cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17779430

A large percentage of threads I've created or participated in have been deleted. Worse is that when visiting the URL everything is completely gone.

This is much more drastic when compared with Reddit thread deletions, where the thread is there and so is the discussion. And the creator of the thread has access to their content.

The Lemmy method discourages people from participating in threads and creating high-quality content, much more so than the Reddit method.

A bunch of lively and useful discussions on Lemmy have completely disappeared. And it makes it seem like a waste of time to even contribute content here.

EDIT: I see that the "fediverse" link for posts has been removed. I posted this to lemmy.ml from a lemmy.world account and there's no way for me to get the lemmy.ml link now. And when I crosspost it it shows a lemmy.world link instead of the lemmy.ml one. I think this should be changed [back].

A large percentage of threads I've created or participated in have been deleted. Worse is that when visiting the URL everything is completely gone.

This is much more drastic when compared with Reddit thread deletions, where the thread is there and so is the discussion. And the creator of the thread has access to their content.

The Lemmy method discourages people from participating in threads and creating high-quality content, much more so than the Reddit method.

A bunch of lively and useful discussions on Lemmy have completely disappeared. And it makes it seem like a waste of time to even contribute content here.

EDIT: I see that the "fediverse" link for posts has been removed. I posted this to lemmy.ml from a lemmy.world account and there's no way for me to get the lemmy.ml link now. And when I crosspost it it shows a lemmy.world link instead of the lemmy.ml one. I think this should be changed [back].

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12989654

I'm a novice so I chose the most novice-friendly option I could find - Squarespace. But I've had lots of problems with them, and they keep raising their prices, and they hide features like javascript code behind even higher prices.

I learned about SSGs https://jamstack.org/generators, which create fast and secure sites that can be hosted for free on Netlify and other similar sites. The downside is they're limited to static content -- IE: you can't have a contact form without paying a 3rd party.

I found a novice-friendly SSG theme for wikis/documentation -- MKDocs Material -- but I haven't been able to find anything for a regular business site.

This seems to be one of the most popular Jekyll themes https://mmistakes.github.io/minimal-mistakes/about/ but it seems to be mainly for blogs and documentation, and doesn't seem to have all the design options that Squarespace does.

I read that healthcare.gov used Jekyll https://medium.com/devseed/new-healthcare-gov-is-open-cms-free-41c25249cf38 in conjunction with https://prose.io. So I looked it up and found this https://github.com/CMSgov/HealthCare.gov-Styleguide which actually seems pretty decent; but also not complete enough. Their newer version https://github.com/CMSgov/design-system seems more complete/extensive, but also quite technical. It looks like it requires too much coding for me.

Weebly seems to be a slightly cheaper alternative to Squarespace but it's missing some features and Square might end it in a few years.

I've never used Wordpress but now that I've hosted a few websites I'm thinking about purchasing Oxygen https://oxygenbuilder.com/ and hosting a Wordpress site myself. Oxygen is like a more advanced version of Squarespace with a 1-time payment equal to 1 year of Squarespace. Then you just have the monthly costs of hosting the server, which should be $5-10 (no idea how this scales with amount of traffic, do you?). There is a plugin/addon to export a static site, but it might not be worth the trouble.

According to https://servebolt.com/articles/calculate-how-many-simultaneous-website-visitors/ a 2-core server ($5) with a webpage that takes 300ms to load can serve:

• 400/minute
• 24,000/hr
• 288,000/12 hrs

A lot of people use Wordpress, but also seem unsatisfied with it https://jamstack.org/survey/2022/#content-management-systems.

The Gutenberg editor may be new since the last time I tried Wordpress https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/gutenberg-wordpress, and it looks pretty similar to Squarespace. So maybe I don't even need Oxygen. I looked up "Gutenberg vs Oxygen" and people were saying to go with Gutenberg.

I've been considering Grav https://getgrav.org/ too, but similar to the SSGs, it doesn't seem to have all the design capabilities without coding them yourself.

I've seen people say you can get chat GPT to write HTML code for you but I've never used it and it seems like it would be difficult to design a website that way. I looked for a video but only found one covering writing content, not code.

I found out about Hostinger Website Builder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUjjGIfjh-4 which uses AI and looks very similar to Squarespace's builder. But there's no demo so I can't see exactly what it can do. But Hostinger is much cheaper than Squarespace, and you can choose to use Wordpress with it instead of the Hostinger builder.

I checked GreenGeeks and they say "We offer drag and drop website builders like Weebly and SitePad". Sitepad is $12/yr and makes static sites, but it looks like you need one of the popular GUI web panels to use it https://sitepad.com/docs/admin/supported-control-panels/. Similar to Weebly, it's also a bit more limited -- IE: you can't open a contact form in a lightbox from a button https://sitepad.com/docs/enduser/contact-form.

A benefit of using Hostinger or GreenGeeks is probably that I don't have to worry about a surge in traffic causing my site to go down. That's why I'm thinking they're a better option vs self-hosting on a VPS.

I found this video that seems quite good and covers more options I didn't know about: Ultimate Website Builder Comparison 2024 | Find the BEST One for You + Why I Hated Squarespace

Anyone know of better places/forums to discuss this type of thing? There seems to be hundreds of thousands of people using the jamstack SSGs but I haven't found a place where people discuss them. I've tried:

• https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1909999
• https://community.centminmod.com/threads/cheaper-squarespace-alternative-novice-friendly-static-site-generator-for-wikis-general-sites.24382/
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39216383

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12715607

"I didn’t notice a single new or low-post-count forum"

"There Appears to Be No Benefit if a Forum is Hosted on a Subdomain or Which Software It Uses"

The author lists many reasons why reddit should not be at the top of search results. I listed even more reasons here: Reddit is dangerous. The admins are out of control. Humanity needs a viable alternative.

"I didn’t notice a single new or low-post-count forum"

"There Appears to Be No Benefit if a Forum is Hosted on a Subdomain or Which Software It Uses"

The author lists many reasons why reddit should not be at the top of search results. I listed even more reasons here: Reddit is dangerous. The admins are out of control. Humanity needs a viable alternative.

A group of scammers is retaliating against me for exposing them and the Reddit admins and legal department completely ignore it.

I consulted with lawyers who told me that my only option is to spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to pursue each individual reddit account that's doing it.

It's refreshing to see a major news outlet discussing collateral damage and not just resistance. Over the past decade, 99% of the time antibiotic overuse is covered and warned about it's always only in regards to resistance.

It's a good article that also doesn't spread the common misinformation of "just take some probiotics and fermented foods after antibiotics and you're good to go".

Swallowing an antibiotic is like carpet-bombing the trillions of microorganisms that live in the gut, killing not just the bad but the good too, said Dr. Martin Blaser, author of the book “Missing Microbes” and director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers University.

“I think the health profession in general has systematically overestimated the value of antibiotics and underestimated the cost,” Dr. Blaser said.

No shit. And it has spread like a virus to the general populace as well. The majority of people seem mentally addicted to antibiotics and think they're going to die if they don't get an antibiotic for every minor issue.

• Find out if you really need an antibiotic.
• Ask for the shortest course.
• Rethink probiotics.

I appreciate the NYT for finally helping spread this.

Just yesterday people on Lemmy were cheering about AI discovering new antibiotics. When I shared info about the concerns of collateral damage, the responses were more unintelligent and close-minded than on reddit. Extremely depressing.

For more info on this subject there's a wiki and forum at https://humanmicrobiome.info.

EDIT: It was a firewall issue. I disabled my firewall and it works.

https://listmonk.app/

The site loads properly on serverIP:5870 and if I change proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5870; to proxy_pass http://listmonk.mydomain.com:5870; then it will load on listmonk.mydomain.com:5870. But it gives the 502 error when I visit the site without the port.

If I set proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5870; and visit listmonk.mydomain.com:5870 I get:

The connection for this site is not secure
listmonk.mydomain.com sent an invalid response.
[Try running Windows Network Diagnostics](javascript:diagnoseErrors()).
ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR

docker-compose.yml:

version: "3.7"

x-app-defaults: &app-defaults
  restart: unless-stopped
  image: listmonk/listmonk:latest
  ports:
    - "5870:9000"
  networks:
    - listmonk
  environment:
    - TZ=Etc/UTC

x-db-defaults: &db-defaults
  image: postgres:13
  ports:
    - "9432:5432"
  networks:
    - listmonk
  environment:
    - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=pw
    - POSTGRES_USER=listmonk
    - POSTGRES_DB=listmonk
  restart: unless-stopped
  healthcheck:
    test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U listmonk"]
    interval: 10s
    timeout: 5s
    retries: 6

services:
  db:
    <<: *db-defaults
    container_name: listmonk_db
    volumes:
      - type: volume
        source: listmonk-data
        target: /var/lib/postgresql/data

  app:
    <<: *app-defaults
    container_name: listmonk_app
    depends_on:
      - db
    volumes:
      - ./config.toml:/listmonk/config.toml
      - ./uploads:/listmonk/uploads

networks:
  listmonk:

volumes:
  listmonk-data:

nginx config:

server {
        listen              443 ssl;
        server_name            listmonk.example.com;

  location / {
     proxy_pass  http://127.0.0.1:5870;
     proxy_set_header   Host            $http_host;
     proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP       $remote_addr;
     proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; 
    }

}

server {
    listen              80;
    server_name            listmonk.example.com;
      location / {
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
      }
}

https://gist.github.com/MaximilianKohler/3bdedd0185283ac30c1f1422f9626947

If you have a Reddit account please post this to /r/RedditAlternatives.

Why move from Reddit to a forum?

Reddit has been going downhill on the path to enshittification for many years. But recently, they really s**t their bed. They've made communities no longer autonomous, and completely ignore their Terms of Service. Meaning there is no guarantee that any user or community can freely participate under the ToS without fear of the admins randomly stepping in and asserting their power -- whether that be via banning users or communities without cause, or turning over the community to complete outsiders or hostile entities.

Reddit showed that you can't trust a 3rd party. They can rapidly and drastically change their policies to screw you over after you've put in a decade of work hosting & growing your communities on their platform. With hosting your own forum, there is no such risk; you are under complete control.

Hosting your own Lemmy instance is a similar possibility, but Lemmy is early in development, and has various issues and more limitations currently. For me, adding a traditional forum to my existing website seemed like the best option at the time.

I wanted to move away from Reddit ASAP without losing any of the functionality/features, and I was able to accomplish that.

Pros & cons of Lemmy

I posted this to lemmy.world/c/reddit https://lemmy.world/post/3125497 and it was deleted without any reason/notification and I don't see a modmail feature. They have a modlog but it just shows an endless loading icon. There is also no access to your content after it's deleted, unlike with reddit.

There was another thread where people were discussing the need for attracting more niche communities & content creators to Lemmy. Well you're not going to attract them like that. As a content creator that hosted a handful of niche communities on reddit, my /c/reddit experience seems to confirm that making my own forum was the right decision.

I made the below comment about some of the drawbacks of Lemmy and I guess these are more to add. Perhaps Lemmy would be the best option in the [near] future. Unfortunately, forums lack the networking exposure of the fediverse.

I've seen people complain about the phpBB UI, so that made me shy away from using it for my website even though I personally like it.

I started looking into forums some months ago, and in that time Lemmy has already come a long way, to where I think Lemmy would possibly be the better option soon. But I wanted to get my site up and running ASAP.

A few things that factored into my decision:

• I think Reddit and its alts need the features of /r/enhancement and /r/Toolbox.
• I don't like the default UI of Lemmy. It's too bloated. I'm using old.lemmy.world now but it's definitely lacking in features and a bit buggy (IE: I had to switch to the "regular" site, and log in separately, to edit my post).
• I saw beehaw defederate due to lack of mod tools.
• lemmy.world showing Lemmy's vulnerabilities (ddos, security, etc.).
• I'm still familiarizing myself with Lemmy and the fediverse. It's a bit complex.
• The voting system has its upsides and downsides. I think no downvote button is the best option.
• I don't like the time-based nature of reddit-type sites. With forums, you don't need to always be there to answer right away. Discussions can take place over longer periods of time.
• As you say, a full step-by-step guide is essential.
• I'm now very hesitant to trust any 3rd party. I'd have to trust that the Lemmy instance I choose won't do the same thing reddit did to me.

I wasn't really considering hosting my own Lemmy instance at the time. But I think it can be installed onto a subdomain of any website?

https://gist.github.com/MaximilianKohler/84d2175472612a34bcc1c2ebf99b91d4

When I searched for this I had a very hard time finding a right answer because all the results were SEO blogs advertising their newsletter services (Mailchimp, Convertkit, etc.), which is not the same thing.

My use case is that I have a Google form collecting tens of thousands of applications. And I need to reply to those people en masse (a few thousand per day). None of the newsletter services are designed for this, and they're all very expensive.

Even if your use case is a regular newsletter, setting up your own server is way cheaper.

My goal was to find the most cost-effective, user-friendly, bulk/mass email sender with good deliverability and open rates. One-time, 100,000+ emails per month, 3-4k/day.

Feel free to share your input in the comments. I'm a total noob and had never dealt with anything like this in the past. But have now hosted multiple sites for various reasons, and wrote guides for them as well.

The short answer is that you need to set up your own web server (Hetzner, AWS, DigitalOcean, etc.), install an email software on it (Listmonk, Mailwizz, Mautic), and use an SMTP like Amazon SES. It's not that hard. If you're on Windows, Putty and FileZilla will be your main programs to access your server. When using CSV files for your contacts, you want to use UTF-8 format.