Your thoughs about Discourse?

[katie hunter]

It is currently in beta and it doesn't have all the forum features but it is new and works better in my opinion to keep the discussion going, like more activity. That is what i have noticed.

http://www.discourse.org/

But then again it depends on the community really but i did realize it works better to keep up with the latest discussions. While i like to use it, it is in beta so there bound to be bugs. I've tested it around and i like it personally.

It is free open source but it does have some nice profile and topic features. Have you tried it?

ex http://meta.discourse.org/

[Lynne]

I had never heard of it before. It just looks like another forum software?

[katie hunter]

It is not exactly a forum software, well i can refer to it as a community software more because everything is updated live.

[Zachery]

For short form discussion, its fine. For anything long form, its a bit of a pita. A game I backed on KS is using it, and I'm not a fan of using it day to day to try to find information, or carry on a discussion. Time will tell.

Its not PHP/MySQL though, its Ruby/PGSQL, and it looks like it requires 1GB of ram to run out of the box. Which would mean that you're not going to get away with it on any sort of "shared" hosting. You're looking at a proper VPS, or _very_ good shared host.

[katie hunter]

That is the thing i don't like about it, that it is Ruby/PGSQL. But it does promote conversation much better, since everything is live. I tried it and i like it conversation wise.

I don't think it was meant for finding information more then being used for ongoing discussions about a certain topic. But they do have a search function. I haven't test it though.

[katie hunter]

I've been following the Discourse updates for few month lately and so far it is getting better. It is modern, simple, clean and sleek. Now days communities love simple and sleek appearance (looks at twitter) and the features of conversation are nice.

When it comes out of beta, i am planning on using it and integrating it with our homepage system. https://meta.discourse.org/

I've suggested to them to add social features with feeds like twitter and our homepage http://i.imgur.com/12hhUKL.png and they are open to these new ideas and suggestions. So if they were to be implemented, it would definitely be a step forward over VB, Xenforo and IPB since i never see any of the 3 taking a different approach, other than keeping the basic forum functions and features with all their updates. They just don't want to take that next level of social sharing between your friends, followers and the public.

A Discover tab with hashtag # feature and @ feature is a very unique feature that is important and fun for users as well. Everyone likes to share something with his friends and followers and for that shared stuff to be reblogged/retweet, favorites or liked, it always encourages more activity as well.

[setishock]

Live? Redefines "server intensive". Your bandwidth usage alone is going to be out of this world.

[katie hunter]

Originally Posted by setishock

Live? Redefines "server intensive". Your bandwidth usage alone is going to be out of this world.

I don't think that is true or else they wouldn't have launched it and many people would be using it on a VPS. There is also caching features. The developers who are behind it, worked for Microsoft and are the creators of http://stackexchange.com/ , http://blog.discourse.org/2013/02/the-discourse-team/ I think Discourse and their team will have a very bright future, given how they are adopting similar approaches to Twitter and it is an open source project.

I personally was hopping to see VB being distinctive by taking a unique approach similar to this when it comes to sharing, discovering and feeds like Twitter but it is not happening. Xenforo, Vbulletin and IPB will all compete for the same old known forum features, they won't try something new in 2014.

But now days premium bandwidth isn't expensive. If you look at http://www.webhostingtalk.com you can find pretty good deals server wise with bandwidth from 15TB to 30TB dedicated bandwidth for your dedicated server which comes with your server.

Sounds great for a server deal?

Intel Dual e5645 12/24HT cores, 96gb ram, 2x 256gb SSD's $189
All of these come with a free 1gbps port and 30TB outbound traffic!

See this section for many offers, or ask around http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=36

[setishock]

Katie, darlin', the point I'm trying to make is if you have to have a Dedicated Server with outrageous amounts of bandwidth, 30 or 40TB, then this software is not for the average Joe and Jane. The package you posted is $189.00 a month. That's $2268.00 a year. Unless you sell ad space and make a killing off it, it's not cost effective.

And the unlimited scrolling doesn't work all the time on some browsers. I use IE10 and at www.wallbase.net, he uses the unlimited scrolling. Trying to find just one little item means you have to scroll through all that mess to find it. And sometimes the browser complaints about it.

And the coder used to work for MicroSoft? Well, that explains a lot. Outrageous hosting requirements and clunky software.

[katie hunter]

I've had that first impression last year, when i heard about discourse but later found many communities liking it. In general, that is what many webmasters would be seeking, building great communities :0)

I know several sites which runs it using a vps not even dedicated, but true you would need to have ads to generate your server fees, and i think now days that is not as hard as 7 years ago. Of course discourse is not for everyone, just for those who sees that it will actually work for them by creating a decent to a big community.

Endless scrolling is not fun when i first looked at it but later I found that this wasn't the point for many communities, the point is to keep an ongoing different active discussions.

https://meta.discourse.org/t/beginne...g-docker/12156

It is been a year since they launch it, so i would say give them more time to implement a strong search function and may be a pagination option for those who don't like to scroll up/down, that shouldn't be an issue. But then Twitter is all about scrolling up and down, there isn't pagination, and it is very popular. Same with G+ and FB, we have to scroll up and down for new feeds.