A small group of leaseholders have recently set up a Facebook group to
share information between all of our landlord's leaseholders, we have 105
members so far across 40 different estates and what is coming out the
woodwork is fascinating.

We are all retired and while some are quite switched on with Facebook
others aren't and find it confusing.

What are the alternatives assuming Internet access? We want people to join
by answering 3 question which seems to work OK, then sign on (name and
password) and be able to read and post. We'll have admins and we'd like to
pull basic statistics (Facebook tells you how many Members a group has but
won't tell you who didn't proceed or who has left).

We'd need to set up a domain and hosting but as far as possible would want
to administer it ourselves to keep costs to a minimum.

Any suggestions appreciated!

--
Jeff Gaines Wiltshire UK
Indecision is the key to flexibility

On 15/05/2021 12:15, Jeff Gaines wrote:
>
> A small group of leaseholders have recently set up a Facebook group to
> share information between all of our landlord's leaseholders, we have
> 105 members so far across 40 different estates and what is coming out
> the woodwork is fascinating.
>
> We are all retired and while some are quite switched on with Facebook
> others aren't and find it confusing.
>
> What are the alternatives assuming Internet access? We want people to
> join by answering 3 question which seems to work OK, then sign on (name
> and password) and be able to read and post. We'll have admins and we'd
> like to pull basic statistics (Facebook tells you how many Members a
> group has but won't tell you who didn't proceed or who has left).
>
> We'd need to set up a domain and hosting but as far as possible would
> want to administer it ourselves to keep costs to a minimum.
>
> Any suggestions appreciated!
>

Not the done thing to point from usenet to a reddit thread, but ...

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/891d1v/selfhosted_social_media_sitefacebook_clone/

gave a link to
https://alternativeto.net/software/facebook/?platform=self-hosted

You would have to jump through all the hoops on security, and; I'd
guess, ICO data storage rules.

Microsoft

--
Adrian C

On 15/05/2021 12:15, Jeff Gaines wrote:
>
> A small group of leaseholders have recently set up a Facebook group to
> share information between all of our landlord's leaseholders, we have
> 105 members so far across 40 different estates and what is coming out
> the woodwork is fascinating.
>
> We are all retired and while some are quite switched on with Facebook
> others aren't and find it confusing.
>
> What are the alternatives assuming Internet access? We want people to
> join by answering 3 question which seems to work OK, then sign on
> (name and password) and be able to read and post. We'll have admins
> and we'd like to pull basic statistics (Facebook tells you how many
> Members a group has but won't tell you who didn't proceed or who has
> left).
>
> We'd need to set up a domain and hosting but as far as possible would
> want to administer it ourselves to keep costs to a minimum.
>
> Any suggestions appreciated!
>
Create a What's App group.

Jeff Gaines <jgaines_newsid@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> A small group of leaseholders have recently set up a Facebook group to
> share information between all of our landlord's leaseholders, we have 105
> members so far across 40 different estates and what is coming out the
> woodwork is fascinating.
>
> We are all retired and while some are quite switched on with Facebook
> others aren't and find it confusing.
>
> What are the alternatives assuming Internet access? We want people to join
> by answering 3 question which seems to work OK, then sign on (name and
> password) and be able to read and post. We'll have admins and we'd like to
> pull basic statistics (Facebook tells you how many Members a group has but
> won't tell you who didn't proceed or who has left).
>
> We'd need to set up a domain and hosting but as far as possible would want
> to administer it ourselves to keep costs to a minimum.
>
> Any suggestions appreciated!

Slack
Microsoft Teams

Jeff Gaines <jgaines_newsid@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> We'd need to set up a domain and hosting but as far as possible would want
> to administer it ourselves to keep costs to a minimum.

What do you want:
- a website that people have to check regularly
- an app that works on phones
- a thing that emails out when somebody posts something
- a thing that sends notifications (mobile app/browser) when something
happens

What are the reasons for hosting something yourself, rather than (paying
for) a pre-existing service?

I think getting a domain and 'administering it yourself' is going to cost
more than signing up for whatever kind of online service is the right thing,
and substantially more work. It doesn't sound like your application is
going to be very taxing (we're not talking thousands of posts a day) so the
free tier of most services is probably fine (although it may have ads).

Theo

Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Jeff Gaines <jgaines_newsid@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> We'd need to set up a domain and hosting but as far as possible would want
>> to administer it ourselves to keep costs to a minimum.
>
> What do you want:
> - a website that people have to check regularly
> - an app that works on phones
> - a thing that emails out when somebody posts something
> - a thing that sends notifications (mobile app/browser) when something
> happens
>
> What are the reasons for hosting something yourself, rather than (paying
> for) a pre-existing service?
>
> I think getting a domain and 'administering it yourself' is going to cost
> more than signing up for whatever kind of online service is the right thing,
> and substantially more work. It doesn't sound like your application is
> going to be very taxing (we're not talking thousands of posts a day) so the
> free tier of most services is probably fine (although it may have ads).

Also you'd need to fulfil all the data protection requirements of GDPR.

On 15/05/2021 in message <xn0mxx2412so4xi004@news.individual.net> Jeff
Gaines wrote:

>Any suggestions appreciated!

Many thanks for all the replies, much appreciated :-)

I will follow up with my fellow admins.

--
Jeff Gaines Wiltshire UK
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who do binary and those
who don't.

On Sat, 15 May 2021 11:15:38 +0000, Jeff Gaines wrote:

> A small group of leaseholders have recently set up a Facebook group to
> share information between all of our landlord's leaseholders, we have
> 105 members so far across 40 different estates and what is coming out
> the woodwork is fascinating.
>
> We are all retired and while some are quite switched on with Facebook
> others aren't and find it confusing.
>
> What are the alternatives assuming Internet access? We want people to
> join by answering 3 question which seems to work OK, then sign on (name
> and password) and be able to read and post. We'll have admins and we'd
> like to pull basic statistics (Facebook tells you how many Members a
> group has but won't tell you who didn't proceed or who has left).
>
> We'd need to set up a domain and hosting but as far as possible would
> want to administer it ourselves to keep costs to a minimum.
>
> Any suggestions appreciated!

Just remembered that Wix offers free web forum features.

So long since I used it that I can't remeber if you can conceal posts from
non-members.
You can certainly restrict posting to members only.

HTH

Dave R

--
AMD FX-6300 in GA-990X-Gaming SLI-CF running Windows 7 Pro x64

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote:
> Slack
> Microsoft Teams

I think the main difference here is whether you want a real-time 'messaging'
platform (compare it to a group SMS chat) or a longer-form 'writing' platform
(like email).

1. Slack/Teams/Whatsapp/Signal/maybe Facebook Messenger are real-time but
aren't intended for much writing. People might write 1/2/3 sentences in
each message. They're a medium for having back-and-forth group
conversations. It's slightly impolite to jump into 'old' conversations (a
bit subjective what 'old' means, possibly order of a day) because the topic
of conversation has now moved on to something else. Typically they are
organised in terms of the group of people having the conversation.

2. Email/Usenet/web forums and to some extent Facebook groups give space for
writing longer text and where people also don't expect to get an
instantaneous reply. It's socially acceptable to pick up a discussion from
a month before if you have new things to add. Typically they are organised
by a named topic (such as an email Subject) and the people in the
conversation can ebb and flow depending on who is interested in the topic.

The first group is more heavily bound to mobile apps because it's expected
that people will answer you now(ish), while the second are things people
might check every day/week/month, and the conversation run more slowly
because people aren't glued to the app all the time.

I think it's a mistake to focus on the platform before working out what kind
of human interaction you want to have.

Theo