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[Baked at 420]

Me and about 200 friends want to put together a forum to migrate to, away from facebook.

We would like to use the Small Machines templates for their user friendly interface and simplicity.

Much as is the case with TMM, radical content is the norm. Thus we have run into a problem finding a hosting service that wouldn't shut us down outright. Our funding is also limited.

With these conditions in mind, do any of the tech savvy folks here know of a solution?

[MamaLiberty]

Might pool your resources and buy a server, especially if one of your members is able to run it and keep it functioning. I don't know much about it myself.  But I don't know why finding hosting should be a real problem either. There are lots of very radical websites around. Hard to believe yours would have a real problem. Anyway, good luck!

[Bill St. Clair]

Much as is the case with TMM, radical content is the norm. Thus we have run into a problem finding a hosting service that wouldn't shut us down outright. Our funding is also limited.

How much more radical is your content than TMM's? I've seen no evidence whatsoever of pushback from any of our hosting services, including the current one, DigitalOcean.com.

We pay $10/month to host thementalmilitia.com, eliasalias.com, and thementalmilitia.net, with free SSL certificates from LetsEncrypt.org, plus yearly domain renewal fees of about $14 per domain, including privacy service that leaves contact information out of our whois record. Depending on how many people you expect to use your forums, you might be able to get away with $5/month.

[securitysix]

Might pool your resources and buy a server, especially if one of your members is able to run it and keep it functioning. I don't know much about it myself.  But I don't know why finding hosting should be a real problem either. There are lots of very radical websites around. Hard to believe yours would have a real problem. Anyway, good luck!

Instead of buying a server, you might consider leasing finding a local business or non-profit that is upgrading their hardware and see if they're willing to part with servers they are retiring and see if they're willing to give you one or more of the servers they're retiring.  They have to pay an electronic waste disposal fee to get rid of the server anyway, so giving it to someone is actually a cheaper option.

If they're smart, they'll pull the hard drives from it before giving it to you, so you'll have to buy those, but hard drives are cheap.  Once you have the server, it's a matter of you or one of your friends footing the bill for the electricity and making sure your ISP allows you to host your own server (a lot of personal accounts don't allow for it, so you may have to look at a business account).

Of course, then you have to learn how to admin a server, which is simple when everything goes smoothly and unbelievably stressful the rest of the time...