Ask HN: Is there any simple, clean and well-designed forum solution out there?

7 points by c2prods 11 years ago | 14 comments

Why nobody made a proper forum, with a good UX/UI? Discourse is the closest existing software but it's not well designed, user profiles are a pain in the a… Something as well-designed as branch.com but that you could use privately. Any ideas?

phantom_oracle 11 years ago |

You are seeking a solution to a non-existing problem.

People seem quite content using shitty-looking forums.

Measure ease-of-use as 1 of the key elements.

No point making a great UI/UX when nobody knows where the login is.

MalcolmDiggs 11 years ago |

I think it's just a problem people moved on from awhile ago. There were a few years when building a forum-solution (as a wordpress plugin or a standalone solution like VBulletin or PHPbb) was good business. But these days, who would you be building it for exactly? Many of the popular forums are either perfectly happy with their old solution, or are running on something completely custom.

c2prods 11 years ago |

I'll answer everybody here but I was thinking about something I could use for a company. A place where you can both talk and manage people - a bit like Discourse but with proper profile management. I don't think people are used to shitty forums, I think they accept it because of a lack of other solutions. But thanks for the recommendations, I'll give it a look.

mneil 11 years ago |

Have you checked out Muut https://muut.com/? It's completely customizable with CSS, uses a lightweight javascript client, minimal design and focuses on the conversation (text). You can also use it privately. That requires a subscription. It's a hosted service.

Disclaimer: I work there.

ddorian43 11 years ago | |

It's so trendy you can't even rightclick-newtab with it.

Why haven't you guys customized the scrollbar ? It would be way COOLER. Probably change the speed, so it can be personalized for your forum.

And why not an infinite-scroll ? Who needs pages anyway.

No javascript? Are you a scraper? Fuck off neanderthal!

You need a link of the thread? Go search for it dummy.

Only thing left to do is to break the back button.

mneil 11 years ago | | |

It's hard to read get your actual points through your comments but I'll try to address what I can.

Right-click new tab is available when you click the link icon available from the burger when hovering a title. That burger holds sharing options. That also holds a link to the thread.

Click the bubble with the number of posts at the bottom to keep loading comments. We've found most people don't need or want pages. The search is typically good enough and new/active threads are bubbled to the top so you're not constantly searching for that active thread you were on last night.

We also send email digests while you're away from the forum to keep you informed on new replies. You can watch/unwatch any post or subscribe to all new posts.

Muut combines forums and commenting and works really well for aggregating comment threads on blogs, for example. Many of our users use it support as well. It also works great as a standalone forum. Is it vBulletin? No, but that's on purpose and in an attempt to make online conversation better. So no, it doesn't look like the traditional forum of the 90s.

As for c2prods updated response I'm not sure how much profile management c2prods needs. That's one of the areas we're currently working hard on along with ACL. Muut isn't the right fit for everyone; but it is a legitimate suggestion to the original post.

mneil 11 years ago | | |

I forgot to mention that a static index is generated under the /i/ prefix https://muut.com/i/moot of each forum for SEO and reading when there is no javascript available. But, to contribute on the forum you will need to have javascript enabled.

jordsmi 11 years ago |

Idk if it's just because I am used to it or what, but I love the old forums. They don't look the best but I enjoy using t hem. When I try to use discourse or something similar I have no idea what I am doing.

doug1001 11 years ago |

so i believe one of the StackExchange founders left full time work at SE to build a start-up directed to here. (http://www.discourse.org/). i I think this was maybe two years ago--no idea about their product.

brudgers 11 years ago | |

Jeff Atwood created Discus. The poster is explicitly looking for alternatives.

c2prods 11 years ago | | |

I quite like discuss but I need a better user management…

avinassh 11 years ago |

Have you looked at Xenforo? I find it fine.

creyes123 11 years ago |

I have spent many hours looking, only to come up empty. Discourse looks great, but I do not like Ruby and it runs like a fat pig with a lame leg. In other words, it needs decent hardware and careful tuning to get it to run well. Their only supported platform is Docker under Ubuntu, which is a bit restrictive. All the PHP forums look ancient and I hate PHP with a passion, too.

I would love to have something like the D language forums (http://forum.dlang.org/). Very snappy performance. But last time I checked there was no documentation whatsoever for the software.

Muut is an option, but I much prefer hosting it myself. Less expensive and more control.

I would love to see an open source forum coded in a high performance safe language like Haskell. In another year or two, Rust might be an option, too.

I get so frustrated about it, that sometimes I dream of launching a Kickstarter campaign. That is how the blogging platform Ghost got started, and it looks to have worked for them.