Let me start this topic with some difference between blogging and discussion forum.
Blogging
Blogging is something you would like to focus more on Quality content, I would say your niche topics which I believe really should help readers in many ways.
Discussion forum
Forum is something which starts a discussion on a specific topic created by not only admin but by all valuable readers. It’s kind of decentralized collaboration group based on interest.
In 2015 I got more than 300 emails and feedbacks on why not to start a forum on Crunchify?Mainly all users want to post their Java related exceptions, Blogging queries, Eclipse setup related questions, etc on forum.
As you could see ~290 comments on Simplest Spring MVC framework tutorial, ~180 comments on Social sharing button setup. It’s kind of not a very pleasant user experience for users to go over comments and find their solution about any exception, query, etc.
Finally as a new year 2016 resolution we have decided to give it a try. Forum is now open for all developers and bloggers if they want to get instant answers for any query they may have. I personally very fond of high knowledge and content rich forum.
Note: In 2023, we have decided to close our forum. All the tutorials regarding discourse forum setup are still valid. Let us know if you have any questions around the same.
Please visit https://ask.crunchify.com to get started. You do have options to login using Facebook, Twitter or Gmail ID.
Here is some background on how we choose forum software:
Forum is hosted at Linode and software is Discourse.
Why Discourse?
There are quite a few forum softwares are available online like phpBB, bbPress, Vanilla forums, miniBB, etc. Discourse is the 100% open source discussion platform built on latest web technologies. It also comes with 4 default plugins on which we will go over later.
It’s fast, secure, scalable and runs on docker. With some simple steps I was able to setup Discourse on Linode with 4GB RAM, 2CPU VM.
If you would like to setup Discourse forum by yourself and want to avoid high charged then follow this details steps on How to setup Discourse forum on Linode correct way.
How to get started?
Please chime in and join ask.crunchify.com and start posting your queries and exception details. I’m hoping to see active participation on forum.
Main idea behind forum is: Get help. Give help & get yourself discovered.
Happy blogging and happy coding.