NodeBB vs. Discourse

Any other thoughts about this topic?

 

Using Discourse for 3 weeks now on my brand new Forum, it works really cool and great.
Feature from default install/no plugin is almost complete forum suite.

My plugins:



Just using the cheapest OVH VPS.
It has bundled a lot of very useful features that XenForo don't have.
Plus the anonymous caching for guest is built-in, wow!

Still waiting XF 2.1, and then decide if I prooced to XF 2.1.x or Discourse for my current big board.

 

Yeah, and I can't say it's bloated forum software.
All the features included are useful or must have plugins from other forum script.

Based on Ruby so can't speak as I'm not a coder at all.

You mean Importer to Discourse?
Yes they support almost all forum software: discourse/discourse

 

I almost converted to discourse from IPB Except there wasn't a converter. I was going to go so far as a start over, leave the old forum on a 'archive', that's how much I hated IPB in the v3 days and the delays in v4, no search to speak of etc. I very begrudgingly upgraded to v4 and it's not been smooth, but hey it's still there, still running...

I'm a ruby dev of over 10 years so happier in that ecosystem (used to do coldfusion, php, asp in the 90/00's). IPB wanting to have access to ftp to view logs, having to ftp files to update, it was, is a step backwards for my dev/ops outlook... It irked me for a long time that fourms were mostly pre-factor 12 based.

But nothing came to replace, and it's a shrinking market now to do what discourse, nodebb did. Shrinking in the sense of investment required to become a challenger to the established gang of options.

Ruby/Ember relies on a lot of magic, or it can feel that way. Even after a decade I can be surprised how a bit of code/process works, or doesn't. Ruby can't be considered a fast language, fast to develop yes, the logic being hardware is far cheaper than developers. But end to end request time was/is still a challenge to be quick like <10ms quick. Certainly in the '07/'15 it was slow as dishwater, caching was almost mandatory. the likes of GO, Crystal and Elixir now really push the envelope and balance between developer productivity and under load/distributed performance. Although few of us truly need that. I'd be happier with 5x2Gb do instances than one 10Gb one.

I think the pattern of <web><api> applications is going to be strong for a period now. Given devices are far more powerful, let them do the work, it's a rehash of the old thin server fat client, which was a reinvention of the fat server, thin client. We'll bounce around that loop for eternity as device/network/server strengths weakness come and go.

I like discourse and agree it's great for conversation/support topics.

Like it or hate it, sadly the world has been polluted by the likes of facebook/youtube comment style interactions. 110 page threads are few and far between now. The conversation the discussion, largely replaced by 'like it' reactions. I could not scroll a thousand page build log, I want to nip to the last 20 comments. But I prefer to scroll a 20/30 reply topic on a specific bug/issue.

On monetisation, I've not looked at the discourse option recently, but if it can run adsense it should be able to run the DFP suite, a complex wrapper to adsense. If it can run that you can direct place/sell ad space, although far more complex in setup/delivery. Failing that you fork it, alter the code, then merge the updates and go, but that's now a support/cost you have to bear.

 

Care to share the link? It will be great to see live example of Discourse, other than the demo site.

 

Discourse customers

 

yes me personally I found a difficulty to configure it under CentOS

 

After 8 years, I'm back to this dilemma again :|

XenForo's future seems not so good after Mike left the company.
Since XF 2.2, 5 years ago, there have been very few meaningful features added

 

Would be nice to see AI features but I don't know if they have anyone with the experience on the team.