Cheap/Free Forum possibilities?

[kamikazekeeg]

I'm a part of a local gamer group, nothing huge, sub-1000 people in the Facebook group, though the active people is well under 100.  We have a Discord, but I've sorta realized how awful it is for any real discussion.  It's meant for in the moment interaction and simple chatting, not actual discussions and at times the channel can get dominated by these things.  The Facebook page is good for our meetups and at the moment news, but it's not organized.

What I'd like is what we have here basically, so we could have a section for user reviews, and we have a couple Twitch streamers that could use it for talking to folks and setting up stuff, and we could have a marketplace, and game news won't get buried by unrelated things.

Now back in the day, like 10+ years ago, you could find places that'll offer free and easy space for small forums with easy to alter layouts, but nowadays, I don't know if any of that exists or if there's at least very cheap things that could be done.  Maybe if all we need is a server, I could find someone with a spare PC to host it, but I also don't know anything about that kind of setup.

So I'm sorta asking around for what our options might be for this.

[ignition365]

This board is built off of the SMF software.  It's free and simple.

If you have a static IP, you could even set up a computer as a server and host it yourself for free.  I've done this in the past and it is simple and maintainable if you have a small user base.  My user base exploded so I had to move to a real server.

There is also Pro boards I believe, which is a free forum website, but you MUST follow their ToS.  I had a Pro Boards site shut down due to violating their ToS, of course the only reason we got in trouble was because there was a vitriolic user who I banned for being toxic and he reported us.

Pro boards is probably what you want.

[tripredacus]

Without having hosting of your own, there are other services where you can get a hosted forum.

Look into Zetaboards, it is supported by banner ads.

http://www.zetaboards.com/

[kamikazekeeg]

ProBoards actually sounds familiar, might've used them once in the past years ago, but I think I'll give that a try for us.  Not even sure if we can get enough people to move over from Discord to be engaged, but we'll see.  It's free, so nothing is lost at least.

Thanks for the help.