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I think anyone paying attention knows the world went from lots of phpBB community websites straight over to Reddit. Reddit is hideous, but man, it's easy to use

• Macha 9y ago
  Funnily enough, the phpBB (old, static, boring but predictable) vs Discourse (new, fancy, JS-laden) debate is literally going on on Reddit right now as they told the mods they're going to take away custom subreddit CSS for the new design since it's a fundamental rewrite (and replace it with theming tools which they have denied are going to be as limited as colour pickers, but we'll see), which judging by the mobile site will be a card-based, infinite scrolling, React app.
• CM30 9y ago
  I've never seen a successful community run on top of Discourse either. However, that's because: 1. The people who like internet forums and more traditional communities don't seem to like it very much, and prefer sites using traditional scripts like phpBB or vBulletin or XenForo. 2. Those who find forums outdated find Discourse as or even more confusing than traditional forum scripts and don't really see the point in it. So the succesful forums opening at the moment pick something else, because that's what their userbase wants. The ones trying to use Discourse for something new struggle because the software is offputting for their members and doesn't attract the new audience Jeff Atwood thinks it will. And the sites that switch to Discourse usually realise only too late that A: their forum problems are often down to their management and the state of society rather than the software and B: that their regulars detest the new design. Discourse just doesn't seem to appeal to pretty much anyone.