Just like this comment.mayfirst.org we are using, is it possible for MayFirst to host other sites for different purposes? Or is it somehow possible to “Split” or “Share” this Discourse instance so there will be mote venues for different topics?
I think there is a dire need for a worker coop / solidarity economy discussion site for Japan in Japanese language. (If Discourse has a built-in translation feature, that would be great, too)
I don’t know whether they need their own channels or can be combined, but I would like to know if we can use MayFirsrt to host it.
I noticed that many Discourse hosting sites are very expensive (say $100/mo) and I wonder if we can reduce the cost by sharing the same server, etc.
Yes - It is possible to share this discourse instance. We can create a category for you to use, and you can make it private or public. However, only people with a May First username/password can login and post to it. So, if you are looking for a place for a small, pre-defined team to discuss something, it will work well. But if you are looking for a public space to have a discussion with non-members, it probably is not the right choice.
Discourse is difficult to host - it’s a very complex system with many software dependencies. so I am not suprised that corporate providers charge a lot of money. There’s an alternative called Flarum that seems to offer many of the benefits but in a far simpler to manage package that could probably be installed on a shared May First server.
If you are interested, we could direct you on how to set that up in a regular hosting order. If you’d like help with that - posting a ticket at https://support.mayfirst.org/ is the way to go (we are trying to keep this spot as a place for discussion, but it’s hard to properly manage support requests so our support tracker is the place to post such a request).
Just to weigh in here, our org runs two discourse sites (externally) and we’ve found it to be excellent for organizing lots of volunteers and community members. I’ve come to see it as a key tool for our organizing and as we develop new programs, it keeps coming up. The way email notifications and permissions work is so useful… I could go on…
The kind of folks we have on those sites are without Mayfirst logins and setting that up would create a pretty high threshold for them and us.
Flarum looks promising, but the level of support and community is excellent with Discourse and it looks like Flarum is still in Beta?
Is there a future scenario where MayFirst could host instances of Discourse? Even at some kind of additional cost?
It is possible if you go with your own dedicated virtual server (which is why @yasuaki discovered it is so expensive). Discourse requires it’s own full virtual server. Those consume a lot of resources, so it makes it much harder to just spin them up and down as needed (flarum, in contrast, could be run this way).