement to allow users to Watch chat threads. This lets you keep a close eye on threaded conversations that are important to you. To Watch a thread, click or tap the bell icon in the thread header area and select Watching: Like with topics, when you Watch a thread, you’ll get notifications for all replies and will see a count of new replies in your thread lists. 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

I am in the process of converting http://bash.zone to IPB. I have setup a test site running v5 beta2. If you want play around with it feel free. The data that I import will be wiped out when I do the final conversion when 5.0 is done. If you would like admin access let me know. I'll set up a test admin account and pm you details if you like. Site is at http://ipb.bash.zone

All the themes on my sites I made. I had paid before. Once I found out how easy it was to make them I started to do it myself. Only one of my sites use a theme I bought.

Sometimes. On the tech sites I watch when beta's are announced. I want to keep up with them so I check what they are doing.

It took almost 3 years for xenforo 2.3 which was supposed to be 3.0. They are telling us now that 2.4 will have most of the features slated for 3.0. New editor and new style being the biggest. Rarely is there a mention of 3.0. They have successfully diverted the inactivity in development they have exhibited through the lifetime of xenforo. They are great at this. By announcing 2.4 they bought themselves a couple years. Once the asking why it's taking so long starts they will bring up a new version 2.5 with the features that should have been in 2.4. You have to understand these are the same people that took 5 years to get vbulletin 3 out the door. They think that no matter what they will make money with what they have to sell. I have absolutely no faith in them. That is why I started looking at IPB again. In all honesty I would have never went to xenforo if an IPB rep had't told me I was using an unsupported server software and they couldn't help me with a small problem that I fixed myself.

Kee the software you use updated. Can't stress that enough. I have seen too many sites get hacked because they use an old version of software.

Good news! We have now added the invite link to the sidebar on all sites, and selecting it opens the invite popup directly. The link is only shown to people who have permission to invite. Sites can customize the placement of the invite link or remove it entirely using the “Customize this section” option, which is found under the “… more” menu. You can also add link to the popup directly from anywhere using the https://yoursite.com/new-invite URL. For more guidance on setting up and using the invite system, see Creating and using invites. This change comes as part of a handful of tweaks we are making to the invite system. The goal is to make it quicker and easier to get to the invite popup and copy the link to share, while also not taking away existing functionaltiy to the greatest extent possible. Let us know if you have any feedback at all or questions! 26 posts - 9 participants Read full topic

Good news! We have now added the invite link to the sidebar on all sites, and selecting it opens the invite popup directly. The link is only shown to people who have permission to invite. For those sites that prefer not to have the invite link so prominent or want to move it below ... more they can set it up as they see fit by using “Customize this section”. You can also add link to the popup directly from anywhere using the https://yoursite.com/new-invite URL. For more guidance on setting up and using the invite system, see Creating and using invites. This change comes as part of a handful of tweaks we are making to the invite system. The goal is to make it quicker and easier to get to the invite popup and copy the link to share, while also not taking away existing functionaltiy to the greatest extent possible. Let us know if you have any feedback at all or questions! 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

I am better at adding to topics. I do get ideas that pop in my head. I go with them. It;s much easier for me to reply to new stuff.

You can get that. At the top right just above the thread list you'll see a hamburger icon. Click that to change to forum view.

We are excited to announce that in addition to Enterprise, all Discourse AI features are now available on our Standard and Business plans. Start here to read more about Discourse AI and how to enable the plugin and individual features for your site. Note that Large Language Model (LLM) based features require an API key for a supported provider We hope this opens the doors to more people using Discourse AI. 2 posts - 2 participants Read full topic

We are excited to announce that in addition to Enterprise, all Discourse AI features are now available on Standard and Business, excluding the Starter plan. What this means is if you have the Discourse AI plugin enabled, you should now be able to see all the related site settings for all features. This is a big change and we hope this opens the doors to more people using Discourse AI. Please note we are still in the process of updating the website and documentation 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Yes it is. A few niggles because I run on Windows/IIS. Nothing I couldn't work through.

I am working on installing a test site with v5 beta2

/secure-uploads/original/4X/f/0/4/f04a3ff4f38cd63477c8df3eb015c24e24ec4218.png Curious about design at Discourse? Here’s your chance to get behind-the-scenes look from the talented designers who shape both our internal platform and customer communities. During this session, you’ll hear from designers across Discourse as they share: Design tips and customizations you can explore for your community. Insights into how our design team is structured at Discourse. Our design team’s unique approaches to design challenges. How we collaborate and bring projects to life. Highlights of favorite design projects. This is a great opportunity to connect with our design experts. Plus, there will be a live Q&A where you can get your specific questions answered. Wednesday, October 30, 2024 5:00 PM UTC Register Here 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic View the full article

I want to apologize for the downtime. I was in Tennessee looking at property. The power was not fully restored when I left. I though the back up power would hold things together in between. It didn't. Site went offline on Tuesday as I was doing an upgrade. I wasn't able to access the server until this morning when I got home. Power was still off. It came back at about 1630ET. It still up and down. Backup generator is keeping up this time. Thanks for understanding

While Discourse is widely recognized as powerful open-source forum software, Discourse has also served as our primary workplace/team collaboration tool from the very beginning. Many other companies and organizations have found incredible value in using it the same way. In this blog post, we share insights on how companies, research labs, and other groups that need spaces to collaborate can effectively use Discourse to support discussions that are worth remembering. Why teams choose Discourse for collaboration This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://blog.discourse.org/2024/10/discourse-a-team-collaboration-tool 6 posts - 4 participants Read full topic View the full article

Howdy and welcome. I was able to fix the post by removing the apostrophe. Seems more than 1 special charcater causes the ridrect problem.