Showcase Human Microbiome Community Forum

Site Name:

Human Microbiome Community Forum

Site Url:

https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/

I moved a few microbiome-related reddit subs to a Xenforo forum since reddit has been continually degrading their website and becoming more and more problematic, capricious, unreliable, untrustworthy, and even dangerous.

I had a microbiome wiki running on the domain using free, open-source software -- MKDocs Material theme static site generator -- hosted for free with Netlify. I chose Centmin Mod to host the forum because it had the best documentation and guides that I could find. I previously tried and failed with another GUI-based web panel that was supposedly more noobie-friendly, but they weren't due to deficient documentation & guides.

Since then I added another website running listmonk (free and open-source email/newsletter manager), and then I added another subdomain/website running another FOSS SesDashboard - Analytics UI for Amazon Simple Email Service.

3 unique websites all running on the same $5/mo Hetzner server with minimal resource usage, and easy maintenance & backup. I'm quite happy with it. I'll easily be able to add more websites and subdomains as needed.

I had originally set up listmonk on an Amazon EC2 micro server. After my free year ended they were charging me $10/mo. I get better specs for half the price with Hetzner and I haven't had major issues so far.

I was a total noob regarding this sort of thing, and benefited from video guides that another CMM user made. I created various tutorials that document everything I learned while setting things up, to help other noobies get started: gist.github.com/MaximilianKohler

This guide is for the forum and Centmin Mod: Detailed startup guide for newbies on migrating to, and setting up a Xenforo forum. Including reddit-like titles, and threaded comment view. [Centmin Mod]. It includes all the addons and customizations I used with the idea in mind that I didn't want to lose any features of subreddits.

I really hope to see (and encourage) people moving away from sites like reddit that are so problematic, and getting worse and worse. I switched to forums, lemmy, hackernews, StackExchange, etc., which are all better alternatives. $5/mo is pretty affordable, and it's easy enough to set up and maintain. If forums join the fediverse that should help negate the network effect, where people go to reddit because that's where everyone is. Search engines need to be petitioned to remedy this as well though, since most new small forums don't show up in search results, but new reddit subs do.

Centmin Mod Version:

Latest beta

OS:

CentOS 7

CPU Cores / Threads:

2

Memory:

2 GB

Disk Space:

30 GB

Price:

$5/mo

Web Host:

Hetzner

Backups:

Manual backups & snapshots

Length of Hosting:

~6 months