apache-labs.com

I was unsure where to post this topic in the Forum.

Is it time for the “Community Forum” to be free of Apache Labs Hosting?

I believe the lack of Apache Labs active forum participation, coupled with their unresponsiveness to inquires via emails, poor customer service and unknown ongoing viability justifies re-hosting this forum on a site under community control.

QTH.com, https://qth.com/ , hosts sites starting at $4.99 month US. This includes 1GB of storage. If more is needed unlimited storage is provided for $9.99 month US. They host numerous Ham sites.

I have never seen a call sign associated with anyone at Apache Labs. Plus, the community answers literally all hardware and software questions with no assistance from Apache Labs. Richie, Scott, Ernst, Richard, Warren, Laurence, Paul, and others are the community backbone with the rest of us contributing when and where we can.

One way this could be funded is to select an administrator. My vote is for Scott, if he is willing. If just a few of us send money to Scott {PayPal?} it can happen. The big open question is can we get access to all the forum data.

+1 for my vote. Great idea!

I would like at least a seperate forum for the G2
Very interesting radio (wish i had one) but other ANAN model owners (like me) get overwhelmed by all G2 related messages.

R/Leon

Discord is the place to be right now.

https://discord.gg/y3qABbNq

I moved this to the Forum Problems sub-forum, which seems to be the closest match in terms of subject matter.

First, thank you very much for the vote of confidence, Chip Having set up this forum, it would not be difficult to set up another phpBB-based forum.

I've long thought about exactly what you suggest. Aside from the issue of Apache control of the forum itself, their hosting provider does not have a good track record for up-time, and also has been unwilling/unable to upgrade the forum to the latest version of phpBB. Indeed, the version used here is so old I have to wonder how much longer it will continue to function.

As for funding things like domain registration and hosting, it should not cost more than $50/year, although I'm not sure about backup services, that might be a few more bucks. Certainly I can't see it going over $100 a year.

The best choices in terms of cost & performance are interserver and hostinger. I'm more of an interserver fan myself. It could literally be done for free, for example at aeonfree, but the cost is so nominal at the previously mentioned sites and the HUGE leap in features, reliability and performance you get for that tiny expenditure is more than worth it. Note that free vs. paid hosting has been analyzed and discussed to death, just jump on YouTube to learn more.

BUT...Chip, you hit the nail squarely on the head when you ask whether we could get a full backup of the forum database. I have asked for this and received "No" as an answer. There is so much knowledge in the current forum that IMHO right now it's not worth abandoning it. Also, Apache has been silent and neutral regarding negative discussions on the forum, and I've tried to be equally neutral and accommodating, as long as things stay polite and factual. Indeed, since the inception of the forum there has only been a single instance where Apache took an independent hand in moderating and ultimately banning a single member, which all happened before I even saw the relevant posts, so I'm not sure what that was all about. Apache has never asked me to delete a post or ban a member. In the rare circumstances where I have acted, it has been per my own judgement and never at the behest of Apache.

Thus creating a new forum because of some worry about Apache censorship doesn't seem to be required at this time. And any independent forum I might run would have some limits on profanity laden, emotional rants anyhow Similarly, creating a new forum doesn't make it any more likely that Apache HQ will take any more interest in addressing issues than they do now. However, I surely would like to be able to run the latest, supported version of phpBB, and to have some measure of control over database backups.

73,

Scott