I _do_ believe in forums as a SaaS.
Yes, there are risks, as you pointed out. There are also benefits.
The forum service provider rolls out updates
The forum service provider applies security patches
The forum service provider keeps the service running 24 hours, and gets woken up in the middle of the night to fix unexpected crashes, not me.
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I try to outsource anything I can. And forums is one of them.
I run some very large forums, and the reason I'm now making a forum PaaS/SaaS play is precisely because of the above.
Just Google for "Powered by vBulletin 3.8" to see how many hundred thousands of forums are running old unpatched versions of forum software.
Most people who run forums are into the topic of the forum, not becoming a sysadmin.
We just blogged something about infrastructure where Redis plays a key role. It has nothing to do with our product proposition. Expect to see various topics about design and technology.
Re:8 days. 8,000 forums
by trumbitta2 on Friday April 12, 2013 @11:30AM
(#5539022)
Hello, Wordpress is a blog engine, not a forum.
Wordpress growth, in a sense, it is because it is open source. You can have your own version, and also, if you prefer, they can host your blog.
A forums is a different kind of service, takes a lot of time and effort to build a community, and if this guys dissapear in 2 or 3 months, years, etc, it is a big loss.
I prefer the path that Discourse is taking. It's software is open source & they are experts in hosting it. Like wordpress. So, if my community finally is growing, I can think on host everything by myself.
Also, I love redis, I use it a lot, but don't understand why it is a key driver to explain the product proposition.