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 readers. It’s kind of decentralize 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, queries, Eclipse setup related questions, etc on forum.
As you could see ~200 comments on Simplest Spring MVC framework tutorial, ~100 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 already live at ask.crunchify.com.
Here is some background on how we choose forum software:
ask.crunchify.com is hosted at DigitalOcean 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 DigitalOcean with 2GB, 2CPU VM.
In next tutorial I’ll show all detailed steps on setting up Discourse on DigitalOcean.
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.
Here are list of forum categories:
- Spring MVC Topics
- Java Web Development Topics
- Blogging Topics
- Apache Tomcat related Topics
- Eclipse Tips and Tricks Forum Topics
Happy blogging and happy coding.
The post Introducing a Discussion Forum for any Java Exceptions or Blogging queries you may have: ask.crunchify.com appeared first on Crunchify.
Author: App Shah