I actually emailed the site owner, but never received an answer.
I've always wondered what the channel/chan type sites typically cost to run, and who is a good host who accepts anon's the way they are. Wondering because I'd like to start my own for the first time since I've been visiting some for years.
Thanks!
but why would you want to?
Mainly to have a place I feel is home. I've been doing web development off and on since around 2005 and I've always loved minimalistic/simplistic styled sites like just plaintext kind-of-sites and textboards have always kinda fit that description of what I like in terms of design. The anonymous aspect of it all forces users to be themselves and value what they type (at least most of the time).
I'll be making it from scratch without any outside code resources because I want it to be unique to what I need. It will either be developed in Python or PHP with MySQL database and have few boards. Too many boards is too much unless they are all popular with new threads etc.
But these are just the ideas at this point. I want to spend some time to actually fully think out what I want as features and functionality etc.
like $5-10/month
source: used to have a textboard site that is now defunct
shared hosting is cheap
managed hosting, VPSes, etc... small differences in price points
also make sure you use domainsbyproxy or whoisguard when you register the domain
but text boards barely use any resources, compared to other kinds of sites that have higher-bandwidth/higher-disk usage media (such as images or videos)
however, you will have to worry about moderation and security
so even though the monthly cost is low in dollars, the monthly maintenance and time requirements are high in other areas
you really don't want your site to become a haven for spam or bad content, so you gotta moderate it
also, you can always go fancier/more expensive, like with a CDN or something to protect against DDoSing, since a single shared server won't be able to scale well to handle lots of users, but the fact of the matter is that scalability issues aren't really a concern for tiny sites that barely get any traffic to begin with
ALSO: if you don't develop board software on your own, be prepared to deal with bugs and a lack of support
you might install text board software, and then one day, the maintainer abandons it, and you're on your own
don't use old software, it can get hacked
but if you're a web developer it's no big deal
hell, even put it on github and let the community help you maintain it
also please use TLS, such as with Let's Encrypt or Comodo or something
I hate the lack of HTTPS on 4-ch
Thank you. I was thinking about using Amazon as a web host, Let's Encrypt (because it's free), and my domain I have will be with Google and WHOIS privacy comes by default for free.
> ... one day, the maintainer abandons it ...
This seems to happen more often than it should.
a few years ago i made a forum that i intended to be a 4chan anonymity + somethingawful-style comedy thing but let me tell you, don't ever advertise on either of those websites
Oh yeah, I saw your ad. Mewchan? Mewch? It sucked.
my thing wasn't an imageboard
>>9
Why not?
4chan seems lighthearted, usually.
SomethingAwful was a special breed of terrible though. Like, there were posters who were typical loser neckbeards... but they'd get on a high horse and make fun of other neckbeards. Like ``I'm not like those OTHER losers!'' Okay, buddy, but you still have a hentai avatar and post edgy shit on a web forum multiple times per day. They claim that it's ironic, but I doubt it. Irony loses its meaning when it's over-used. Post-irony.
Unlike anonymous image boards, SomethingAwful, Something Sensitive, and so on had a lot more doxxing and harassment issues. At least 4chan was mostly anonymous, though every now and then someone would tripfag or post doxx. But that was very rare. It seemed like a frequent occurrence on SA. People just bored and with too much free time so they went out of their way to attack other people. Very strange.
Remember Retsupurae? A pair of grown-ass men who made fun of children who posted video game recordings to YouTube. Now they pretend to be paragons of virtue or some shit. Very strange. Shmorky was weird as fuck, Lowtax had drug issues, and the whole community was a shitshow. Moot seemed to be more hands-off for his community, but Lowtax seemed to be just as bad as the people who trolled his site. I think his flawed business model encouraged shit-flinging. After all, banning more people would get him more money. But then again, maybe he's just jaded from having to deal with the kinds of freaks who pay to use a forum. I can't imagine having to put up with human garbage for a living. It's probably taken a toll on him after all these years.
I'm surprised SA is still around. And the weird thing is how it's taken a 180 and become super leftist now. It used to seem like apolitical edginess, but now it's very politically-oriented.
I never actually made an account there, thank goodness. When I was interested in sites like that, I was too young to have a credit card. Even though I'm older now, I've never actually signed up, but instead just watched from a distance. Schadenfreude, I guess. I can't see a lot of SA directly, since I don't have an account, and a lot of it is paywalled. But its drama seeps over into spinoff forums and Twitter.
I wonder if the posters there have Stockholm Syndrome or something. I just don't understand why you'd willingly subject yourself to that kind of treatment.
>>14
They don't call it a catlady hugbox for nothing.
Having pets is a bourgeois privilege.
Having socks is a bourgeois privilege.
One kg of coffee beans a day
With a 10 buck VPS you can support a community quite a bit bigger than this.
USD2.89 per day
Having a site like Channel 4 is a bourgeois privilege.
$5 a month for a vps and $12 a year for a domain name