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Location: God's Gift to Mankind for flying anything
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I am a member of a group of recreational pilots and am in need of a programme or hosting service that is/has:
1 - Free to use
----- Can have some advertisements as long as it is in the same category as what the forum is all about.
2 - a mailing list
----- The mailing list can then access a regular mailing APP such as Gmail.
----- Send one email that then is sent to all members.
----- Pictures or PDF files should be able to be attached to that one email.
----- The attachments are then automatically filed/stored,
----- in the appropriate storage areas under different directories.
3 - a picture storage area.
----- The pictures should be able to be stored in different directories created by the members.
4 - a document/PDF storage area
----- The PDF files should be able to be stored in different directories created by the members.
Should be able to have one 'admin' and several 'moderators'.
Also must be:
Totally private, where membership is by invitation only.
Can not be 'found' by searching on the internet.
Reason for asking:
"Yahoo groups" will be discontinued as per the end of 2019.
It's quite similar to the the forum software you are using here on CD.
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1 - Free to use
----- Can have some advertisements as long as it is in the same category as what the forum is all about.
They have "free" services for phpBB hosting this but I doubt you will find anything ad free. The larger problem is you do not have control of the content, Say you wanted to move it to a hosted site down the road, they will often hold the data hostage unless you pay significant amount. The other issue is they can disappear. For $5 a month it should be no brainer and just pay the $5.
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2 - a mailing list
----- The mailing list can then access a regular mailing APP such as Gmail.
----- Send one email that then is sent to all members.
----- Pictures or PDF files should be able to be attached to that one email.
----- The attachments are then automatically filed/stored,
----- in the appropriate storage areas under different directories.
phpBB has mass email feature but the user has option to opt of them, there would be no option for attachments out of the box or to store them automatically. What you are asking to do here would really require some custom programming especially if you want it to work within any forum software.
The other issue you will run into is the amount of emails you can send are typically limited. It may be a couple hundred per day which is adequate for the activity on smaller forum but it isn't going to be for mass emailing.
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3 - a picture storage area.
----- The pictures should be able to be stored in different directories created by the members.
Like here you can upload files to posts, there are some extensions for files like galleries etc. Acess to those files is controlled through script. e.g. only the sender and recipient of a file in PM can access them. Files posted in a forum section would require access to the forum to download. If it's private forum anonymous users would not be able to access them.
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Totally private, where membership is by invitation only.
Out of the box you can't hide the index page but it can only contain login with nothing of interest for anonymous users.
The easiest way by far is a Closed Facebook Group.
It supports photos, files and docs for the group. A closed group is by invitation only.
Facebook and Google do not get along, I don't think facebook groups will show up in any google searches. I would not know about other search engines. As far as being searched for in FB, here's more. https://www.facebook.com/help/220336891328465
I've set up vbulletin in the past which is similar to phpBB. It is not a straight forward process and not for the novice user. It depends on your skill level.
I've set up vbulletin in the past which is similar to phpBB. It is not a straight forward process and not for the novice user. It depends on your skill level.
Running a full fledged BB (Bulletin Board) is not great advice IMO. You'd be better off with a Wix website.
Running a full fledged BB (Bulletin Board) is not great advice IMO. You'd be better off with a Wix website.
There is learning curve but at the end of the day you have full control over it. Privacy, no ads etc.
I could have new forum setup literally in the time it takes to make coffee but I'm very familiar with phpBB software. Been using it for 15 years and I'm even part of the moderator team on phpBB.com.
Two important things, you need to keep the software up to date and you need to learn how to back up your data and files. If you have managed to install it you can update it. A phpBB update includes first backing up the database in case something goes wrong, upload the new files overwriting the old ones, point your browser at the install folder which will run database updates, delete the install folder. Done.
Adequate backups are a little more complicated but cross that bridge when you get to it. A host will have backups but they might be days out of date.
I could have new forum setup literally in the time it takes to make coffee but I'm very familiar with phpBB software. Been using it for 15 years and I'm even part of the moderator team on phpBB.com.
I rest my case.
Make a Wix website, add a password protected chat / forum section: done. An order of magnitude easier.
Honestly it would take but a few minutes to learn how to do this.
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Make a Wix website, add a password protected chat / forum section: done. An order of magnitude easier.
Sure, it may be easy now. If you are building a site with a few pages something like this may be appropriate. The thing to realize with these services is they are proprietary and are designed to keep you in their system. That is a pretty big problem especially for something like a forum. They don't own your content but that is meaningless unless you have easy way to move it out of their system. I spent days moving a site out of proprietary network solutions "site builder". Files that could be moved with FTP with a few clicks had to be individual loaded and saved one at a time through web interface.
If you decide to move out of their system or worse case they go out of business you are left with nothing if there is no export available and since it's proprietary even if export is available getting it into another forum package is going to be very problematic.
With phpBB or other forum software it can easily be moved to anywhere you want. You have full and easy control of the files and data. There is even converters between different forum packages if you decide you want to use something different.
With phpBB or other forum software it can easily be moved to anywhere you want. You have full and easy control of the files and data. There is even converters between different forum packages if you decide you want to use something different.
City-Data runs on vbulletin, doesn't it? It sure looks like it although they don't reveal that.
I have no idea on the OP's skill level, it's not that easy for the casual user. Most don't even know what FTP is, much less the internal workings of PHP, SQL, HTML all of which may be needed to setup and maintain a forum. If you want to do any level of customization, you will need at least a little bit of PHP and HTML. I haven't worked with it since 2005, I'm sure things have changed. It wasn't easy back then.
You punch in your credentials and after that it should be self explanatory except perhaps folder permissions that you would need to change on three folders. Right click and change them...
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much less the internal workings of PHP, SQL, HTML all of which may be needed to setup and maintain a forum.
Knowing those things can be quite helpful especially if you want to customize beyond what is available but you don't need to know those things to have a phpBB forum. Everything can be done with FTP and if you reading this and don't know what FTP is you would use it transfer files to the remote host. Local files on one side, remote files on the other.
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If you want to do any level of customization,
For phpBB for custom features it's done with extensions. You download the extension, upload the files, go into the ACP(administrative control panel) web interface and install it. Same thing with styles. Any customization you see in this list is done with FTP and the web interface:
Of course if you want a feature that is not available as extension or want to style it yourself then the PHP, HTML and CSS comes in handy. Honestly it's not that difficult to handle once you know how to use FTP program and that is not rocket science.
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