ANNOUNCEMENT [06/26/16] by @webeindustry
Our beta hosting service has been discontinued indefinitely due to personal reasons. We didn't intend to reach such a premature conclusion with the project, but felt it was in the best interest of Flarum to put hosting on hold for a while.
For anyone looking to get their data, you can email us at flarumhosting@gmail.com and we'll attach your avatars and database in a reply. We apologize for the abrupt disconnect, and will help with making sure you can transition to your own hosting vps/dedi/shared if you would like to continue trying out Flarum while it's in beta.
I'd like to differentiate between the beta hosting and a stable hosting platform. We feel it's best to make Flarum stable first and foremost. Providing a hosting solution is still high on the list, but comes second to high-quality code, and that requires our star developer to focus on just this and not get bogged down with extras.
We received a lot of feedback on what people want and expect out of a quality hosting platform and Flarum software through this process, and would like to thank you all for helping us learn through the short time this Beta hosting trial was offered.
Again, our apologies for the abrupt ending.
Today we're announcing our plans for an official Flarum hosting service. ? ?
From the very beginning, building a hosting business around Flarum has been a long-term goal for me. Though I didn't quite get to it in my year off, Flarum continues to mature, and now I think it's time to get the ball rolling.
@webeindustry (Brandon Chapman) and I have teamed up to do just that. Brandon is an experienced sysadmin, and has been doing a stellar job putting together the tech that will run our hosted Flarum instances.
Goals
Just like Flarum itself, we want to make a hosting service that's simple, fast, and cheap.
At the most basic level, the goal is to run seamless Flarum instances. You’ll fill out a form to have your forum up, running, and configured in seconds. While we can't confirm pricing yet, we'll be aiming to have a base package that costs at most $10 per month (hopefully less). Custom extensions won’t be installable for security and stability reasons, but a selection of the most popular extensions will be available.
We want to stress that this venture is distinct from the open-source aspect of the project. Specifically:
- Flarum will continue to be free and open-source under the MIT license.
- It won't impact our efforts to make Flarum easily installable on shared hosting. This is still in the pipeline, hopefully for beta 6.
- Please don’t use this forum for support related to the hosting service. Email support@flarum.com instead.
Servers
Our hosted Flarum instances will be run on reliable, performant hardware rather than in the cloud. We’ve chosen to do this because we believe it will allow us to offer a superior service. And building servers is fun! ?
The first server we’ve purchased is running on a multicore Intel Xeon with 36GB of RAM and 4 SSDs in a RAID 10 configuration, located in Texas. We’re using all the latest — Ubuntu 16.04, PHP 7, NGiNX 1.9.14 w/ HTTP/2 — specifically tuned for optimal Flarum performance.
Helping us Test
This forum (discuss.flarum.org) has been back and forth between this server and the cloud as we iron out the kinks. But now we’re ready to open it up to you!
To help us test as we continue to develop our infrastructure, we’re accepting a limited number of signups for free beta hosting. You get:
- A managed Flarum 0.1.0-beta.5 installation
- A [something].flarum.com subdomain, or you can BYO domain
- HTTPS with Let’s Encrypt
These installations will be free up until we launch the hosting service later this year. At this point, as thanks for your help, you’ll get another three months of free hosting! You’ll be able to export all of your data at any time.
Note that in order to facilitate more signups, beta instances will be deleted after 30 days of inactivity (no users logging in / posts being made).
Just as the software is in a beta state, our hosting solution is also a work in progress that will require some patience. ? If you or your users encounter any issues, let us know at support@flarum.com.
Sign up here! Please note that we’ll only be accepting a limited number of signups on a first-come-first-serve basis, so submitting this form does not guarantee you a spot.
Reply to this discussion or shoot us an email (support@flarum.com) if you have any questions!
