Are you referring to discourse.org?
Whilst its true the word forum is used in combination with the word community on Discourses’ homepage, they clearly showcase their customers, features and testimonials which are very important in the consumer decision making process. I agree with Hawk here - it is quite clear.
If I was an individual that needed a community I would be convinced by the website and if I still wasn’t sure I could make use of the free trial.
Back to your point about marketing a ‘neoforum’. Like I said before, I believe that Discourse had already reinvented forums as that’s the whole purpose of Discourse: to make discussion on the internet a better place.
I’ve thought of some things you might want to change from a clunky old forum and expect to see in your neoforum. Then see if Discourse does it already.
- Use a clean UI/UX
- Include features like AI
- Allow indepth customisations
- Replace words like ‘thread’ with ‘Topic’ etc. See Discourse nomenclature here
- Allow you to keep your data
- create videos that showcase the software. See Discourses’ YouTube channel.