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I don't think anything has ever really been a suitable replacement for forums. Just bring back proboards and PHPBB, with an automatic CC-BY or similar license,

I don't think anything has ever really been a suitable replacement for forums. Just bring back proboards and PHPBB, with an automatic CC-BY or similar license, and some archiving and exporting tools, and maybe a mobile app.

mtremsal 4y ago
https://discourse.org/ https://discourse.org/ is the closest thing I’ve seen to what you’re asking.
- muzani 4y ago
  I'm actually looking for something like this. Discourse pricing seems to be around $100 per month minimum for a group of 500? It's a huge leap from the forums where minimum cost is about $8/month.
  - doodlesdev 4y ago
    Discourse is free software [0], you can simply host it elsewhere, the pricing you're looking at is their managed option, which while convenient absolutely isn't necessary. [0]: https://github.com/discourse/discourse https://github.com/discourse/discourse
    - eternityforest 4y ago
      Self hosting seems like a bad idea if you're a random club for vintage cars or something and don't have IT staff. What happens when someone finds a 0day? Or some browser feature changes and nothing works until you update?
  - zappchance 4y ago
    It's open-source and easy to self-host: https://blog.discourse.org/2014/04/install-discourse-in-under-30-minutes/ https://blog.discourse.org/2014/04/install-discourse-in-unde...
    - muzani 4y ago
      Ah, I missed that. Thank you!
- ilyt 4y ago
  I swear every time I find answer on discourse it's near-always useless...
geerlingguy 4y ago
Discourse is the modern phpBB. It's really good, and both are about 10,000x better than private chat servers.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  Discourse is not really good, it's got endless scrolling at takes forever to navigate what could be done in seconds with pagination. Pages are a defining feature of old forums, without them it's just another Reddit-alike or something.
  - kevincox 4y ago
    The endless scrolling is really annoying. Apparently they can't load more than 10 messages on a page for "performance reasons". But it breaks searching the page, slows down scrolling and a lot of other browser UX. If you can't performantly display a few hundred short messages you need to rethink your frontend technology.
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  I don't like it. It works poorly without JavaScript, but this isn't quite the main problem. The main problem is that it seems to have the same sterile look everywhere just like every single "modern" corporate site, the same as new design reddit, facebook, or goolag, or anything else.
eschaton 4y ago
That’s because forums are themselves an abomination, just create a newsgroup in the `alt.*` hierarchy or set up a mailing list and be done. Just because you insist on using a web browser to access it doesn’t mean everyone should have to. You can use a web-based client and others can use native clients and nobody is locked out.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  Newsgroups have obnoxious hierarchal branching replies, unlike any normal human conversation, unlike what forums do, and they lack lots of minor forum features.
  - eschaton 4y ago
    Huh? Things like message threading are not only common on forums (like HN and Reddit and Slashdot and…) but with newsgroups and mailing list they’re entirely up to the client application you’re using to access them. I use Mail for email and Thunderbird for news on macOS: Mail only presents one layer of hierarchy, while Thunderbird can show replies hierarchically _or you can turn that off_. With a forum, you’re making that decision for me, instead of letting me make it for myself. I can’t believe how ignorant people are about how things work.
    - psnehanshu 4y ago
      Congratulations on using your stuff. But I really like my web browser. Thanks.
      - lenkite 4y ago
        We need browsers to natively support newsgroups. But that would cause too much political backlash, so it wouldn't happen.
        account42 4y ago
        Unfortunately, browsers don't seem to be interested in native support for much of anything. It's all just javascript APIs where the websites are incontrol of the experience instead of your user agent. Video streaming is extremely limited without client-side javascript. They even removed the minimal RSS support that we had.
eschaton 4y ago
Take a look at Groups.io: You can set up a group with both a mailing list and a forum for free, for up to a certain size, and then it’s some minimum price and $0.04/month per user for all the feature.
iKlsR 4y ago
I've found many useful threads and answers for some super niche and obfuscated stuff on Gitter where you get some discord like benefits (better irc) and is indexed by engines. I liked their model where you can have rooms for topics, repos etc but shame it's hardly used.
Saris 4y ago
Forums are not great for usability though. You need a unique login for every forum, notifications are a mess and usually via email, the UIs are poor and difficult to use, every forum usually has a different theme with different locations for buttons and settings, there's no real time way to communicate so everything takes forever, and everyone has stupid profile footers in their posts that make you scroll twice as much as you should have to. There are also bugs like quoting a post that has images reposts all of the images again and creates even more pointless scrolling. Or forums that lack even basic image resizing so someone uploads their 24MP photos and it goes way off the side of the screen and makes the post take ages to load. I'm sure it could all be fixed somehow, but current stuff is just awful and I absolutely dislike interacting with forums.

mtremsal 4y ago

https://discourse.org/ https://discourse.org/ is the closest thing I’ve seen to what you’re asking.

muzani 4y ago
I'm actually looking for something like this. Discourse pricing seems to be around $100 per month minimum for a group of 500? It's a huge leap from the forums where minimum cost is about $8/month.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  Discourse is free software [0], you can simply host it elsewhere, the pricing you're looking at is their managed option, which while convenient absolutely isn't necessary. [0]: https://github.com/discourse/discourse https://github.com/discourse/discourse
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    Self hosting seems like a bad idea if you're a random club for vintage cars or something and don't have IT staff. What happens when someone finds a 0day? Or some browser feature changes and nothing works until you update?
- zappchance 4y ago
  It's open-source and easy to self-host: https://blog.discourse.org/2014/04/install-discourse-in-under-30-minutes/ https://blog.discourse.org/2014/04/install-discourse-in-unde...
  - muzani 4y ago
    Ah, I missed that. Thank you!
ilyt 4y ago
I swear every time I find answer on discourse it's near-always useless...

geerlingguy 4y ago

Discourse is the modern phpBB. It's really good, and both are about 10,000x better than private chat servers.

eternityforest 4y ago
Discourse is not really good, it's got endless scrolling at takes forever to navigate what could be done in seconds with pagination. Pages are a defining feature of old forums, without them it's just another Reddit-alike or something.
- kevincox 4y ago
  The endless scrolling is really annoying. Apparently they can't load more than 10 messages on a page for "performance reasons". But it breaks searching the page, slows down scrolling and a lot of other browser UX. If you can't performantly display a few hundred short messages you need to rethink your frontend technology.
alwayslikethis 4y ago
I don't like it. It works poorly without JavaScript, but this isn't quite the main problem. The main problem is that it seems to have the same sterile look everywhere just like every single "modern" corporate site, the same as new design reddit, facebook, or goolag, or anything else.

eschaton 4y ago

That’s because forums are themselves an abomination, just create a newsgroup in the `alt.*` hierarchy or set up a mailing list and be done. Just because you insist on using a web browser to access it doesn’t mean everyone should have to. You can use a web-based client and others can use native clients and nobody is locked out.

eternityforest 4y ago
Newsgroups have obnoxious hierarchal branching replies, unlike any normal human conversation, unlike what forums do, and they lack lots of minor forum features.
- eschaton 4y ago
  Huh? Things like message threading are not only common on forums (like HN and Reddit and Slashdot and…) but with newsgroups and mailing list they’re entirely up to the client application you’re using to access them. I use Mail for email and Thunderbird for news on macOS: Mail only presents one layer of hierarchy, while Thunderbird can show replies hierarchically _or you can turn that off_. With a forum, you’re making that decision for me, instead of letting me make it for myself. I can’t believe how ignorant people are about how things work.
  - psnehanshu 4y ago
    Congratulations on using your stuff. But I really like my web browser. Thanks.
    - lenkite 4y ago
      We need browsers to natively support newsgroups. But that would cause too much political backlash, so it wouldn't happen.
      - account42 4y ago
        Unfortunately, browsers don't seem to be interested in native support for much of anything. It's all just javascript APIs where the websites are incontrol of the experience instead of your user agent. Video streaming is extremely limited without client-side javascript. They even removed the minimal RSS support that we had.

eschaton 4y ago

Take a look at Groups.io: You can set up a group with both a mailing list and a forum for free, for up to a certain size, and then it’s some minimum price and $0.04/month per user for all the feature.

iKlsR 4y ago

I've found many useful threads and answers for some super niche and obfuscated stuff on Gitter where you get some discord like benefits (better irc) and is indexed by engines. I liked their model where you can have rooms for topics, repos etc but shame it's hardly used.

Saris 4y ago

Forums are not great for usability though. You need a unique login for every forum, notifications are a mess and usually via email, the UIs are poor and difficult to use, every forum usually has a different theme with different locations for buttons and settings, there's no real time way to communicate so everything takes forever, and everyone has stupid profile footers in their posts that make you scroll twice as much as you should have to. There are also bugs like quoting a post that has images reposts all of the images again and creates even more pointless scrolling. Or forums that lack even basic image resizing so someone uploads their 24MP photos and it goes way off the side of the screen and makes the post take ages to load. I'm sure it could all be fixed somehow, but current stuff is just awful and I absolutely dislike interacting with forums.