+1 on the discourse: Is anyone using it, like at all, except discourse? I have been waiting since it came for it to become a place for everything that Stack Overflow bans (non trivial questions that need discussion, "how can this be done in an elegant way" etc).
<rant>And: Can someone please please create a new stackoverflow that rewards solving problems instead of going full Daesh in destroying old artifacts, enforcing dumb rules etc?</rant>
I tried to use Discourse but the hardware and software requirements combined would have meant a $20+/month VM rather than a $10/month VM:
- Dual core CPU recommended
- 1 GB RAM minimum (with swap)
- 64 bit Linux compatible with Docker
- Postgres 9.3+ (2 GB RAM min?).
- Redis 2.6+
- Ruby 2.0+ (we recommend 2.0.0-p353 or higher)
Ultimately I wound up putting PHPBB with a different skin back on the server, since it just requires MySQL, PHP, and any web server.
Plus Discourse has a lot of strange features (e.g. auto-mod promotion) and it feels like it is still in beta based on the feedback they get on their own forums.
And don't get me started on the docker-based setup. If you want a local native install (no docker container) well, you cannot. Docker or nothing.
The whole product feels extremely convoluted and over-engineered.
Yup. I had pretty much the same problems, except I didn't even get to installing because the requirements put me off.
I just wanted something that sucks less than PHPBB or SMF, you know? But this thing mainly seems more bloated, and the live demos didn't really quite convince me of the "sucks less" part either.
One thing I haven't even been able to test yet, once you have it running, how much is there to configure in order to tone it down? Because if you want to run a forum for pretty much anything but a tech audience, I would like to get rid of all the "dynamic" and "interactive" javascript stuff. Because it really makes it less interactive/dynamic for people on old, low-powered computers. They need basic HTML full page reloads (assuming the HTML is somewhat lean--leaner than PHPBB/SMF preferably :) ).
Because the unique thing about forums, that still gives them relevance in the 2010s, is that you can gather a community with extremely specialized niche knowledge. If the person who knows everything about, I dunno, stained glass dyes, psychogeography or uh Sumerian breakfast recipes, just happens to have a really old machine you don't tell them to upgrade or suck it, because he or she may be one of the only people in the world with the particular expert niche-in-niche knowledge that brings invaluable quality to the forum, much more than having a shiny slick UI that looks buttersmooth on a new laptop.
<rant>And: Can someone please please create a new stackoverflow that rewards solving problems instead of going full Daesh in destroying old artifacts, enforcing dumb rules etc?</rant>