Alright, firstly - I hate writing threads so I'm going to try and be as brief as possible, and secondly
I'm not good at writing threads, so don't expect this to sound amazing or remotely coherent.
Caveat lector. Warning aside let's proceed with some context.
We had the discussion about this initially in the community Discord server, you can join that
here by the way.
The discussion stemmed from the topic of MyBB's minimum PHP version, which is currently 5.2. People are uneasy with the idea of bumping that up to 5.6 or above due to the sheer number of boards that are using such an old version, they are rightly concerned about doing anything that could harm MyBB's userbase and drive people away to other forum softwares. I think it might have been
Eric or
Azareal that originally raised the possibility of MyBB offering a free shared hosting platform much like services such as
CreateMyBB and
IcyBoards.
The premise for offering this service is simple:
- Too many people are hosting MyBB on free, low quality, webhosts such as 000webhosting
- This is one of the reasons preventing the minimum PHP version from being bumped, the sheer number of boards on hosts that don't support anything above PHP 5.4
- These webhosts are directly contributing to a lack of modernisation for MyBB, we're still hashing passwords with MD5 for example and plugins to fix that are mostly only available for boards running on PHP 5.6/7.0+
- So, in order to help fix that, we'd need to offer a new home for those boards if we were to raise the minimum PHP version from 5.2 to 5.6 (I argued for 7.0 but hey, don't always get what you want ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
- A shared MyBB hosting platform similar to the ones referenced above would be the perfect solution IMO. We'd be in complete control of the server software versions provided, could apply security updates immediately and manage the infrastructure on behalf of the users
- Users would always have the latest, fastest and most secure PHP version possible. They would also benefit from the additional server hardening and security mechanisms that we could put into place to protect them
So wrapping up (I said I'd be brief) I'd really like to hear your comments, suggestions and criticisms on the whole idea. We have a fair bit of support for it in the Discord as I mentioned but community feedback would be extremely valuable to me too.
I do agree with the idea and I don't. How do you propose the team manage it? The team is already stretched as it is. How are we expected to fund the costs of the server?
(2017-11-16, 08:17 PM)Ben Wrote: [ -> ]I do agree with the idea and I don't. How do you propose the team manage it? The team is already stretched as it is. How are we expected to fund the costs of the server?
Hmm I don't know maybe ask for donations like everyone has asked you repetitively to do, or charge a small fee for websites with X views per month.
No host should be running 5.4 these days :\. That's a disaster waiting to happen.
I use to run a free mybb hosting service years ago and would be willing to fund a server to start a project like this again.
The main thing is support, I wouldn't be able to hire support techs for a free service, it would have to be community based support like how the mybb community forum is run. If I could get a few volunteers that have a good understanding cPanel I'd give it another go.
I wouldn't be able to offer unlimited diskspace and bandwidth because those things cost money are tend to be abused sadly. What do you think a reasonable amount of diskspace and bandwidth for a free service?
(2017-11-16, 08:17 PM)Ben Wrote: [ -> ]How are we expected to fund the costs of the server?
Hand MyBB project over to our company as I suggested somewhere here (on community forum) as well as on Discord.....
We would take care of funding, etc....
(2017-11-17, 02:52 AM)Lunorian Wrote: [ -> ] (2017-11-16, 08:17 PM)Ben Wrote: [ -> ]I do agree with the idea and I don't. How do you propose the team manage it? The team is already stretched as it is. How are we expected to fund the costs of the server?
Hmm I don't know maybe ask for donations like everyone has asked you repetitively to do, or charge a small fee for websites with X views per month.
Valid concerns, Ben. I've been prototyping a project with Euan that would make this project a lot easier to initially pull off and manage further down the line. I think Euan can quite happily vouch for my technical ability in the subject but I won't put words into his mouth at this point.
As for Lunorian's point again I think that MyBB really needs to look into ways to receive community funding. MyBB could easily accept tax free crypto currency donations with no legal repercussions at all if they wanted to, there isn't any reason to go down the PayPal or credit card donation path if they want to avoid that hassle with taxes and accounts etc. In many jurisdictions crypto currency is largely considered a commodity and not an actual currency.
(2017-11-17, 02:52 AM)Lunorian Wrote: [ -> ] (2017-11-16, 08:17 PM)Ben Wrote: [ -> ]I do agree with the idea and I don't. How do you propose the team manage it? The team is already stretched as it is. How are we expected to fund the costs of the server?
Hmm I don't know maybe ask for donations like everyone has asked you repetitively to do, or charge a small fee for websites with X views per month.
Okay, as we've said repeatedly, "The MyBB Project's expenses are currently being covered by the MyBB Team and due to financial stability and legal reasons we currently do not accept direct donations." not only that we do have a whole page dedicated to it
https://mybb.com/about/donations/ . If you've got suggestions with logic behind them, then let us know.
I think that discussing financials at this point is not worth the time. This should be a discussion about how viable a shared hosting platform would be from a technical perspective and how it could benefit the MyBB project and the users who use the software.
I disagree with the idea of MyBB providing hosting. There is already more than enough things that MyBB staff need to consider/worry about. Adding hosting to the mix just seems like a recipe for disaster. It would just end up splitting the focus up even more. I mean if the host side needed help, they'd be running to the developers for help because they couldn't let issues happen for very long (it'd reflect terribly if MyBB's own hosted setup had issues that persisted too long). And that'd easily slow development of 2.0 down further.
I also think that because IcyBoards and CreateMyBB already exist that MyBB itself doesn't really need to get into the hosting aspect. Let those two sites handle the free hosting side stuff so that MyBB itself can focus efforts on developing MyBB. (Either handling bugfixes or advancing the forum software.)
Anyone who tries running a forum on a free host like X10 or 000webhost is quickly going to discover it's not optimal and either end up going paid or moving to IcyBoards or CreateMyBB to get better results. So I don't think it's that big of an issue to bother trying to make a free MyBB host to get people away from the less desirable ones.
Plus, like mentioned in the
Denied Support topic people already can't figure out that MyBB is the software, not the host... so why open up that avenue for confusion further.
Since I know it's going to come up... Yes, Invision Power Board (or rather Invision Power Services) offers hosting alongside the option to buy a license... But that's at a kinda steep cost. (The lowest option, for 40 users online at a time, is $30 a month.) And the main reason they they're able to pull it off is because they have a larger team of staff. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they got more reports about communities that just used IPB (but weren't hosted by IPS) because they do happen to run a hosted experience also. (People, unable to tell that IPS isn't hosting, just report to them anyway thinking that'll solve the problem.)
I know the money side of things isn't something that you want to discuss, but it's kind of a critical aspect. Running a host of any nature isn't free, money to pay for it has to come from somewhere (usually Adsense or whatever Amazon's equivalent is). Which is just another headache to have to deal with. One that, in this case, could easily be avoided.
I'm not sure of the top of my head if we have something like this but we could maybe add a page to mybb.com about hosts we recommend for setting up a forum but again it's just an idea and would need to be looked at in more depth! But then you'd have the problem of people saying that we endorse those hosts because we recommend them rather than something like 000webhost.