As I use other libre software community tools (Matrix, Zulip, Discourse), they offer hosted instances for people wanting a click-and-go experience. It's a skills-inclusive force multiplier, so that people who can't self-host (or find someone to) can still start communities to make use of the product.
Is this, hosted offerings, something that forem.dev team could offer? Or is the team / development / ownership structure make it difficult to offer this? If so, could an adjacent non-profit be started to run this?
Top comments (5)
Can you clarify whether you're talking about hosted by us or hosted by you on somewhere in the click of a button?
Either way, the answer is definitely yes.
So right now, we are working on our hosted version which is now powering the.community.club/ and community.snyk.io/ and others. It's also possible to self-host but not easily and we'll be working on more streamlined solutions in early 2021.
We'll be more broadly rolling out our hosted version (Forem Cloud) in the future. So far it's a segment of folks who have filled out this form gradually being let in, starting a couple weeks ago.
I'm capable of running it myself, but I would like to offer/encourage its use in some communities where I don't want to be responsible for the maintenance and scaling burdens. I take from your helpful reply that forem intends to offer an easy hosted version, and that the way to sign up for it, for the near term future is through this form. Thanks!
Awesome! Came here after applying to create a new community using Forem and also looking to contribute.
We're looking into creating a multi-language community so we'd be particularly interested in contributing to the i18n / localization efforts.
Any more info on when people that applied via form would be let in? Any chance that contributing to the development would push applicants up the queue? :P
Could you share links to that here, or with me directly? I have some friends in the twitter languages/i18n/linguistics sphere that I'd like to share it with.
So exciting to hear that you are letting people in! I've been waiting for the day!