With the discontinuation of Apple Support Community, I have decided to look into baking a forum right into the Low End Mac website. As it turns out, this could’ve been done long ago.. (d’oh!). As of today the forum is available for public registration and testing, while it’s still in beta.
While we launched our own FaceBook group in 2008 and have since made accounts on different social media sites, Low End Mac remained a place for articles, technical knowledge, digital archaeology, and discussions.. but only under our articles. For many years we’ve been a community… and for the first time, everyone will be able to interact directly on our website! We invite all kinds of technology enthusiasts to join the Low End Mac Forum.
Where is the project at right now?
Pros:
- Baked right into the website
- Uses as little JavaScript as possible
- User data will survive through updates.
- All graphical elements are human-made in Photoshop.
- Forum feature is open-source.
- Video embedding and other forms of embedding should work.
- There’s a separate, new account creation system for the forum. Existing site users can simply have forum posting enabled.
Cons:
- Still early in development.
- Messages are not yet available, and cause stability issues when testing.
- Image uploads will be limited due to limited site storage. This may change. You may also embed images from URL, which skips the image uploading.
How To Register
- Click on “Forums”, on the Low End Mac website’s main navigation toolbar.
. - Select the icon all the way on the left, which looks like 3 people and 3 messages.
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. - Enter your username or email + password, or select “Create an account” if you’re a new user.
- When creating a new account:
– Create a username
– Enter & verify email
– Enter & verify password
– Confirm account creation from your email
– Lastly: A Low End Mac administrator must approve you before you’re able to post in the forum, to ensure you’re a human. This is an early version of bot-filtering, on top of other methods employed. It shouldn’t take long for approvals to happen, I get the notification and it’s setup to just be a button press on my end. If it gets complicated or there’s an issue, please email lowendmac97@gmail.com or visit the FaceBook group and ask one of the admins.
What we’re looking for
It wouldn’t be Low End Mac without all of you visiting our website, interacting in different social media groups/sites, and all the different authors posting articles throughout the years. So we’re looking to open the doors for more user & community interaction through forum posting, with feedback on what could be added/improved.
- If there are any site-breaking bugs, or major operational roadblocks, please let us know. The basic elements of an interactive forum should at least be functioning. This is like a v1.0 release.
Some features may take a while, others may be too resource intensive to be realistic for the site, it depends on technical implementation largely. The goal is to have a place for everyone with a Low End Mac to communicate with one another, and for it to stay. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read, and hope to see you soon!
Designing the icon
Had some fun making the icon in Photoshop, if anyone wants to see:
I was so shocked to read that the Apple Support Discussions are closing on the 20th November. I used them so much when I got my first Mac in 2001; it was full of helpful, knowledgeable users and I think I almost always received helpful answers to questions.
Its great that you’re carrying it on here. I hope it does well!
Thank you so much!