Re: Need a little more info about Nabble

Posted by GregChapman on Jul 26, 2016; 8:58am
URL: https://support.nabble.com/Need-a-little-more-info-about-Nabble-tp7596953p7596956.html

Hi Tom,

Tom Swan wrote

Do I understand correctly that I can use Nabble to create a forum on my site (www.tomswan.com)

Yes!

and maybe a blog?

At a technical level the Nabble apps, forums, blogs, boards etc, are all the same. People post and, usually, others reply. It's just how the data is presented that changes with each of Nabble's apps. It's best to create one to use as a test bed and have a good play as, Nabble's documentation is not the best. However, it is highly flexible. Not only can you play with colour schemes and different apps, if you have programming skills you can even re-write much of the NAML code that generates the HTML and CSS that forms your app.

Who is responsible for hosting

Nabble hosts the forums from its own servers.

what are the maintenance duties?

Nabble will delete apps that appear to be unused (though it will return an archive of posts to the owner of the forum so the forum can be recovered, if requested.) Provided your forum is visited reasonably frequently with occasional posts then Nabble will keep it on line. (I'm not sure about the exact time limits but you will get a warning email that your app is scheduled for deletion - Keep an eye on your mail service's spam folder as some find they miss the warning.)

I also need a way to collect email addresses from my visitors for signing up to a newsletter. Is that a Nabble type of application?

Nabble is essentially forum software, so the fundamental assumption is that people opt to visit when they choose and they can never be sent unwanted mass emails.

Any user can send an email to any other registered user. (There's no other "Private Message" facility on Nabble). However, there is no automated way for a forum owner to harvest user's email addresses and issue bulk emails through Nabble's software.

In Nabble it is up to an individual user to opt in (subscribe) to forum posts via email, this can be done at Topic, Sub-Forum, or complete Forum level and unlike many other forum software a subscriber gets the full contents of the post (unless they subscribe to a daily digest) and they may reply via email. This is how Nabble can also claim to offer a mail list service. It's really just a forum (that provides an archive of past posts) with all its users subscribing.

The best that a forum owner can do to generate mail list traffic is to request Nabble to add the "Invite subscribers" module to your forum. That will provide a facility that allows a forum owner to generate a bulk email from Nabble to the addresses the forum owner supplies, inviting those people to subscribe by clicking a link in Nabble's email.