I want to join the Fediverse. I don’t have a computer or anything to make something like a Lemmy instance, and I found that NodeBB will easily allow you to make a forum quickly, but I have to pay to do so. Should I just pay when I can or is there a free way to make a federated instance on a software?
@CraigCabbage maybe you have an old computer to run it ?
Nah, but I could ask my Dad. He did last time i checked
@CraigCabbage if you have maybe a 10years old computer you can install Linux through the bios to run mastodon or any fediverse software. you can also pick a sub domain name to have a free domain name. once you got both, you may need an extra storage but basically you will be able to own an instance for free
Thank you!! Dad has one but you can’t access the web with it.
@CraigCabbage why can’t you? no wifi and no ethernet? how old the computer is ?
IDK, Dad and Grandpa say the computer is too old to access it and he thinks me buying an ethernet cable is useless 😭 The computer is probably 10-13 years old, I’m not sure
@CraigCabbage should be compatible with internet, or if you want you can also buy some old stuff through eBay, its also cheap
Thanks so much!!
Is there any way to federate a ProBoards forum? I made one once and someone said I should federate it
@CraigCabbage maybe I don’t know proboards, but you can’t federate it with activitypub
If you go with something that isn’t lemmy/piefed/mbin, you should look into compatibility and project activity very carefully.
@CraigCabbage @mat I had a look at this - - If this is ProBoards - proboards.com/free-forum-featu… - It looks that its a closed service - hosted by that company and either free (Where the audience is is the product sold to Google Advertising) or where someone can pay to host a forum (and remove the ads) - I couldn’t see any federation capabilities
Maybe it would make sense for them to have a Discourse type plugin that allows you to follow posts from the forums in ActivityPub to attract visitors but I guess they are too small to be able to devote their own resources to developing this capability.
From my perspective, If I was going to run a forum - I’d avoid this type of service since you are basically locked in and no doubt at some point it will get enshitiified. I’d either get a Lemmy server, use an lemmy server and create a community on that (so you are properly part of the Fediverse) or run a Discourse Forum (With ActivityPub plugin ) - where you at least own the domain and can move / migrate it if ever want/need to.