Excellent! Glad we could get you sorted! Hosting can be scary and it's okay to be afraid to touch things or not understand certain settings or terms. Especially if you're new. The key is to read the documentation. For your forum needs, this can be found at https://mybb.com and https://phpbb.com. Source: 6 months ago

You may find a current, object-oriented version of phpBB to be just the ticket. It will teach you how to structure the database, authenticate users, manage sessions and selectively display content according to user level, group membership, and other policies. Source: about 3 years ago

Perhaps. I am looking at https://saidit.net/, Quora, and other platforms as well. Source: 12 months ago

What's the criteria you'd need to be met for "something comparable"? Because I'd say running our own https://saidit.net/ site would be pretty identical. Source: 12 months ago

I love IRC but it serves a slightly different purpose. It isn't threaded and it sacrifices permanency for instantaneousness. In my opinion, a forums and chat rooms compliment each other. Saidit is one good Reddit alternative that implements IRC. It's based on Reddit's code but with some modifications. Every page has an embedded IRC box specific to that subcommunity. Source: about 1 year ago

For Reddit alternatives, it looks like https://saidit.net/ (https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit) and https://phuks.co/ (https://github.com/Phuks-co/throat) could be viable alternatives. They're open source, have the UX features we desire (threaded, voting, sorting, collapsing). Source: 12 months ago

Someone already did it - it's called saidit and it works well but very few people have gone there so far. Source: 12 months ago