4 ms·

From the article: > Rather than using an off-the-shelf forum platform, like vBulletin or phpBB, we decided to create our own forum using Strapi as a headless C

From the article: > Rather than using an off-the-shelf forum platform, like vBulletin or phpBB, we decided to create our own forum using Strapi as a headless CMS. Wanted to leave a link here for the impatient https://strapi.io/ https://strapi.io/

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Why would they create their own? That just feels like wasted resources, given that forum software is a solved platform.
- alberth 3y ago
  Agreed. Also, Strapi has one of those odd licenses where everything is MIT expect what’s in /ee directory https://github.com/strapi/strapi/blob/develop/LICENSE https://github.com/strapi/strapi/blob/develop/LICENSE
  - sublinear 3y ago
    "Open Core Model" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-core_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-core_model Enterprise edition features require a license file, so that directory would be empty and is not needed to use the community edition. Most people do not need the enterprise edition and despite what some think, a CMS is fairly trivial to write from scratch anyway. That's why there are so many out there. It's a lazy business model. The general idea is more valuable than the actual code. People who pay for a CMS or start out with an open-core product will eventually have to shift priorities towards protecting what they've built otherwise when they scale up. Cheaper to migrate to your own thing than pay a license in the long term. It's more of a business decision than a technical one to do the cost-benefit analysis. The data, community, brand, etc. are so much more valuable than the platform making vendor lock-in almost impossible unless you're stacked to the ceiling with idiots who can't code at all. That's their customer: entities who want a website or app and don't need to think about the long-term cost yet or ever.
- sublinear 3y ago
  > forum software is a solved platform It was never solved. Forum software just stagnated with its poor backend and frontend solutions that everyone tolerated until the social media platforms we know today took off. Now that even the most unsophisticated user has become intolerant of the noise on there, forums are coming back. But, you can't expect people to go back to the same problems they left behind over a decade ago. Just about any modern CMS is a dramatic improvement over the crappy database schemas, dead languages, ugly, inflexible, and slow server-side rendered HTML, etc. Just about any frontend a college student whips up would have modern features people actually want to use and be far easier to maintain. What was "solved" is the realization that forums are just another CRUD app. The specific implementation is irrelevant as long as it is architected as such.
- antifa 3y ago
  Most forums aren't in my programming language, and probably I'd like the experience to have a properunity with the product, both for the user and the developer, but also no mysterious/ unwanted features lurking about.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

Why would they create their own? That just feels like wasted resources, given that forum software is a solved platform.

alberth 3y ago
Agreed. Also, Strapi has one of those odd licenses where everything is MIT expect what’s in /ee directory https://github.com/strapi/strapi/blob/develop/LICENSE https://github.com/strapi/strapi/blob/develop/LICENSE
- sublinear 3y ago
  "Open Core Model" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-core_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-core_model Enterprise edition features require a license file, so that directory would be empty and is not needed to use the community edition. Most people do not need the enterprise edition and despite what some think, a CMS is fairly trivial to write from scratch anyway. That's why there are so many out there. It's a lazy business model. The general idea is more valuable than the actual code. People who pay for a CMS or start out with an open-core product will eventually have to shift priorities towards protecting what they've built otherwise when they scale up. Cheaper to migrate to your own thing than pay a license in the long term. It's more of a business decision than a technical one to do the cost-benefit analysis. The data, community, brand, etc. are so much more valuable than the platform making vendor lock-in almost impossible unless you're stacked to the ceiling with idiots who can't code at all. That's their customer: entities who want a website or app and don't need to think about the long-term cost yet or ever.
sublinear 3y ago
> forum software is a solved platform It was never solved. Forum software just stagnated with its poor backend and frontend solutions that everyone tolerated until the social media platforms we know today took off. Now that even the most unsophisticated user has become intolerant of the noise on there, forums are coming back. But, you can't expect people to go back to the same problems they left behind over a decade ago. Just about any modern CMS is a dramatic improvement over the crappy database schemas, dead languages, ugly, inflexible, and slow server-side rendered HTML, etc. Just about any frontend a college student whips up would have modern features people actually want to use and be far easier to maintain. What was "solved" is the realization that forums are just another CRUD app. The specific implementation is irrelevant as long as it is architected as such.
antifa 3y ago
Most forums aren't in my programming language, and probably I'd like the experience to have a properunity with the product, both for the user and the developer, but also no mysterious/ unwanted features lurking about.