Alternatives to Yahoo! Groups?

smagruder asks: "Yahoo! Groups is driving this group owner crazy. Even if I could put with their intrusive (pop-up, interstitial, embedded-in-text) advertisements (and I'd rather not), YGroups has been experiencing a major serious bug over the past several months that they are continuing to ignore--that is, posted messages are sometimes not getting added to the group archive. Thus, many owners are considering moving their groups elsewhere, but where? Is it possible to replicate YGroup's features using currently available open source software, or is there another free service alternative?"

Comments

Just use USENET

[Profane Motherfucker]

I've gotten everything I ever got off Y Groups from Usenet. Mainly porn, mind you, but it still works.

Re:Just use USENET

[EricLivingston]

I disagree. Usenet certainly does replicate one key feature of these "group" sites (Yahoo, Lycos, etc), which is the messaging, but there are a few other features that make the group sites better for true group communications, such as:

1. Shared calendar - nice for keeping track of upcoming events and such
2. Images/Documents folders - very nice for storing static content that shouldn't "cycle off" a typical message list, or be lost in hundreds of messages. Having lasting-value documents mixed in with highly perishable messages is a pain in the neck I've found.
3. Private membership - or even just knowing who's a member: difficult to do with Usenet

Yahoo groups, anyway, also has shared links, group polls, and even a "database" function, whereby one can, I gather, create tables and populate data fields in the group context, though I've never used it.

So, certainly for some groups, Usenet would be fine if all they want is messaging. But for other groups these additional features are valuable and unavailable from Usenet (as far as I know).

Re:Just use USENET

[Louis_Wu]

Take a deep breath, and look at MSN Communities, they have users, mail lists, calendars, archival places, chat rooms, and some more stuff. You have to deal with MSN EULAs and the like, but that's what you have to deal with when you are using a free service.

Lycos still runs groups

[R2.0]

and they're free. A lot of Excite Groups refugees went there. Can't speak to the group owner experience, but as a user it's fine.

Try yabb @

[Anonymous Coward]

http://yabb.xnull.com/

Re:The Original Group Discussion Protocol

[Anonymous Coward]

nntp lacks ability to keep messages from being delivered to those not in the group, every message is publicly available.

Re:The Original Group Discussion Protocol

[Profane Motherfucker]

Ok, why not use a mailing list?

Host yourself

[redcliffe]

Get a DSL account, use dyndns to handle DNS, and then run apache on a Linux box. You should be able to hook together a good combo of Gallery, phpwebsite, etc to run your group.

Use Opera [6.01] to preclude the ads...

[ivi]

We don't see ad's while using Yahoo! eGroups

Just set Opera's tri-state "show images" toggle
to "don't show 'em"

Any browser windows opened from one with that
setting -inherits- that setting (fr ver 6.0x)

We've been hit by Yahoo!'s non-posting glitches,
but haven't got a workaround or alternative...

We'll be reading for others' ideas here...

That doesn't inspire confidence

[Cro Magnon]

It seems to me that Yahoo Groups got buggier now that they want to charge for POP3 access. That sure doesn't make me want to spring for the 20/30 bucks per year. They'll probably foul it up anyway!

Exacly what i did...

[josquint]

I used phpnuke. Slash-like, runs on any server capable of mysql and php.. VERY easy to install and administer. I use tzo.com's dymanic dns service myself... although dyndns is cheaper :) i just forgot about it when i set it up(i'm a previous tzo customer.. so i knew about that one from a few years ago)

i tried slascode, but couldnt get the mod_perl to work quite right... and found php nuke much more admin friendly

my group is at linuxdistro.tzo.com right now, soon it will be just linuxdistro.com...

Re:Exacly what i did...

[budgenator]

I am using postnuke on our website and I agree that it's certainly able to give yahoo groups a run for it money. What I can't figure out is why the postnuke developer's forum is hosted in yahoo groups; it not like they are picky about membership or anything.

Re:Freelists

[/dev/trash]

I know of John. We were on a Computer list that was originally independent then went to onelist and then after a bunch of screw ups on Yahoo's part the list owner switched to freelists.

They've been around awhile. They don't do a wide array of lists so I assume they are small to midsize. Drop them an email at staff@freelists.org or weez@freelists.org (John) I am sure they'll answer all your questions.

Re:Freelists

[/dev/trash]

Oh and if the service by free lists is not for you they do run listar which can be found at Listar

topica == free

[madHomer]

Topica runs groups for free. I actually prefer them over yahoo because they have a "one click" unsubscription URL at the bottom of each email.

smartgroups.com

[Anonymous Coward]

well there's always smartgroups

CommunityZero.com is a good alternative

[jutulen]

I recommend CommunityZero they're a Canadian outfit that has a much more polished free community suite that's free. Great administration tools.