Digital BW, The Print

I had a look at phpBB last night. It was real easy to install and
administer. I made a test installation here:

http://digitalbw.staver.no/

Feel free to post messages, but it's just a test installation and I
might take it down again soon. I've added some random categories that
reflect some of the things we usually discuss here.

Email me if you want to test the administration interface and I'll set
up the permissions for your user.

The author of Personal Groupware, a Yahoo Groups offline reader, will
convert a Yahoo group to phpBB for $45 plus $1 for every 1000 messages.
That would amount to just over $100 to have the entire archives converted.

There is a plugin for phpBB that will send a digest daily or weekly. I
haven't yet found anything that would send individual posts as emails.
Maybe it would be possible to combine it with Mailman... I don't know..

A wiki would be great as a knowledgebase. I've looked into various
solutions for another project I'm working on, but haven't yet landed on
a specific product.

Like I mentioned earlier, I have a dedicated linux server running on a
2mbit line and would be happy to host something for the group for free.
I would want to run nightly backups offsite to someone else on this list 
to make sure nothing would be lost in case I should be hit by a bus and 
catch fire or something.

For the same reason it would be good to use standard solutions with
strong community support like phpBB rather than something custom
developed. If only one person knows the code it can be hard for someone
else to take over.

--
Daniel Staver
http://daniel.staver.no

> As someone who develops websites for a living, here's a couple of 
> thoughts.
> 
> Forums can be successful when they do what they are supposed to - 
> enable and facilitate discussion about topics of mutual interest. 
> Forum software can also disseminate information as email and digests 
> if required (depends on the software). If people mainly prefer email,
> then possibly a mailing list would be a better solution. Products
> like Mailman provide email delivery, but also archiving and searching
> facilities.
> 
> However in making a decision about this, it appears to me that there
>  are several fundamental uses of the current forum which may not fit
>  snugly in one solution
> 
> a)       Notification of new products, ideas, discoveries etc (In my
>  view one of the most useful)
> 
> b)       Requests for help, or opinions (support)
> 
> c)       Knowledge base type information. (How to's etc)
> 
> d)       Ranting and raving
> 
> It could be that you need a fully tailored website to cater 
> adequately for all of these, but I guess questions of ownership, who
>  gets to make the decisions, administration and costs are likely to 
> render this a non-starter