[Question] How could I host a BBS on my website?
reddit / bbs

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ShinigamiMachine · 2015-05-27 22:53

Hello, I have a website (ShinigamiMachine.com), and I want to host a
BBS on it. How would I go about doing this so that people can telnet
shinigamimachine.com, and be able to chat and post files and stuff? My
website is hosted on AwardSpace with the cheapest non-free plan if
that makes a difference. Thanks in advance!

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lmorchard · 2015-05-28 01:15

The bad news is, you're not going to be able to host a telnet BBS with
just a cheap web host. The good news is, you can probably do it with a
cheap VPS.

Probably the easiest BBS to get up & running is
[Synchronet](http://www.synchro.net/). I have an super neglected
instance of my own running at
[bbs.decafbad.com](http://bbs.decafbad.com/).

But, that requires an always-on computer running Windows or Linux with
a direct connection to the internet. Looking at AwardSpace, you could
probably get away with their [$10/mo Debian
VPS](http://www.awardspace.com/vps-hosting/what-is-vps-hosting) in
addition to your current hosting plan. Me, I've got a $36/mo Ubuntu VM
at [prgmr.com](http://prgmr.com/xen/plans.html). But, that's overkill
for Synchronet because I use that machine for a pile of other things.

If you have a spare computer at home, a residential connection can
work along with port forwarding from your home router. But, depending
on your ISP, you may get a nastygram about hosting something on their
network - or they may ignore you. Still, opening up ports on your
router to a computer can lead to trouble.

You may also not be able to get port 23 (telnet) at
shinigamimachine.com, since that domain name will point to your web
host. You may need a second subdomain like bbs.shinigamimachine.com
that points at your BBS server.

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ShinigamiMachine · 2015-05-28 01:22

Thanks for all the info, don't know if I can really afford the
10/month bill, so I may have to abandon my BBS project :/

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poolecl · 2015-05-29 17:52

You may be able to use the $15/year plan from buyvm.net

There are other "budget" low end VPS providers as well if you shop
around.  The crew at buyvm (aka frantech) are pretty responsive  and
have an active community around their IRC channel.

Edit:  See www.lowendtalk.com for all sorts of cheap VPS suggestions
and discusion.

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ShinigamiMachine · 2015-05-29 22:53

Thank you for the info! If I get this, then how would I set it up so
that the BBS is accessible by telnet-Ing my current website?

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nolageek · 2015-05-30 01:48

If its running on the same server then they can just use the domain
name, because web used port 80 and telnet uses port 23 - if they not
on the same server then you'll have to use a different sub domain to
point the differ IP addresses to. For example I use
www.capitolshrill.com for my web site, but capitolshrill.com for my
board.

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alrayyes · 2015-06-07 16:41

You can also just run it at home if you use a subdomain (bbs.
ShinigamiMachine.com). Synchronet will run on almost anything.