What's your preferred "Private Online Forum"?

[Oshoma Momoh]

Hi all,

I need to set up an online forum for collecting feedback from a group of people using a private software beta. I'm interested to hear what your favorite services are for doing this.

Some I'm considering:
- PbWiki www.pbwiki.com
- Google Groups http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/tour3/index.html
- Basecamp http://www.basecamphq.com/tour

Must-Have:
- online access via web browser
- secure: invite-only, user must login, admin controls access
- either threaded discussion or wiki-like, ideally some elements of both
- simple... easy to use for anyone web-savvy
- easy for me to set up and manage

Nice-to-Have:
- ability to attach documents such as JPGs
- email integration, e.g. a digest of messages sent out once a day

Ideas?

Thanks, and Happy 2008!

osh

[Michael Allan]

> Some I'm considering:
> - PbWiki www.pbwiki.com
> - Google Groups http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/tour3/index.html
> - Basecamp http://www.basecamphq.com/tour

Google Groups has all items below, Oshoma. Drawback is the annoying
ads. I haven't tried the other 2.

UK is lucky, and has free listservs. Canada doesn't, last I looked.

> Must-Have:
> - online access via web browser
> - secure: invite-only, user must login, admin controls access
> - either threaded discussion or wiki-like, ideally some elements of both
> - simple... easy to use for anyone web-savvy
> - easy for me to set up and manage
>
> Nice-to-Have:
> - ability to attach documents such as JPGs
> - email integration, e.g. a digest of messages sent out once a day

--
Michael Allan

Toronto, 647-436-4521
http://zelea.com/

[Deborah Hartmann]

Bluehost is a cheap hosted solution I'm using here, for web, wiki, forums, email and more.  Good phone support 24x7. Decent online admin interface. Lots of access to actual source code (not dummied-down for non techies). I believe you can even have multiple wikis on one domain name.

agilecoachcamp.org

bluehost.com

-- 

Deborah Hartmann
Agile Process Improvement Coach
Lead Editor for InfoQ.com/Agile
deborah.hartmann.net
416.996.4337

"My advice is to do it by the book,
get good at the practices,
then do as you will.
Many people want to skip to step three.
How do they know? " -- Ron Jeffries 

[Bryan Watson]

Actually... I was looking for something like this last night myself.
Remarkk (thanks again Mark!) reminded me of the existence of Ning. You
may want to check that out. Very easy to use. The only thing I do not
think they have is the wiki, but I may be wrong. You may also want to
check out CollectiveX.

Both are more communities, private or public, can be whitelabeled,
have good forum capabilities, RSS, blog, etcetc.. Best of all, the
base service is free and even the upgrades are not expensive.

Bryan

On Jan 18, 1:35 pm, Deborah Hartmann <debo...@hartmann.net> wrote:
> Bluehost is a cheap hosted solution I'm using here, for web, wiki,
> forums, email and more.  Good phone support 24x7. Decent online admin
> interface. Lots of access to actual source code (not dummied-down for
> non techies). I believe you can even have multiple wikis on one domain name.
>
> agilecoachcamp.org
>
> bluehost.com
>
>
>
>
>
> Michael Allan wrote:
>
> >> Some I'm considering:
> >> - PbWikiwww.pbwiki.com
> >> - Google Groupshttp://groups.google.com/googlegroups/tour3/index.html

> >> - Basecamphttp://www.basecamphq.com/tour

>
> > Google Groups has all items below, Oshoma. Drawback is the annoying
> > ads.  I haven't tried the other 2.
>
> > UK is lucky, and has free listservs. Canada doesn't, last I looked.
>
> >> Must-Have:
> >> - online access via web browser
> >> - secure: invite-only, user must login, admin controls access
> >> - either threaded discussion or wiki-like, ideally some elements of both
> >> - simple... easy to use for anyone web-savvy
> >> - easy for me to set up and manage
>
> >> Nice-to-Have:
> >> - ability to attach documents such as JPGs
> >> - email integration, e.g. a digest of messages sent out once a day
>
> --
>
> Deborah Hartmann
> Agile Process Improvement Coach
> Lead Editor for InfoQ.com/Agile
> deborah.hartmann.net              416.996.4337       
>
> "My advice is to do it by the book,
> get good at the practices,
> then do as you will.
> Many people want to skip to step three.

> How do they know? " -- Ron Jeffries- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[David Crow]

There's Ottawa's Mercury Grove http://www.mercurygrove.com/

On Jan 19, 2008 8:23 AM, Bryan Watson < bwat...@gmail.com> wrote:

Actually... I was looking for something like this last night myself.
Remarkk (thanks again Mark!) reminded me of the existence of Ning. You
may want to check that out. Very easy to  use. The only thing I do not
think they have is the wiki, but I may be wrong. You may also want to
check out CollectiveX.

Both are more communities, private or public, can be whitelabeled,
have good forum capabilities, RSS, blog, etcetc.. Best of all, the
base service is free and even the upgrades are not expensive.

Bryan