New to Discourse, have some questions :)

[vovata]

Hello guys!

I want to migrate my current community to another platform because I have some serious performance problems. In order to migrate it, I need to make sure that some of the core features that are available at the moment will be available after the migration too.

I have a sports hub platform on WordPress with the BuddyBoss plugin and theme, with 18000+ members (most of them are very active). The point of the platform is for people to find other people with whom they can play sports like football, basketball, volleyball, box (or other martial arts), tennis, dancing etc.

The platform also has 3 types of profiles - Players, Coaches and Playground/Hall owners. So, upon registration, the user can choose which type of profile he wants to create. Based on his choice, the profile may have some unique custom fields. For example, the players have Sports category, Location, Gender, Age, and Available time. Users can browse 3 user directories - one for each profile type and filter users based on these unique fields. When they find a user which fulfils the reqs, they can contact him by messaging or just following him (add him as a friend).

Besides the user directory and users’ communication, the hub has groups (1 for each sports category), where they can freely talk about it, and invite other members. Usually, they use these groups to organize some matchups or tournaments even though the platform doesn’t support such functionality.

I haven’t monetized the platform yet but probably in the near future, I will need to put some symbolic subscription plan for 1$ a month and lock a function or two behind it. At least to cover my server expenses and the free time that I am spending on it. Also, I want to integrate some kind of tournament functionality and gamification where users get points or badges based on their achievements (on the playground or in the hall).

Is this possible with Discourse and some extensions, without custom work (as I am not a dev)?

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

@vovata

The platform also has 3 types of profiles - Players, Coaches and Playground/Hall owners. So, upon registration, the user can choose which type of profile he wants to create. Based on his choice, the profile may have some unique custom fields. For example, the players have Sports category, Location, Gender, Age, and Available time. Users can browse 3 user directories - one for each profile type and filter users based on these unique fields. When they find a user which fulfils the reqs, they can contact him by messaging or just following him (add him as a friend).

There is no means to have different sets of custom fields for different types of users. You might be able to hide them with CSS, but how to let a user select which type of account it is might be tricky.

@vovata

Besides the user directory and users’ communication, the hub has groups (1 for each sports category), where they can freely talk about it, and invite other members. Usually, they use these groups to organize some matchups or tournaments even though the platform doesn’t support such functionality.

No problem. How to create private categories using category permission / security settings might help.

@vovata

Is this possible with Discourse and some extensions,

Yes.

@vovata

without custom work (as I am not a dev)?

No. A wild guess is $250-$1000, depending on how much you want things to be exactly the same as they were before. For example, there is Discourse Calendar, which might be how users could publish their availability rather than having it be in their profile. So there could be some ways to solve the same problem, but it’d be very different from how it’s working now. This will make some of your users sad because change is hard.