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I'm a big fan of software that makes better communities possible online. Ever since Discourse set the standard for "good self-hosted open source forum software,

I'm a big fan of software that makes better communities possible online. Ever since Discourse set the standard for "good self-hosted open source forum software," I've always wished there were something simpler to deploy. However, my first impression of Forem is, "this software looks complicated." Can anyone more familiar briefly speak to the trade-offs that were made? Why podman, butane, ansible? Most communities are small, but it looks like the expectation here is that communities might grow to hundreds of thousands (or millions), so orchestration etc. is necessary?

kissgyorgy 5y ago
I had the same kind of thought when I saw the requirement for deployment. It's such a random stack and definitely not the right abstraction for a flexible deployment (for smaller communities as you mentioned). It seems also expensive to host it.
bhalp1 5y ago
Yes, Forem is extracted from dev.to— which was built to reach millions— With crowdsourced moderation, feed algorithms, rich editors, etc, and we're working backwards from there. So yeah, it's a little complicated at this layer of the stack, and getting simpler over time as we work to extract from the core. Background processes, on-the-fly image optimization/caching— It's more shopify for independent social networking than it is classical forum software.
- canadaduane 5y ago
  Thanks, good background info.
gizdan 5y ago
> Ever since Discourse set the standard for "good self-hosted open source forum software," I know this is besides your point, but I wouldn't credit Discourse with any standards but horrible UX. It's the worse of (new) Reddit combined with the worst of forum software. Horrendous.
- warglebargle 5y ago
  Have you used reddit lately? you can’t even read a lot of it without downloading the app
  - Macha 5y ago
    New Reddit is clearly a reference to desktop reddit, though yes, mobile reddit is intentionally even worse to push you to the app (it can be trivially defeated by requesting desktop mode though, or there's always i.reddit.com ).
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - gizdan 5y ago
    Sadly, I have, hence why I mentioned new Reddit.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  More recently they’ve made it work without JavaScript. I disable JavaScript by default for various reasons (but more about performance than privacy), and I’ve actually stopped enabling JavaScript for Discourse because I prefer its functionality that way.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    I'm surprised, in 2021, to find a robust app like Discourse that even works w/o JS. Cheers to that team.
mmcclure 5y ago
I'd be curious to hear more about where you see the rough edges are around Discourse deployment, particularly for a simple use-case. I kicked off a single-node Discourse installation a few years ago and it's happily run ever since with just an occasional machine resize. The community that installation supports isn't _that_ trivial, imo, and consistently hits 5 figure monthly actives (a lot of whom are very, very active). My experience overall has been that, for a project supported by a company that wants you to pay them to run the software, it's almost _too_ easy to run. One click upgrades in the client, generally fantastic documentation and resources for when you need to go deeper, and a really solid story (albeit time consuming) for the situation when you need to transition from the one-click-style installation to multi-node. Personally I've found Discourse to be so simple to install and relatively painless to manage over the years that I'd honestly be shocked to find something better in that regard.

kissgyorgy 5y ago

I had the same kind of thought when I saw the requirement for deployment. It's such a random stack and definitely not the right abstraction for a flexible deployment (for smaller communities as you mentioned). It seems also expensive to host it.

bhalp1 5y ago

Yes, Forem is extracted from dev.to— which was built to reach millions— With crowdsourced moderation, feed algorithms, rich editors, etc, and we're working backwards from there. So yeah, it's a little complicated at this layer of the stack, and getting simpler over time as we work to extract from the core. Background processes, on-the-fly image optimization/caching— It's more shopify for independent social networking than it is classical forum software.

canadaduane 5y ago
Thanks, good background info.

gizdan 5y ago

> Ever since Discourse set the standard for "good self-hosted open source forum software," I know this is besides your point, but I wouldn't credit Discourse with any standards but horrible UX. It's the worse of (new) Reddit combined with the worst of forum software. Horrendous.

warglebargle 5y ago
Have you used reddit lately? you can’t even read a lot of it without downloading the app
- Macha 5y ago
  New Reddit is clearly a reference to desktop reddit, though yes, mobile reddit is intentionally even worse to push you to the app (it can be trivially defeated by requesting desktop mode though, or there's always i.reddit.com ).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- gizdan 5y ago
  Sadly, I have, hence why I mentioned new Reddit.
chrismorgan 5y ago
More recently they’ve made it work without JavaScript. I disable JavaScript by default for various reasons (but more about performance than privacy), and I’ve actually stopped enabling JavaScript for Discourse because I prefer its functionality that way.
- edoceo 5y ago
  I'm surprised, in 2021, to find a robust app like Discourse that even works w/o JS. Cheers to that team.

mmcclure 5y ago

I'd be curious to hear more about where you see the rough edges are around Discourse deployment, particularly for a simple use-case. I kicked off a single-node Discourse installation a few years ago and it's happily run ever since with just an occasional machine resize. The community that installation supports isn't _that_ trivial, imo, and consistently hits 5 figure monthly actives (a lot of whom are very, very active). My experience overall has been that, for a project supported by a company that wants you to pay them to run the software, it's almost _too_ easy to run. One click upgrades in the client, generally fantastic documentation and resources for when you need to go deeper, and a really solid story (albeit time consuming) for the situation when you need to transition from the one-click-style installation to multi-node. Personally I've found Discourse to be so simple to install and relatively painless to manage over the years that I'd honestly be shocked to find something better in that regard.