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Looking for the best forum software to start a new forum community in 2025

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Looking for the best forum software to start a new forum community in 2025

#14

Post by Jsttan »

krapp wrote: post #5

I mean the obvious answer, given that this is HN, is that you should make it yourself. A basic text forum in PHP wouldn't be super difficult. But practically speaking, and unfortunately, hosted forums are a dead technology. All of the attention is on social media, Discord and federated solutions like Mastodon and Lemmy. If what you actually want to do is create a community rather than write software, you could consid…

Hi! Thanks for your comment. I also plan to create one myself, but I plan to deploy an existing forum software first, before moving on my own software. I want to use a hosted forums as it is easier to moderate, as well as hosted forum can give us some autonomy, without at the hands of big social media like Discord and Reddit, and we could made it to the benefit of the community based on what the community want.

Re: Looking for the best forum software to start a new forum community in 2025

#15

Post by Jsttan »

reaperducer wrote: post #9

InVision lets you self-host when you're small, then move to its cloud when you grow: https://invisioncommunity.com/ It's been around for decades, and allows your forum to be part of the real, open internet. Not locked behind some Discord or Facebook wall.

Just curious, I has noticed that it is only possible to host it on their cloud, and doesn't have any autonomy to host the forum myself?

Re: Looking for the best forum software to start a new forum community in 2025

#17

Post by Jsttan »

Hi guys. I just noticed that this post has a Reddit post on the front text. I originally made this post for Reddit actually, but I taught of hearing feedback here too, so I cross-posted it here. I forgot that the title of the text which is 'Reddit post' is also copied. If you guys have any recommendations or feedback for me, I would love to hear it. I sincerely apologise.

Re: Looking for the best forum software to start a new forum community in 2025

#18

Post by Jsttan »

meetingthrower wrote: post #10
lizzas wrote: post #4

Discourse may be worth considering https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/docs/INSTAL...

seconded. I love forums that use this. Easy to spin up as well.

I agreed. But I plan to run this forum on a shared hosting through, and I don't think it is possible.

Re: Looking for the best forum software to start a new forum community in 2025

#19

Post by Jsttan »

moralestapia wrote: post #11

Flarum is great [1]. Looks good, works on mobile, continuously updated. Try it out. Edit: Oh wow, downvoted for posting a good recommendation? 1: https://flarum.org/

I agreed (but I posted here to get some feedback). But I don't think it is continuously updated, as I noticed their update progress is quite slow through.
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