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> If you know any modern forum software (which isn’t Discourse), please let me know! What's wrong with Discourse?

hlandau 4y ago
It's completely broken if you don't have JavaScript enabled, for starters.
dqv 4y ago
https://i.ibb.co/Lpxzz2V/%20.gif https://i.ibb.co/Lpxzz2V/%20.gif It takes up a lot of vertical screen space and the scrolling behavior is really annoying. I know, I know, pagination is old and crusty and no one uses it or whatever, but I do and it helps me navigate threads (especially long ones) a lot easier. It's the same problem as reading a long book on an ebook reader. Sure, if you're reading for pleasure, then an ebook reader is fine, but for reading something more technical, being able to go back to specific "checkpoints" is really important. Comparatively, crusty old phpBB can display 4 posts in the same space that Discourse uses to display 1 and it has pagination. Yes, you can change the theme on Discourse to fix the overuse of vertical space, but the theme it ships with is going to influence how people theme their Discourse instance.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  Try scrolling with their widget instead of the browser scroll bar. You can bookmark or link to any point in the thread. Add /postnumber to the thread URL if you don’t want to manually grab it. And there are some excellent condensed themes, CSS styles and user styles out there if you want that. Not saying you have to like it, but there are easy solutions for those specific preferences, and overall, Discourse has been good for participation on old forums.
eXpl0it3r 4y ago
Author here. I mostly just dislike the feel of it, so it's much more a personal preference. I like the more old-school structuring of content, instead of the tag based approach. Not a big fan of the default theme, but that's something one can adjust. If you visit the official website, I can't really, even with a longer glance, see, that it can be self-hosted, which means that at some point the decision was made to push hosting options over the "100% open source discussion platform" as it's described on GitHub. And finally, I find it quite resource intensive and a bit cumbersome to host; you need Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL and Redis, which might be okay for "maximum" scaling, but for the couple of hundred or thousand users per month, it's slightly overkill. I think Discourse can be a great option, I just want to hear about other forum software.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
  Thanks for replying! I work on Rails applications so "forum software" sounded like something in my wheelhouse, hence the question. Admittedly, my mind went to a similar setup as Discourse so this helps me understand what a host might dislike about their software. I've used many phpBB forums in the past and I often find myself wondering why that UI seems to have fallen out of fashion so it interests me to consider building something myself. It's not likely you'll see anything from me anytime soon (maybe eventually but that's a fuckton of work and I have a day job) but I have ideas of leveraging server-side rendering per the "don't make js required" comment and progressive enhancement in general. If I do build something like this my target browser would likely be Lynx[0]. Just consider it a pipe dream until you see my "Show HN" post. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)

It's completely broken if you don't have JavaScript enabled, for starters.

dqv 4y ago

https://i.ibb.co/Lpxzz2V/%20.gif https://i.ibb.co/Lpxzz2V/%20.gif It takes up a lot of vertical screen space and the scrolling behavior is really annoying. I know, I know, pagination is old and crusty and no one uses it or whatever, but I do and it helps me navigate threads (especially long ones) a lot easier. It's the same problem as reading a long book on an ebook reader. Sure, if you're reading for pleasure, then an ebook reader is fine, but for reading something more technical, being able to go back to specific "checkpoints" is really important. Comparatively, crusty old phpBB can display 4 posts in the same space that Discourse uses to display 1 and it has pagination. Yes, you can change the theme on Discourse to fix the overuse of vertical space, but the theme it ships with is going to influence how people theme their Discourse instance.

1123581321 4y ago
Try scrolling with their widget instead of the browser scroll bar. You can bookmark or link to any point in the thread. Add /postnumber to the thread URL if you don’t want to manually grab it. And there are some excellent condensed themes, CSS styles and user styles out there if you want that. Not saying you have to like it, but there are easy solutions for those specific preferences, and overall, Discourse has been good for participation on old forums.

eXpl0it3r 4y ago

Author here. I mostly just dislike the feel of it, so it's much more a personal preference. I like the more old-school structuring of content, instead of the tag based approach. Not a big fan of the default theme, but that's something one can adjust. If you visit the official website, I can't really, even with a longer glance, see, that it can be self-hosted, which means that at some point the decision was made to push hosting options over the "100% open source discussion platform" as it's described on GitHub. And finally, I find it quite resource intensive and a bit cumbersome to host; you need Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL and Redis, which might be okay for "maximum" scaling, but for the couple of hundred or thousand users per month, it's slightly overkill. I think Discourse can be a great option, I just want to hear about other forum software.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
Thanks for replying! I work on Rails applications so "forum software" sounded like something in my wheelhouse, hence the question. Admittedly, my mind went to a similar setup as Discourse so this helps me understand what a host might dislike about their software. I've used many phpBB forums in the past and I often find myself wondering why that UI seems to have fallen out of fashion so it interests me to consider building something myself. It's not likely you'll see anything from me anytime soon (maybe eventually but that's a fuckton of work and I have a day job) but I have ideas of leveraging server-side rendering per the "don't make js required" comment and progressive enhancement in general. If I do build something like this my target browser would likely be Lynx[0]. Just consider it a pipe dream until you see my "Show HN" post. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)