I need a forum

[AnotherOldJeepGuy]

So my group of retired folks have a very rudimentary forum, we have a great big mailing list and essentially everyone gets everything.  It does work, but something like what we have here at CC would be much nicer. 

 

1. Have topic driven discussions.
2. Have the history to look.
3. Privacy from peering eyes of at least each person's personal info.

 

Is the person that started this forum still around to give me the basics of what it takes to start one of these?

[eaglescout526]

Pete might know better than any of the other admins. Maybe Eagle might as well. I can’t imagine it’s hard to get a forum started though. 

[Pete M]

we use Invision Community for the forum software.  it's been quite a few years since it was set up (and technically I didn't do it), but I imagine if you google them, you'll get step by steps.   you'll want to snag a website address too (we went through GoDaddy), and a place that will host it all (we use Linode). 

 

or you can make a private facebook group

[AnotherOldJeepGuy]

16 hours ago, Pete M said:

we use Invision Community for the forum software.  it's been quite a few years since it was set up (and technically I didn't do it), but I imagine if you google them, you'll get step by steps.   you'll want to snag a website address too (we went through GoDaddy), and a place that will host it all (we use Linode). 

 

or you can make a private facebook group

Thanks Pete.  I hunted around a bit and did find some how to info, but I think I won't have as good luck with this as I have with Jeep repairs!  The idea of a Facebook thing came up in the early stages of the email based group, but the consensus was that Facebook privacy control was too questionable to go that way.  I thing we will just stick with the email, works good enough 

[Pete M]

yup, facebook is by far the easiest to set up for chatting (everyone creates a fake account and joins the same private group), but it has drawbacks