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Any recommendations for a free engineering community forum?

by Insalgo 2y ago

alanbernstein 2y ago
phpBB
- eviks 2y ago
  that's the one without per-post reactions and a weird markup language builtin?
  - alanbernstein 2y ago
    I think of it as the one that powered 10+ years of accessible forum posts.
    - eviks 2y ago
      And unfortunately hadn't evolved in those many years to be a good alternative for this year
mikl 2y ago
https://www.discourse.org https://www.discourse.org is great, best forum software I ever saw. You have probably used it already somewhere. They have a paid hosting offer, but you can also self-host it for free. And it’s open source.
- Groxx 2y ago
  > Managed forum hosting from $50/month Yeowch. $50/mo is a huge cost for anything that's not making money.
- 542458 2y ago
  I don’t get the love for discourse. I’m not one of those “every webpage should work without JS” purists, but Discourse seems intent to reinvent basic web features with JS and has some performance issues and as a consequence of both often (maybe when hitting something not in cache?) takes ages to load during which time you get nothing but a poorly-styled loading throbber, you can’t even read the content as it loads in. Even official instances are incredibly slow at times. One topic on https://meta.discourse.org/ https://meta.discourse.org/ just took over 30 seconds to load for me. Discourse just feels somewhat overengineered. Also anything that’s $50 a month doesn’t compete at the low end (which is where most OSS discussion hosting would exist) with Discord, which is free.
  - 4ggr0 2y ago
    I wonder if there's anything wrong on your end. Clicked on your link, searched for a topic with lots of replies and the content loaded instantly. Then I proceeded to spam-click on topics and still everything loaded instantly... MacBook M3 Pro with Firefox.
    - eviks 2y ago
      Measure the initial load time, subsequent loads are indeed faster And to test many replies you actually have to see them since they're not loaded on page load, only when you get to the bottom of that page, so just opening the top doesn't test anything re. lots of replies
    - 542458 2y ago
      I think it’s a server side cache thing. I was loading a specific old topic on that instance and it took very long to load, but once loaded in the first time refreshes were decently fast (even in private windows). I’ve observed the same behaviour on the Figma forums, which are also discourse.
  - wavyknife 2y ago
    > which is where most OSS discussion hosting would exist You can host it yourself for much less than $50/mo, some people run small instances on a raspberry pi (I work for Discourse)
  - bmacho 2y ago
    Discourse works without javascript. AFAIK it even has email support as well (I don't know how that works).
    - 542458 2y ago
      It barely works without JS. Essentially everything other than basic text display is broken, including search, pagination, sorting, etc. that said, I am surprised it works at all given the aforementioned loading throbber before you can see a page.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- poulpy123 2y ago
  Discourse is nice but only orga making money can use it
- Vvector 2y ago
  $50/month for the basic hosted option. Self-hosting requires skills and resources not available to everyone. It's very easy (and free) to start on Discord. Then if it takes off, there is too much friction to move to Discourse.
- chrisjj 2y ago
  Discourse seems great until it isn't. E.g. sticks on a unremovable banner obscuring your content.
yownv 2y ago
SimpleMachineForum
kaathewise 2y ago
I haven't self-hosted any, but I enjoy using Flarum [0] forums. They load faster than Discourse ones and feel snappy. [0]: https://flarum.org/ https://flarum.org/
jslakro 2y ago
https://github.com/flarum/flarum https://github.com/flarum/flarum (PHP) https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB (js)

Any recommendations for a free engineering community forum?

alanbernstein 2y ago

phpBB

eviks 2y ago
that's the one without per-post reactions and a weird markup language builtin?
- alanbernstein 2y ago
  I think of it as the one that powered 10+ years of accessible forum posts.
  - eviks 2y ago
    And unfortunately hadn't evolved in those many years to be a good alternative for this year

mikl 2y ago

https://www.discourse.org https://www.discourse.org is great, best forum software I ever saw. You have probably used it already somewhere. They have a paid hosting offer, but you can also self-host it for free. And it’s open source.

Groxx 2y ago
> Managed forum hosting from $50/month Yeowch. $50/mo is a huge cost for anything that's not making money.
542458 2y ago
I don’t get the love for discourse. I’m not one of those “every webpage should work without JS” purists, but Discourse seems intent to reinvent basic web features with JS and has some performance issues and as a consequence of both often (maybe when hitting something not in cache?) takes ages to load during which time you get nothing but a poorly-styled loading throbber, you can’t even read the content as it loads in. Even official instances are incredibly slow at times. One topic on https://meta.discourse.org/ https://meta.discourse.org/ just took over 30 seconds to load for me. Discourse just feels somewhat overengineered. Also anything that’s $50 a month doesn’t compete at the low end (which is where most OSS discussion hosting would exist) with Discord, which is free.
- 4ggr0 2y ago
  I wonder if there's anything wrong on your end. Clicked on your link, searched for a topic with lots of replies and the content loaded instantly. Then I proceeded to spam-click on topics and still everything loaded instantly... MacBook M3 Pro with Firefox.
  - eviks 2y ago
    Measure the initial load time, subsequent loads are indeed faster And to test many replies you actually have to see them since they're not loaded on page load, only when you get to the bottom of that page, so just opening the top doesn't test anything re. lots of replies
  - 542458 2y ago
    I think it’s a server side cache thing. I was loading a specific old topic on that instance and it took very long to load, but once loaded in the first time refreshes were decently fast (even in private windows). I’ve observed the same behaviour on the Figma forums, which are also discourse.
- wavyknife 2y ago
  > which is where most OSS discussion hosting would exist You can host it yourself for much less than $50/mo, some people run small instances on a raspberry pi (I work for Discourse)
- bmacho 2y ago
  Discourse works without javascript. AFAIK it even has email support as well (I don't know how that works).
  - 542458 2y ago
    It barely works without JS. Essentially everything other than basic text display is broken, including search, pagination, sorting, etc. that said, I am surprised it works at all given the aforementioned loading throbber before you can see a page.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
poulpy123 2y ago
Discourse is nice but only orga making money can use it
Vvector 2y ago
$50/month for the basic hosted option. Self-hosting requires skills and resources not available to everyone. It's very easy (and free) to start on Discord. Then if it takes off, there is too much friction to move to Discourse.
chrisjj 2y ago
Discourse seems great until it isn't. E.g. sticks on a unremovable banner obscuring your content.

yownv 2y ago

SimpleMachineForum

kaathewise 2y ago

I haven't self-hosted any, but I enjoy using Flarum [0] forums. They load faster than Discourse ones and feel snappy. [0]: https://flarum.org/ https://flarum.org/

jslakro 2y ago

https://github.com/flarum/flarum https://github.com/flarum/flarum (PHP) https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB (js)