Technology and costs
This board is created with open-source software called Discourse. That means that the software is free to use, and extensible at a later date if we choose.
To use it, we need a computer out on the web that runs the software and is accessible to the users. I have rented computer space to run this board from a company called Digital Ocean. I am using the smallest amount of computer space possible, and it will cost 5 US Dollars per month to rent.
I think that may be a bit too little, and the actual cost will probably be more, but my guess i that it will probably grow to about 20-30 USD per month as we grow.
Additionally, I picked a website name (called a domain name) - 5filters.info so that we have a memorable address to type in that takes us to this forum. That will cost something like 13 GBP per year to keep up. We could choose to keep that or replace it with something else as we see fit.
These costs are really not very much (13 quid a year + 10-30 dollars / month) but at some point I think it will be worthwhile discussing how we want to fund this community. I really would like it to feel like a mutually owned and managed space, so I would be open for a discussion about this at some point.
In the meantime, we have the space for 2 months for free anyway. So we have time to work things out!
Scaling out into the future
Given that we do have the 5filters.info domain name, I am thinking that in addition to this message board, we could also go on to host blogs or other activism later on down the line. The blogs could be lightly attached to the forum, to encourage discussion and participation.
I’m very keen to see what other ideas come out from discussions around this topic.
