I wanted to start this news feed to provide updates on building this community, and hopefully, as it grows, it will turn into a place that highlights members' projects, accomplishments, and maybe even announces events or challenges.
Some notes and plans about this community and platform for moving forward:
‣ This platform is currently hosted via a free hosting service (FreeFlarum, using the open-source Flarum forum software), but my plan (as of now) is to eventually transition to nodeBB via a VPS (Virtual Private Server) once we have established that this community does in fact have enough people interested and committed to being a part of it.
‣ While on one hand starting a community and then asking everyone to transfer to a new platform shortly after isn’t ideal - this community is a bit of an experiment and may never get enough traction to succeed. Hosting a forum myself will require more time, effort, and money - and I would prefer to hold off on investing the money into this project until I have a better idea if it will succeed. I don't plan on waiting too long to transition, as once we have 10 to 15 semi-active and committed members, I will likely feel comfortable to begin transitioning platforms.
‣ After transitioning to nodeBB, I would assume that actual forum features will be a lot better, with a more functional group chat, better layout, and less buggy interfaces. And possibly most importantly, nodeBB will allow us to federate into the Fediverse - which I think for some people might be quite important.
Some further ramblings about my hopes for this community's future:
Let me start off by saying that I recognize that mega-forum platforms like Reddit, Lemmy, and PieFed exist, and serve an important function. While Lemmy and PieFed have yet to gain traction, I personally hope that they might eventually mature enough to replace Reddit - but as of now, Reddit is a central platform that allows users to find almost any sub for a random topic, and get questions answered from other people who are also interested in that specific niche. This is great, and I think this is where mega-forums excel.
However, I feel that individual forums (like this one that I am trying to create) have very much died off, with the exception of some already well established and long lived ones (BoardGameGeek, I'm looking at you). What I think a personal forum like this has to offer that mega-forums do not, is the permanence and commitment from its members - generally leading to a smaller but more tightly-knit community and network of individuals. On mega-forums like Reddit, it is so easy for members to move from one sub to another, and get lost in the "social-media" type of posts and memes that detract from the intent of any one specific forum.
Additionally, subs on these platforms are often hyper-niche, which can offer a lot of benefits, but a traditional forum may provide a better place to bring people together from various skill sets, interests, and hobbies to share and encourage one another.
To get to the point, my ideal for this platform is to build a space that values creativity, learning, and working/tinkering at various projects - whatever that may be, from arts and crafts, to software development, to 3D printing, to scientific research. As the forum title suggests, "UnfinishedProjects" is meant to bring people together to share what they are working on, provide a network to collaborate and work together, and just overall enjoy the journey and make some friends along the way.
The forum is not meant to be a "hyper-niche" space, but instead a place for creatives and tinkerers (the kind of people who always have three half-finished projects sitting on their desk) to come together. While the forum has a slight leaning towards the open source and Creative Commons space, to support the "Libre" community - it's meant to be more of a general philosophy rather than a strict gate-keeping measure.
Well, I think I am done rambling on for now, but if this is something that you think you might be interested in supporting, I kindly ask that you might be willing to join our community and help us build a place that we can all be proud to participate in.
I hope you all have a great day!
Stay safe in these crazy times ✊
-Anthony
14 Feb 2026
