levinlog

My family and a group of friends will be signing up for the State Department’s new Sponsor Circle (https://www.sponsorcircles.org/) program, to help settle Afghan refugees in the US.

It occurs to me that for the families going through this process, this will be the sort of shared, parallel, yet geographically disparate experience that is a great case for an online community.

However, for the same reasons as many people these days, I got off Facebook and other social media over 7 years ago. So, I don’t really have an online home that where I can check in with others as we await the progress of our application, learn what others are going through, and share with other families if we are accepted into the program.

As is my habit, and that of many others who came of age in the 90s I suspect, my first instinct was to go look for good domain names for a bulletin board. And I found a great one; circlesocial.org! Couldn’t believe it was available so I snapped it up.

Of course, I also realized that ‘spin up a phpBB’ my be a relatively graybeardy response, with an experience not up to the standards of most modern web users.

So, that leads me to the question. What sort of setup could I host that might meet this need? Is ning still a thing? Is Discourse self-hostable and easy enough that I am not signing up for too much work? (outside moderation?)

If you have comments on the right tool for a busy, semi-technical person like myself to host to try to support a non-Facebook (or reddit, etc) option for these families I would appreciate your thoughts.  Thanks.

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