I said 0 cost and ad free but your answer does not satisfy those requirements, because your interest are at odds with the interests of these various communities.
Communities generally don't need their content to be indexable. People in the community can use Discords search feature. Indexable content is only a benefit to people outside the community.
So why should these communities move away from discord to help you? Especially given that you do not respect their interests.
Do you get what I'm saying?
> Why hosting costs apparently weren't such a big deal 15-20 years ago?
It's not that hosting costs are so much higher now. In the 2020s I ran a forum for ~10$ a year but then I realized exposing my home IP was a bad idea. Then I ran the forum for $50 a year and... no one but me used it.
Recently one of my friends paid $500 to set up a forum using a dedicated provider /w a support plan. Fingers crossed it sees more activity than mine did.
So you can still host a forum pretty cheap but it requires trading in your personal time or paying $500 and given most Americans don't have $500 liquid you would need donations/organization (which requires more of your personal time).
It's not impossible but it's not super easy either.
You're just repeatedly asking that these communities deal with advertising to make things easier for you personally because you think they need your participation to survive.
But what if they don't need you?
P.s. not every community recruits primarily through the internet.
Communities generally don't need their content to be indexable. People in the community can use Discords search feature. Indexable content is only a benefit to people outside the community.
So why should these communities move away from discord to help you? Especially given that you do not respect their interests.
Do you get what I'm saying?
> Why hosting costs apparently weren't such a big deal 15-20 years ago?
It's not that hosting costs are so much higher now. In the 2020s I ran a forum for ~10$ a year but then I realized exposing my home IP was a bad idea. Then I ran the forum for $50 a year and... no one but me used it.
Recently one of my friends paid $500 to set up a forum using a dedicated provider /w a support plan. Fingers crossed it sees more activity than mine did.
So you can still host a forum pretty cheap but it requires trading in your personal time or paying $500 and given most Americans don't have $500 liquid you would need donations/organization (which requires more of your personal time).
It's not impossible but it's not super easy either.