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Slant community chat on Discourse| 11 Recommended Products | Recommendations | Databases | Written in | Database |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 Discourse· · · | 37 | 14 | PostgreSQL with Redis | Ruby | – |
| #2 NodeBB· · · | 22 | 3 | Redis or MongoDB, others can be added with plugins | Node.js | – |
| #3 Flarum· · · | 6 | 1 | MySQL | PHP | – |
| #4 Vanilla· · · | 5 | 7 | MySQL (or Percona/MariaDB equivalent) | PHP | – |
| #5 AsmBB· · · | 2 | 0 | None required | x86 Linux ASM | – |
| #6 XenForo· · · | 5 | 4 | MySQL | PHP | – |
Pro Modern & polished UI/UX with lots of great smaller features
The best feature is its design: discourse is designed to aid in the creation of high quality online conversations. Flat discussions with well implemented quoting systems, expandable/collapsible replies, infinite scroll, clean UI and many more features come together to form a highly polished forum e...
Pro 100% free and fully open source
Discourse is powered by Ruby on Rails, Ember.js, PostgreSQL and Redis. The code is licensed under GPL and available on GitHub.
Pro Has a built-in immune system from trolls, spammers and bad actors
Discourse has a simple user trust system that makes moderating the forum a lot easier. Users gain more permissions as they gain more trust, which limits the amount of damage spammers and trolls can do. Discourse co-founder Jeff Atwood also founded StackExchange, which is the gold standard for gamif...
Con Complicated setup
Compared to standard PHP+MySQL apps, Discourse is more complicated - the app lives in a Docker container. However, a Docker image is available, which reduces the setup time to about 30 minutes.
Con Bad noscript support
When using a Discourse forum without scripts the experience is greatly reduced. It's really hard to use and is read-only, meaning that one can't comment or create threads without scripts.
Pro Has live chat
Private Messages (PMs) are live chats, just like messaging apps, allowing real-time conversations with one or a selection of users.
Pro Free and open source
NodeBB is free for all use cases, although the code is licensed under GPLv3, so the source code must be provided if you are re-distributing (and/or reselling) NodeBB.
Con Very complicated installation process on shared hosts
If you do not have root ssh access or node js installed, it is impossible or very hard to install on shared hosts.
Con Slow development
Development moves at a glacial pace.
Con Very complicated installation process on shared hosts
This is not a MySQL+PHP application. it is impossible or very hard to install on shared hosts compared to vanilla or phpbb.
Pro Easy setup
Vanilla is a MySQL + PHP app and can be set up very easily.
Pro Free and open source
Vanilla is a free PHP+MySQL application that's licensed under GPLv2 with source code available on GitHub.
Con Poor search, unless using Sphinx
The default search that comes with Vanilla produces poor results because it uses MySQL. One needs to investigate integrating with Sphinx for much better results.
Con No post edit history
Old versions of a post are only visible to admins, which may lead to a credibility problem. The amount of time during which users can edit their posts is configurable from a few minutes to indefinitely.
Pro Mobile friendly
AsmBB provides specially optimized skin for mobile browsers, resulting for best UX on any device.
Pro Real-time chat
Since v1.5 AsmBB includes real-time chat in order to allow instant communication between users for themes not suitable for the "message board" format.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Pro Stable
Good stability and functional
Pro Extensible
XenForo is built to be the most extensible and flexible community software ever.
Con Expensive
140$ for simple use, price can reach 610$ for complete system and service
Pro Open Source
It is completely free to use and is licensed with an open source BSD-3 clause license.
Pro Improved Anti Spam measures
Elkarte has BadBehaviour and other measures included into the core to protect your forum from spammers.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Pro Free and open source
Source code is available on GitHub under Apache License.
Pro Slack integration
Plays well with Slack out of the box. Get notifications when users post new stuff or use the /fruum command to query the forum.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Con No post edit history
Posts can be edited for 2.7 minutes. After that, they remain fixed forever. This makes it impossible for the original post to be updated to reflect the current consensus, the latest version of a software being discussed etc.
Con No Self-hosted option
Muut uses a system similar to Disqus where your forum, comments etc. reside on their servers.
Pro Open source
Source code is available on GitHub under GNU General Licence.
Con Slow
Not optimized for slow connections.
Con Outdated look and feel
Even the latest version of the software looks like the typical '90s forums which is now pretty outdated.
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