Apart from the daily online visits to a few EE/maker communities, I found myself recently in a (technically) intense PM exchange with someone who wants to keep the messages exchange private. Even after I repeatedly suggested to make a public topic about the subject, because it feels like a big waste to benefit alone of such expertise, the answer was still no. It is from a Romanian forum, by the way, not EEVblog.
OK, then, will keep the messages private, but the PM pitfalls as a collaborative platform starts to show its teeth:
- attachments not allowed
- pics can be inserted only as links, so they need a 3rd party hosting
- no LaTeX or other math formulas, just text and emoticons
- the PM initial subject has now spread into 3-4 main topics, and it is very hard to track each topic
- no pagination, just infinite scroll, which is a pain after 10-20 PM of 1-2 textbook pages long each
- no easy way to quote or reference certain text when commenting on it
- all the internet security protections are in place, like e.g. can not embed a GeoGebra interactive model in a reply, etc.
After looking for a couple of days what online (and free) platform to use, I came to the conclusion that a forum-like platform (but with no restrictions) would probably be the best.
It just happens that I already have had a Dynamic DNS address from my ISP provider (which I never used before), 50 GB cloud storage (on 1Gbps fiber link, used only once or twice even it's WebDAV capable and is as fast as a local SSD, if not faster) and an old RaspberryPi B (ARM 700MHz / 256MB RAM) from around 2014 or something, just sitting around.
Sort of speak, I was already in possession of all the parts, just to click them in place.
At first I've looked for what forum platform to use, this search narrowed down to a choice between phpBB and SMF forum platform. I like EEVblog a lot (which is SMF driven) so I settled to a SMF forum hosted on a Raspberry Pi (RPi) SBC (Single Board Computer). My fiber optic (FO) router is powered 24/7, so I'll power the RPi board from its USB port.
The network setup is like that:
- RPi sitting inside internal LAN
- port forward of port 80 in my FO router (for now is http:// only, no secure https:// )
- DDNS (Dynamic Domain Name System) provided by the ISP (Internet Service Provider) itself, rogeorge.go.ro
- RPi running an ancient Wheezy Debian Linux (from around 2014) with Nginx (web server), PHP5 (language), AMP (accelerator), MySQL (database server), and on top al all these, SMF (Simple Machines Forum).
After a few days of fiddling with the whole setup, it finally works. There is a running SMF 2.0.17 at
http://rogeorge.go.ro, with registration closed (it will not go public) and with 3 users, all in Admin roles: the two of us exchanging messages, and a 3rd admin just in case, if something goes terrible wrong.
SMF 2.0.17 works like a champ on a humble RPi@700MHz/256MB RAM and a 2GB CLASS1 SD card!
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Not very happy with the SMF 2.0 mostly because it can not drag and drop pics, does not scale pics and iframes (in the editor window), etc.
However, I just read and test the new SMF 2.1 editor, and I'm thrilled with it, it does all the SMF 2.0 editor lacks, and it does it out of the box, no mods required (SMF 2.1 is in RC4 stage now, so not yet released for production but very stable)
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- Should I switch to SMF 2.1?
- Should I just use the current SMF 2.0.17 with some (free) editor mod? I'm a week old in SMF, which editor mod (mostly for proper drag&drop pics into posts)?
- So far I looked for casual platforms like Disqus, Twitter, e-mail, hackaday, Wordpress, etc. None seems appropriate. Did I miss any? Should I maybe try something else, some other platform then a SMF forum? Which one?
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