Welcome to the New I.T. Bible: What’s Here and How It Works

We started in 2013 as a group of friends who got tired of a community we couldn't steer. We became The Computer Crowd, took a break while life happened, then came back as I.T. Bible. This month, we're running on a platform we built ourselves.

Here's what's in it.

A forum built for real questions

Topics are organized into categories and subcategories covering servers, networking, security, workstations, and general discussion, plus a place to show off your setup. Tags have their own pages, so everything on Proxmox, MikroTik or pfSense is a click away. You'll also find polls, drafts that save as you write, @mentions, a Markdown editor, and link previews.

A few things are designed to cut down on noise:

• Similar topics are suggested as you write, and duplicate questions get closed and pointed to the original.
• Watch, mute and ignore controls let you follow the categories and tags you care about and tune out the rest.
• Notifications can come by email, push, or in-app, and you decide which. There's also an activity digest if you'd rather catch up in one go.
• Recurring threads keep the regular conversations coming, like weekly check-ins on what everyone's building.

New here? Start in Introductions and tell us what's in your lab, or what you'd like to build. "I just bought my first mini PC" is a great first post.

Questions get answers, and answerers get credit

When you ask a question, you can mark the reply that solved it as the best answer. Answerers earn titles for it, and a question can carry a bounty if you want to draw attention to a tough one. The aim is simple: the person who takes ten minutes to help you should be easy to thank.

Your profile shows your lab

Every member profile has a home lab section, so you can list what you run, plus your badges, points and flair. Leaderboards show who's been helping lately.

Behind that is a system of trust levels. As you take part, your level rises automatically, and higher levels unlock more privileges. Once you've been around a while, you can invite people by email, too. It means the people who've shown they care about the place help shape it.

Chat and private messages

There are live chat rooms for quick back-and-forth, with replies, reactions, and presence, plus private messages, including group conversations. Use chat for "anyone around?" moments and the forum for answers other people will want to find later.

A blog with guides you can use

The blog covers homelabs, Linux, networking, Microsoft, security, and the career side of IT. It's multi-author, so members can write for it, with review before anything goes live. Every post has comments through the forum, an RSS feed, and an option to get new posts by email. Our older posts came across too.

If you've documented something you built or fixed, we'd like to publish it.

Community projects

The Projects directory lists tools, scripts and builds from members, with screenshots and a review step before anything is listed. Use it to find something worth running, or list your own.

One account, and it's yours

We run our own sign-in service, so your I.T. Bible account isn't tied to anyone else's platform.

• Pick how you sign in: password, a magic link by email, passkeys, or GitHub, Google or Discord.
• Protect your account: add authenticator-app two-factor sign-in with recovery codes. You'll see your active sessions and remembered devices, and get alerts for new devices and failed sign-in attempts.
• Stay in control: see which apps are connected to your account, change your email or password, and export or delete your data yourself under Settings > Privacy. Sign-in records are kept for 12 months.

For people who build things

If you've made a self-hosted tool or a small web app, you can add Sign in with I.T. Bible to it. Our sign-in service works as an OIDC and OAuth provider with PKCE. Register your app, an admin reviews it, and your users can sign in with the account they already have. It also supports single logout.

There's also a public read-only API with personal tokens, webhooks, and a bot API if you want to build integrations. If you make something with them, list it in Projects.

How we recognize people who help

A community like this runs on people who take a few minutes to answer someone else's question, and that work is easy to overlook. So we notice it.

• Points and badges mark milestones: your first post, your first reply, your first project. They're a visible thank-you.
• Leaderboards show who's been helpful, so you know who to learn from.
• Monthly challenges are coming: hands-on projects, like setting up Pi-hole or documenting your network, with a few levels you can take on.
• Member of the Month is coming too, nominated by members, to recognize someone for being helpful, for a great lab write-up, or for how far they've come.

None of this is about competing. We'd rather you ask and answer because you're curious, and let the recognition follow.

Safe and fair

New members' first posts are held for review to keep spam out. Staff use flags, watched words and a spam filter, and if someone is ever silenced or suspended, there's an appeals process. Our analytics only run with your consent, and our backups are encrypted nightly. Our Privacy Policy and Terms are linked in the footer.

What we're asking from you

• Introduce yourself and share your lab.
• Answer one question you know the answer to.
• If you build things, try signing in to a project with your I.T. Bible account, or list one of your own.
• Tell us what's missing. This is your community, and the platform will keep changing based on what you tell us.

We've been at this a long time, and we're glad you're here.

Connor, I.T. Bible