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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

#31

Post by DrillShopper »

Jsttan wrote: post #15
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?

A link to this page is buried (nearly hidden) under all of their monthly cloud plans: https://invisioncommunity.com/buy/self-hosted/

So you can self host but they'd rather make recurring revenue from you.

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

#32

Post by CRConrad »

IWeThey is among the best, probably the best, Web forums I know. It has one killer feature that HN sorely lacks: It shows edit history, edited posts have a link to show all previous versions.

AFAICR it's open source; I think there is (or at least used to be?) a link to the code on the front page. If not, get in touch with the author, Scott A. (username “Malraux”).

https://www.iwethey.org/

HTH!

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

#33

Post by lizzas »

lobsterthief wrote: post #24
Jsttan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Discourse can be self-hosted as well

Shared hosting usually doesn't have docker or a vm available to you. Often you get to upload PHP, maybe Node, Ruby or Pyhon too and accept all their opinionated defaults. Often this makes it incompatiable with anything not specifically designed for shared hosting.

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

#34

Post by memhole »

codingclaws wrote: post #26
memhole wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any suggestions on deploying? I looked over the readme. I’m not understanding how to go from clone to cloud. Meetup sucks and I’m wondering if this might be a good replacement for local groups.

Yeah, here is what you need to do: - install Node.js, Redis and PostgreSQL - start the Redis server - start PostgreSQL, create a database and run structure.sql: https://github.com/ferg1e/comment-castles/blob/master/sql/st... - get all the source code for the actual app (ie. the code from the comment castles repo) - figure out all your environment variables (the ones I list in the README) - now you can run the node ap…

Thanks! I’ll check it out

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

#35

Post by KaustubhKatdare »

Jsttan wrote: post #14
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.

Why not use an existing software?

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

#36

Post by rgovostes »

lizzas wrote: post #4

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

Discourse is great software with one dark pattern that I absolutely loathe: by default, it turns on an obnoxious setting to send you digest emails when you stop visiting a forum.

So when you sign up for a forum to ask a single question and then move on, rather than correctly infer you are not interested in the forum anymore, they start sending you low-value emails until you get tired enough of them to login and change the setting.

If you run a Discourse, please change the default setting. Don’t use lame growth hacking features to nudge people into participating in a community they don’t want to be a part of.

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

#40

Post by Jsttan »

KaustubhKatdare wrote: post #35
Jsttan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not use an existing software?

Well making my own software would let me create my own features that I need, understand the codebase better and etc, and possibility create features that other software do not supported at the moment.
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