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As someone who runs a discord server. The issue I had with a forum is that I hate all the off the shelf forums around. There doesn't seem to be any modern forum

As someone who runs a discord server. The issue I had with a forum is that I hate all the off the shelf forums around. There doesn't seem to be any modern forums that I can just host. If there was, that would actually be really preferred to me. A web app that melded the discord experience of live chat, but also had topics that could be discussed and kept around for both search engines and archives to look back. But every forum I could find is still a very old and outdated experience. A big one being that you need to refresh the page to see a new response which really changes the dynamic of a conversation. The designs of those forums also really feel like the early 2000s. Did I miss something or did modern versions of forums just never really get developed?

mcbuilder 5y ago
Discourse is an option for a modern forum like experience.
- lucasverra 5y ago
  Growing bubble.io platform (tens of thousands forum members) community [0] use this since multiple years. And bubble community is one of the key aspects. [0]: https://forum.bubble.io https://forum.bubble.io
  - archon810 5y ago
    Wow it's like a straight up shameless Discourse clone.
    - tadfisher 5y ago
      The mobile experience is much better though.
    - truetraveller 5y ago
      It is Discourse, hosted by a company called "Bubble". Just do a "view source".
eslaught 5y ago
What about Discourse? They have an open source, self-hostable version: https://github.com/discourse/discourse https://github.com/discourse/discourse
- mnsc 5y ago
  Clicked on the screenshot/showcase of the Atom discussion forum and one certificate error and a 301 later I'm at Github's discussions. Symptomatic?
- bogwog 5y ago
  A couple of communities I'm a part of have switched over to Discourse over the past couple of years, and I hate it. It's just a mediocre forum, but with "modern web" designs/quirks. It does the whole single-page app thing, tons of wasted space/terrible information density, every single thread is displayed in one giant infinite-scrolling list (I've yet to see an instance with proper "subforums", just tags/categories), and it barely works without javascript (although at least it works). My favorite modern forum software I've encountered is XenForo, although it's neither free nor open source.
  - math-dev 5y ago
    XenForo is great!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- FalconSensei 5y ago
  self-hosted is a blessing and a curse. Many people like and benefit from it, but also many will not use since they would need a host and setting things up. With Discord you just click a couple buttons
benrbray 5y ago
> A big one being that you need to refresh the page to see a new response which really changes the dynamic of a conversation. This is not high on my list of complaints, and I'd even venture to say it is an advantage. Asynchronous forums like HN / StackOverflow attract much higher quality (as in, self-contained, thoughtful, informative, and searchable) answers than the Discord servers I'm a part of.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  I would agree. On a high-traffic discourse-based forum I peruse, both the automatically updating thread pages and the "soandso is typing…" indicators make for posts that are short, IM-like, and generally more combative. The endless scroll is a problem too. Because nobody wants to scroll through n-hundred posts, you also end up with the same handful of posts being re-made ad infinitum. Old paged style forums suffered from this to some extent but pages being bite-sized lended to more people reading the whole thread.
  - cwillu 5y ago
    To say nothing of it being impossible to search. Ctrl-f + pagedown + f3 + pagedown + wait + f3 + pagedown + wait + f3…
    - asddubs 5y ago
      and god help you if you're trying to read a thread in reverse order, any images popping in via infinite scroll will make what you're reading jump out of place
- unknownOrigin 5y ago
  That is true, Discord is generally thought of (and used) as voice/chatting platform, more than a message board platform, but people still write random garbage even on those... as evidenced by things like Youtube comments or Disqus comments. So, the target community is still the king when it comes to the quality of the conversation. (BTW I didn't mention Twitter because that is the worst PLUS all the spam. Trying to read something like a response thread for a Musk Tweet is a nightmare.)
kevinwang 5y ago
Ktt2.com (successor to kanyetothe, a huge hip-hop forum) has live messages. However from what I've seen it has the drawback of encouraging lower-content "chat-like" messages instead of the less spammy forum posts of yore.
yboris 5y ago
A Node based forum - NodeBB. I've not tried but this has been on my radar for years https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB
yboris 5y ago
For a PHP based forum, glance at Flarum - I have not tried but it's been on my radar for years. https://github.com/flarum/flarum https://github.com/flarum/flarum
divan 5y ago
So much this. I've recently tried Flarum and Discourse, and the biggest issue is that PHP and Ruby on Rails are unforgivably slow and complex. Granted, Flarum/Discourse are way better than PhpBB/NodeBB/etcBB, but after few months I can't update to a new version due to a lot of PHP/Ruby complexity/dependencies related stuff. Another thing is that forums eventually become a mess of outdated/broken plugins that extend functionality and add features. It seems extending functionality is an afterthought in most forum engines. As a result I try to avoid to use any plugins at all just to keep the site running and not to spend sleepless nights upgrading/fixing code.
- Fogest 5y ago
  The other issue not addressed here is the security aspect too. Via haveibeenpwned so many of the sites I have had data breached on are from forums. It seems so many different forum softwares that exist also have so many security vulnerabilities. And then forum owners often won't upgrade their website as often as they should to ensure it is more secure as they will have a lot of plugins that likely will break.
  - KajMagnus 5y ago
    > > after few months I can't update to a new version > forum owners often won't upgrade their website ... plugins that likely will break Maybe then it'd make sense if I mentioned Talkyard https://github.com/debiki/talkyard https://github.com/debiki/talkyard — it's forum software with automatic upgrades. I'm developing it. There's not yet any plugin system, instead currently "everything" is built-in, and there are (unfortunately) fewer features.
    - Fogest 5y ago
      What do you plan to do about the plugin problem? A lot of forums come to rely on these plugins and often times the owners aren't programmers. It means that if they are stuck choosing between upgrading the core software and keeping a useful plugin they often will choose the latter. Will an automatic upgrade break plugins then? Because I can't see that being optimal.
fuzzy2 5y ago
Maybe forums were already perfect. Sure, design could always be updated. However, what's wrong with vBulletin 4 UX? Nothing. It works in all conditions. Not some self-updating battery-draining endless scrolling website. Yes, I'm looking at you, Discourse. Not to mention the tremendous amount of edge cases where it fails because its complexity is simply out of control. For example, it drops posts on any kind of connection interruption (tab sleep, network down, device sleep, …) unless you refresh.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
I'd like to see Discord do message boards too. Kind of a natural outgrowth.
holler 5y ago
> A web app that melded the discord experience of live chat, but also had topics that could be discussed and kept around for both search engines and archives to look back. I am building just that at https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im & would be interested to show it to you. On Sqwok, each post contains a built-in chat room, is open to the public, shareable by url, supports markdown etc, can be ephemeral or long lived, and are posted to the user's account similar to Twitter.
cblconfederate 5y ago
Slack came along and made a lot of money and since then the slack-wannabee-guys are making slack clones in an attempt to attract investor interest. Meanwhile google demonetizes forums , and facebook steals and locks in their users. There are few for Don Quixotes who will be interested in making another forum platform
stiltzkin 5y ago
I am on the same spot of running a future Discord community but planning of hosting a Discourse instance for archive and history of conversations. Discourse has extra batteries included and an active community of people developing for Discourse. One key advantage is both can link together: https://blog.discourse.org/2021/05/discord-and-discourse-better-together/ https://blog.discourse.org/2021/05/discord-and-discourse-bet...
e12e 5y ago
> Did I miss something or did modern versions of forums just never really get developed? Not sure. There's the propiatary muut.com (which also maintains riot.js), and there's zulip which might be the best Foss "modern" forum? Then there is the hn clones (anarki/news, lobste.rs) and the more old school dfeed that runs d-lang forums.
pndy 5y ago
No idea what software is running Manjaro Linux, Vivaldi or Skyscrapper City forums but these at least from front-end side seem to be pretty modern but, from a perspective of someone who was raised on MyBB and similar solutions, these are pain in the use and awful at displaying the information.
- wott 5y ago
  > Skyscrapper City forums I wish they hadn't updated their forum software indeed. I share your opinion about it: very slow, lots of wasted, white space, and stuff which may or may not be displayed correctly depending on your browser; in a word: modern. As in other kinds of software, even traditional "*BB" pieces of software follow the fads: add tons of Javacript and heavily revamp interfaces to look trendy. So you can't trust the same piece of software on which you've been relying for decades not to become like that one day. If I am not mistaken, it used to be running vBulletin. Now it seems to be running Xenforo (which some posts in this thread seem to praise). The problem in SSC's case was that they had let the former piece of software and database rot (the former owner had lost interest/energy for some time, and then sold to a company which didn't do much about it for some more time), so there were frequent troubles, and that justified a big jump "forward". Luckily I have been banned from there enough times that I don't bother recreating accounts and write there any more, I just browse it 3 times a year nowadays. :-)
olah_1 5y ago
Aether is doing something pretty cool. Combining chat with threads and email lists. All three together. https://aether.app/ https://aether.app/
baud147258 5y ago
I don't know what forum software you used, but on xenoforo, when a new messages are posted on the thread, you'll get a button at the bottom (with text like 'new messages have been posted since you loaded the page, click _here_ to see them'), loading the new messages without having to reload the page. Though I feel forums are more geared around asynchronous conversation anyway.

mcbuilder 5y ago

Discourse is an option for a modern forum like experience.

lucasverra 5y ago
Growing bubble.io platform (tens of thousands forum members) community [0] use this since multiple years. And bubble community is one of the key aspects. [0]: https://forum.bubble.io https://forum.bubble.io
- archon810 5y ago
  Wow it's like a straight up shameless Discourse clone.
  - tadfisher 5y ago
    The mobile experience is much better though.
  - truetraveller 5y ago
    It is Discourse, hosted by a company called "Bubble". Just do a "view source".

eslaught 5y ago

What about Discourse? They have an open source, self-hostable version: https://github.com/discourse/discourse https://github.com/discourse/discourse

mnsc 5y ago
Clicked on the screenshot/showcase of the Atom discussion forum and one certificate error and a 301 later I'm at Github's discussions. Symptomatic?
bogwog 5y ago
A couple of communities I'm a part of have switched over to Discourse over the past couple of years, and I hate it. It's just a mediocre forum, but with "modern web" designs/quirks. It does the whole single-page app thing, tons of wasted space/terrible information density, every single thread is displayed in one giant infinite-scrolling list (I've yet to see an instance with proper "subforums", just tags/categories), and it barely works without javascript (although at least it works). My favorite modern forum software I've encountered is XenForo, although it's neither free nor open source.
- math-dev 5y ago
  XenForo is great!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
FalconSensei 5y ago
self-hosted is a blessing and a curse. Many people like and benefit from it, but also many will not use since they would need a host and setting things up. With Discord you just click a couple buttons

benrbray 5y ago

> A big one being that you need to refresh the page to see a new response which really changes the dynamic of a conversation. This is not high on my list of complaints, and I'd even venture to say it is an advantage. Asynchronous forums like HN / StackOverflow attract much higher quality (as in, self-contained, thoughtful, informative, and searchable) answers than the Discord servers I'm a part of.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
I would agree. On a high-traffic discourse-based forum I peruse, both the automatically updating thread pages and the "soandso is typing…" indicators make for posts that are short, IM-like, and generally more combative. The endless scroll is a problem too. Because nobody wants to scroll through n-hundred posts, you also end up with the same handful of posts being re-made ad infinitum. Old paged style forums suffered from this to some extent but pages being bite-sized lended to more people reading the whole thread.
- cwillu 5y ago
  To say nothing of it being impossible to search. Ctrl-f + pagedown + f3 + pagedown + wait + f3 + pagedown + wait + f3…
  - asddubs 5y ago
    and god help you if you're trying to read a thread in reverse order, any images popping in via infinite scroll will make what you're reading jump out of place
unknownOrigin 5y ago
That is true, Discord is generally thought of (and used) as voice/chatting platform, more than a message board platform, but people still write random garbage even on those... as evidenced by things like Youtube comments or Disqus comments. So, the target community is still the king when it comes to the quality of the conversation. (BTW I didn't mention Twitter because that is the worst PLUS all the spam. Trying to read something like a response thread for a Musk Tweet is a nightmare.)

kevinwang 5y ago

Ktt2.com (successor to kanyetothe, a huge hip-hop forum) has live messages. However from what I've seen it has the drawback of encouraging lower-content "chat-like" messages instead of the less spammy forum posts of yore.

yboris 5y ago

A Node based forum - NodeBB. I've not tried but this has been on my radar for years https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB

yboris 5y ago

For a PHP based forum, glance at Flarum - I have not tried but it's been on my radar for years. https://github.com/flarum/flarum https://github.com/flarum/flarum

divan 5y ago

So much this. I've recently tried Flarum and Discourse, and the biggest issue is that PHP and Ruby on Rails are unforgivably slow and complex. Granted, Flarum/Discourse are way better than PhpBB/NodeBB/etcBB, but after few months I can't update to a new version due to a lot of PHP/Ruby complexity/dependencies related stuff. Another thing is that forums eventually become a mess of outdated/broken plugins that extend functionality and add features. It seems extending functionality is an afterthought in most forum engines. As a result I try to avoid to use any plugins at all just to keep the site running and not to spend sleepless nights upgrading/fixing code.

Fogest 5y ago
The other issue not addressed here is the security aspect too. Via haveibeenpwned so many of the sites I have had data breached on are from forums. It seems so many different forum softwares that exist also have so many security vulnerabilities. And then forum owners often won't upgrade their website as often as they should to ensure it is more secure as they will have a lot of plugins that likely will break.
- KajMagnus 5y ago
  > > after few months I can't update to a new version > forum owners often won't upgrade their website ... plugins that likely will break Maybe then it'd make sense if I mentioned Talkyard https://github.com/debiki/talkyard https://github.com/debiki/talkyard — it's forum software with automatic upgrades. I'm developing it. There's not yet any plugin system, instead currently "everything" is built-in, and there are (unfortunately) fewer features.
  - Fogest 5y ago
    What do you plan to do about the plugin problem? A lot of forums come to rely on these plugins and often times the owners aren't programmers. It means that if they are stuck choosing between upgrading the core software and keeping a useful plugin they often will choose the latter. Will an automatic upgrade break plugins then? Because I can't see that being optimal.

fuzzy2 5y ago

Maybe forums were already perfect. Sure, design could always be updated. However, what's wrong with vBulletin 4 UX? Nothing. It works in all conditions. Not some self-updating battery-draining endless scrolling website. Yes, I'm looking at you, Discourse. Not to mention the tremendous amount of edge cases where it fails because its complexity is simply out of control. For example, it drops posts on any kind of connection interruption (tab sleep, network down, device sleep, …) unless you refresh.

TulliusCicero 5y ago

I'd like to see Discord do message boards too. Kind of a natural outgrowth.

holler 5y ago

> A web app that melded the discord experience of live chat, but also had topics that could be discussed and kept around for both search engines and archives to look back. I am building just that at https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im & would be interested to show it to you. On Sqwok, each post contains a built-in chat room, is open to the public, shareable by url, supports markdown etc, can be ephemeral or long lived, and are posted to the user's account similar to Twitter.

cblconfederate 5y ago

Slack came along and made a lot of money and since then the slack-wannabee-guys are making slack clones in an attempt to attract investor interest. Meanwhile google demonetizes forums , and facebook steals and locks in their users. There are few for Don Quixotes who will be interested in making another forum platform

stiltzkin 5y ago

I am on the same spot of running a future Discord community but planning of hosting a Discourse instance for archive and history of conversations. Discourse has extra batteries included and an active community of people developing for Discourse. One key advantage is both can link together: https://blog.discourse.org/2021/05/discord-and-discourse-better-together/ https://blog.discourse.org/2021/05/discord-and-discourse-bet...

e12e 5y ago

> Did I miss something or did modern versions of forums just never really get developed? Not sure. There's the propiatary muut.com (which also maintains riot.js), and there's zulip which might be the best Foss "modern" forum? Then there is the hn clones (anarki/news, lobste.rs) and the more old school dfeed that runs d-lang forums.

pndy 5y ago

No idea what software is running Manjaro Linux, Vivaldi or Skyscrapper City forums but these at least from front-end side seem to be pretty modern but, from a perspective of someone who was raised on MyBB and similar solutions, these are pain in the use and awful at displaying the information.

wott 5y ago
> Skyscrapper City forums I wish they hadn't updated their forum software indeed. I share your opinion about it: very slow, lots of wasted, white space, and stuff which may or may not be displayed correctly depending on your browser; in a word: modern. As in other kinds of software, even traditional "*BB" pieces of software follow the fads: add tons of Javacript and heavily revamp interfaces to look trendy. So you can't trust the same piece of software on which you've been relying for decades not to become like that one day. If I am not mistaken, it used to be running vBulletin. Now it seems to be running Xenforo (which some posts in this thread seem to praise). The problem in SSC's case was that they had let the former piece of software and database rot (the former owner had lost interest/energy for some time, and then sold to a company which didn't do much about it for some more time), so there were frequent troubles, and that justified a big jump "forward". Luckily I have been banned from there enough times that I don't bother recreating accounts and write there any more, I just browse it 3 times a year nowadays. :-)

olah_1 5y ago

Aether is doing something pretty cool. Combining chat with threads and email lists. All three together. https://aether.app/ https://aether.app/

baud147258 5y ago

I don't know what forum software you used, but on xenoforo, when a new messages are posted on the thread, you'll get a button at the bottom (with text like 'new messages have been posted since you loaded the page, click _here_ to see them'), loading the new messages without having to reload the page. Though I feel forums are more geared around asynchronous conversation anyway.