HosTedTalk.io 
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First, i want to say that i love this name. And if you’re looking for a forum software, you can try Flarum
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I can’t deny that I read this as well and had to read it a 2nd time.
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I’d change the name. Otherwise I like Discourse a lot.
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I really don’t know what the name means or if it sounds ridiculous. I don’t care.
Abot the software: I like Discourse. I know installing, modifying and updating takes a lot of time. But as an end user it’s easy to use and clean. Why their devs like downtime? Weird, but nothing is perfect.
About the community: there is a reason why I open threads here and not in the other hosting forums, but also there is another reason why I don’t search for deals here.
I should go back to my English classes. It is hard to write lately.
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I’m kinda torn on this.
On one hand I really love what this place has become and I love seeing all the responses here as I can tell a lot of you feel the same way. It’s been nice to get my hosting fill here without all the bants and drama associated with other dark corners of the internet. And even when differing opinions arise, it very very rarely gets to a point where admin action is needed – which is a nice change as admining at another place could be considered more akin to babysitting, while here it’s more of a “hey how you doing, how can we make your experience better” type of arrangement. Better for everyone involved, I think.
On the other hand, I think the name of the community (and to a lesser extent the forum software) have stunted our growth a bit. HostBalls doesn’t have a ton of name recognition and those that do recognize it is really only a byproduct of seeing it mentioned in other hosting forums. LowEndTalk, LowEndSpirit, WebHostingTalk, hell even VPSBoard all have names that an outsider would see and somewhat know what the community is all about. Someone not familiar with HB will take a look at the name and not know if they’re strolling into a porn hosting palace, a biggest balls competition, or a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit.
I don’t want to lose all of our past history, discussions, tips, jabs, and Taylor Swift adorations, so if we did move forum software, I’d only want to do it if we can bring our old content. We have enough smart people here that a few of us could probably write up some quick and dirty scripts to move most of the content over. If we did move forum software, I assure you it won’t be a LET clone, because seriously… fuck Vanilla. NodeBB is solid and I’ve used it in the past. But perhaps keeping Discourse is the right move since we’re nice and settled here, but at the same time, I’d rather the forum software not cripple us from being able to acclimate new members into the community. Whether NodeBB would alleviate the concerns people have with Discourse, I’m not sure. I’ll have to think more about that.
Anyways, I think a full rebranding (at least name-wise) is in order and will only help us grow and continue to be awesome. And by doing that, HostBalls certainly won’t die. HostBalls will live on as long as we all call this place home. We didn’t come here for the name anyways (well… maybe some of you did 
), we came here for the people, the atmosphere, and the content that interest us. I think a name change will make us more marketable and be able to attract new community members. “HostedTalk” is a step in the right direction. I’m not 100% sold on it yet, but we certainly welcome any recommendations. And if we don’t move forward with a software change, then maybe some other changes could be made – more competitions, polls, code reviews, etc.
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I don’t think so honestly. Discourse is solid and tons of communities are switching to Discourse rather than moving away. Then again, we do have a bit of a special audience.
That’s a no brainer. A clean start is very likely kill to the community. It can’t be too difficult honestly and I won’t mind contributing to a few dirty scripts
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Sounds like the only major concern is the name. There are two roads here. Hostballs is a quirky name. It’s like the fun, nice, but a bit of an oddball kid on the playground. I’d say it’s not that professional of a name, but then again they made a multi-million dollars production company out of alternative words for cock bite so hey who knew.
In the end, you can go the more professional (and traditional-naming-scheme) route and compete with WHT/LET/LES/vpsB (wow haven’t thought of that in a long time) or continue on as planned. Also, those methods are a bit outdated. I mean vpsB at one point was trying to compete with the other communities and I can give an ear full about that (looking back).
I’d suggest looking into a new name but still one that’s hilarious/quirky but a little less testicles-in-the-name.
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I keep thinking of… GoDaddy.
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@Jarland @Mason I have a question regarding the software side…
I’ve seen several people moan about Discourse both here and on LET/LES but it looks to me like NodeBB is very similar… I’m putting my project manager hat on for a second, but do we know what people dislike about Discourse? All I’ve seen are general “meh its Discourse” style comments.
I’m sure there are many different reasons people may dislike it, but a number of them will probably be the same - from my (admittedly 5 minute) look at NodeBB it seems very similar and it would be a shame to rush to a new product and risk all the good parts of this incarnation of the community if the same issues are present in NodeBB.
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AyPapi will work.
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Thread scrolling is the only repeating complaint I’ve seen that is Discourse-specific. Mainly the Ball Pit thread that everyone loves, people seem to feel obligated to keep up with it or scroll bit by bit (not using the side scroll bar) to skip to the latest.
Pagination seems a strong preference of many.
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It outright harasses us shitposters nearly consistently with it’s passive-aggressive shit. Might as well keep it.
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NodeBB has up/downvote, though. And you can turn off endless scroll … Not sure if that matters to me, though …
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A bit late to the party, but after scrolling through the new one I would say I prefer Discourse.
By all means, re brand if you think it could help in any way, but keep Discourse and the data. 
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^ this. Perhaps we should reflect this in a poll of some sort. I like Discourse and if you want pagination you can just disable your JavaScript and get it over with… That said, it can’t be too difficult to fall back to pagination with a plugin of some sort since it is default Discourse behavior for when JavaScript is disabled. In other words, it is existing functionality.
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Annoyingly, it’s not possible at all. I don’t mind the infinite scroll, but it’s the main complaint we get. I actually had no idea that that is default behaviour when JS is disabled.
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I don’t have time on my hands currently to look into it but the timeline is a component injected by Discourse. If it is not injected it’ll fall back to regular pagination. No clue how Discourse handles injections though, it’s something I’d have to look into.
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I haven’t had the time to manually look through Discourse’s source, I’ve just Googled it and found that apparently there isn’t an option. If we have to manually modify any source files, it’ll break on update.
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Sure, but one might be able to hook into those functions with a plugin of some sort and/or modifying the DOM.
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