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Forem Self-Host

forem.dev

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Re: Forem Self-Host

#21

Post by Macha »

warglebargle wrote: post #19
gizdan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ever since Discourse set the standard for "good self-hosted open source forum software," I know this is besides your point, but I wouldn't credit Discourse with any standards but horrible UX. It's the worse of (new) Reddit combined with the worst of forum software. Horrendous.

Have you used reddit lately? you can’t even read a lot of it without downloading the app

New Reddit is clearly a reference to desktop reddit, though yes, mobile reddit is intentionally even worse to push you to the app (it can be trivially defeated by requesting desktop mode though, or there's always i.reddit.com ).

Re: Forem Self-Host

#22

Post by mmcclure »

canadaduane wrote: post #3

I'm a big fan of software that makes better communities possible online. Ever since Discourse set the standard for "good self-hosted open source forum software," I've always wished there were something simpler to deploy. However, my first impression of Forem is, "this software looks complicated." Can anyone more familiar briefly speak to the trade-offs that were made? Why podman, butane, ansible? Most communities are…

I'd be curious to hear more about where you see the rough edges are around Discourse deployment, particularly for a simple use-case. I kicked off a single-node Discourse installation a few years ago and it's happily run ever since with just an occasional machine resize. The community that installation supports isn't _that_ trivial, imo, and consistently hits 5 figure monthly actives (a lot of whom are very, very active).

My experience overall has been that, for a project supported by a company that wants you to pay them to run the software, it's almost _too_ easy to run. One click upgrades in the client, generally fantastic documentation and resources for when you need to go deeper, and a really solid story (albeit time consuming) for the situation when you need to transition from the one-click-style installation to multi-node. Personally I've found Discourse to be so simple to install and relatively painless to manage over the years that I'd honestly be shocked to find something better in that regard.

Re: Forem Self-Host

#23

Post by [deleted] »

Macha wrote: post #21
warglebargle wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used reddit lately? you can’t even read a lot of it without downloading the app

New Reddit is clearly a reference to desktop reddit, though yes, mobile reddit is intentionally even worse to push you to the app (it can be trivially defeated by requesting desktop mode though, or there's always i.reddit.com ).

[deleted]

Re: Forem Self-Host

#25

Post by NmAmDa »

gabereiser wrote: post #7

What’s the reason there isn’t a docker compose-able way to run this? Did I miss something? I like the software, and congrats on making it available to all. Wish there was a simple compose up option.

They don't use docker but podman.

Re: Forem Self-Host

#26

Post by 0des »

bhalp1 wrote: post #16
0des wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it would be nice to have these things, think about it: this isn't a product someone is selling us, they were doing their own thing making something that worked for them and stopped and thought "dang I bet the other nerds out there would use this" and then did what they could to open source it. That in itself this is generous, and nowhere does it imply any other types of agreement. Does that make some of us sad?…

This is true— But also, we will support the journey towards being 100% cloud agnostic— It just wasn't worth holding up this release to get it all perfect. Nothing is deeply cloud-specific in the core stack— Opportunities to go cloud agnostic are there, we just might have to do it via contribution, as we have a few important projects on the go with conflict with the time this would take. But it's open source, and it w…

Thanks for everything you do, we really appreciate it! Good job, team!

Re: Forem Self-Host

#27

Post by wmf »

NmAmDa wrote: post #25
gabereiser wrote: post #7

What’s the reason there isn’t a docker compose-able way to run this? Did I miss something? I like the software, and congrats on making it available to all. Wish there was a simple compose up option.

They don't use docker but podman.

One would hope that their container images are also compatible with real Docker. As for compose, that sounds like a nice project for the community.

Re: Forem Self-Host

#28

Post by edoceo »

chrismorgan wrote: post #20
gizdan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ever since Discourse set the standard for "good self-hosted open source forum software," I know this is besides your point, but I wouldn't credit Discourse with any standards but horrible UX. It's the worse of (new) Reddit combined with the worst of forum software. Horrendous.

More recently they’ve made it work without JavaScript. I disable JavaScript by default for various reasons (but more about performance than privacy), and I’ve actually stopped enabling JavaScript for Discourse because I prefer its functionality that way.

I'm surprised, in 2021, to find a robust app like Discourse that even works w/o JS. Cheers to that team.

Re: Forem Self-Host

#29

Post by tbonesteaks »

gabereiser wrote: post #7

What’s the reason there isn’t a docker compose-able way to run this? Did I miss something? I like the software, and congrats on making it available to all. Wish there was a simple compose up option.

You can. In the repo there is

> bin/container-setup

You just need to copy the .env_sample file to .env. I ran it on my Mac and worked right out the gate to poke around locally.

Re: Forem Self-Host

#30

Post by jdoss »

wmf wrote: post #27
NmAmDa wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't use docker but podman.

One would hope that their container images are also compatible with real Docker. As for compose, that sounds like a nice project for the community.

The containers should work fine with Docker or Podman.
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