The Great Google debate continues...

Hi Aaron,

> Robert, as for the proprietary script, I think the BBS certainly looks nice,
> etc. But do they have Linux scripts? And I'm still not quite sure I want to
> pay dough to be able to chat with you all about music/tuning. My vote would
> still be to stay at Yahoo over that, lame as it is.

Yes, they have linux scripts - that is what I'm using in the demo
because my web host, like most hosts, uses Linux servers.
Certainly wouldn't want members to pay indeed. But it is just
a one off payment of $150 or so (per forum that is)
to use it, so if someone found that then it would be done
- no more payment needed ever. But I'm not particularly
rooting for it - just want to be sure that the
situation is understood clearly and that no-one
gets put off it just because I have been clumsy in
explaining how it works.

I do feel, not necessarily that this one is the
one to choose, but that hosting our
own forum somewhere seems a better bet in the long term
if we could do it as then you could just move it about
- easier to find a new host to run a Perl or such like
script than to find a new web based e-mail system that
everyone agrees on.

After all - suppose Google changes their policy about
their groups and starts to have restrictions
on them that we don't like - after all originally
their search pages had no ads at all and now they
have them so perhaps eventually they may have visual
ads too, at least, whether they do or not just
depends on whether they keep to the same policy
or eventually change it in say a year or two
- you can't always assume that the policy will remain
unchanged indefinitely unfortunately.

Or what about the thing that happened here in
Yahoogroups where they changed the format
of the on-line web pages so that they no longer showed
up as fixed width characters? There was absolutely nothing
we could do about it. We were lucky that there was a
work around that let us still see them in fixed
width fonts. So in that way, we are just at the mercy of whatever
changes they make in teh way the forum works.

While if we have our own script to host, then we don't
need to change it at all unless we want to. Migrating
to another server is a trivial thing to do if it is needed.

BTW another nice thing about the Discus script is that
when you post, you edit your post in a fixed width
font. There was another forum I tried that let
you post in fixed width fonts but it was of little
use because the web page edit window used a
variable width font. You had to make the
shapes yourself and then paste them into
the edit window which is more awkward.

Which again isn't intended as saying we should
use this particular one - it is just something
elseto look out for and if you have a script that
works like that then you know that it won't
change without notice - so long as you host
it yourself of course.

On Google - I got an e-mail saying to visit
a paritcular usrl but it didn't work.

So I went to the one you posted instead
to finish setting things up.

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/non12comp

I agree it is a nice layout there,
and some fun ideas have gone into
the way the forum works, as you
would expect from Google indeed
- interestingly innovative
in their web page designs while
somehow managingn to be simple
and uncluttered as well.

Robert