I'm starting Build Civitas so that more people can start free online communities. All sort of online communities. It's intended to be a conservatory of communities from newsletters to forums to blog comments to private groups. Every one of these patterns of community require specific feature, but also stand to benefit from careful tuning and improvements.
Discourse is the open source platform that powers Build Civitas. It's remarkably flexible, but also can be tricky to use if you don't know what you are doing. My plan is to build a standard configurations for group owners so that they can focus on building a community and not fiddling with the software.
Communities on Build Civitas are owned by the group. I mean they are responsible for their own moderation and governance. They also are free to move to another platform. If it's Discourse, I can even help with the move.
For the moment communities don't cost anything. I'm already paying server costs, so it's not a huge issue. At some point I may set up a subscription model for groups to pay for themselves. But there will always be a free option for groups that don't consume much in the way of resources.
It's inspiring to see platforms like Build Civitas making community building more accessible and tailored to users' needs. Jon, the focus on easing the technical burden for community creators is commendable. How do you envision supporting communities as they grow and their needs evolve? Keep up the great work!
About Build Civitas (beta) on Product Hunt
“Build a free community on Discourse”
Build Civitas (beta) launched on Product Hunt on February 12th, 2024 and earned 91 upvotes and 1 comments, placing #24 on the daily leaderboard. Build Civitas is a platform for communities. It removes barriers so that more people can start communities on the internet.
Build Civitas (beta) was featured in Newsletters (12.1k followers), SaaS (41.6k followers) and Community (3k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 48.2k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Build Civitas (beta)?
Build Civitas (beta) was hunted by Jon Ericson. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how Build Civitas (beta) stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Jon Ericson