Thank you Discourse for doing an incredible job! I migrated a phpBB forum that has been around since 2001, and went through all the changes in upgrading through the phpbb lifecycle. The community that I support is extremely grateful for the software and I would like to extend my appreciations and thanks!
47 Likes
Yes, Discourse is the best.
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Around 5 years back, I wanted something like question answer type site/android app for my local community. I wasn’t in position to spend much. But I wished something like helping forums. I tried finding developers/helpers on Freelancer.com etc, but they asked me around INR 50k to 100K.
And so I spent many days googling. And I thank God that I happen to stumble upon ‘Discourse’ as luck would have it.
I was really astonished to find that on Discourse when somebody answered to an existing post, then viewers of that existing topic weren’t required to even ‘Refresh’ the page to see the newly added answer. (and the concept of try.discourse.com was something that I never had seen before) I really tell the truth, I was very much astonished to see all this, and that too ‘White Labelled’. To me, such a ware must’ve costed many lakhs, as I think.
Finally, it really needs too-too much-much courage and determination to offer something like this not only free, but white-labelled. At least I can’t come even to close something like this, even at my level.
Edit1: After getting a few views of this reply of mine, I’d like to add one more thing, which I think is equally important, if not more. The discourse volunteer community. And out of this, one star above all, is Pfaffman Jay (I deliberately didn’t make it a link to call him here). 5 years back, when I was building MY site, he used to give so much of his time and his expertise to every asker, without any concrete gain to himself, that few other people can. And since he is helping people on this meta even today, I can presume that he has a helping gene in his body which few other have. To me, had he (and 1 other person, whose identity I forgot now) wasn’t there, I couldn’t have upped my ‘D’ site and had left in first one month only (wordpress setup seemed far far more easier to me in the beginning). And I’m sure there would be hundreds of more souls like me, who’d have quit with Discourse, if such help wasn’t available to them on time.
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Yeah, discouse is a great software as it has many useful features and quick help
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Discourse is living, breathing, growing, thriving software. For me, such a pleasure every single day.
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Incredible piece of software and the support is absolutely incredible. Discourse team has motivated me to be fully dedicated to my community which has brought a lot of joy to a lot of users. Thank you for being an inspiration and a constant supporter of decentralized communities.
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I’m watching community engagement grow and it’s very heart-warming. Folks can focus on discussions without having to wait for the website to load, or log out once mid-post.
Most important aspect is the security. PhpBB, for all it’s awesomeness, had a lot of security vulnerabilities. For where the site runs, security is extremely important. We had to add layers, upon layers of security to keep the PhpBB site running. EVERYTHING, I mean EVERYTHING was an issue. It was frustrating every day dealing with the firewall, backups, etc… the phpBB database was also bloated due to the PhpBB Word Match table. It was horrible. I maintained the site because there were no alternatives, but my gosh, how easy and enjoyable this is.
It’s also re-assuring to see that Discourse was able to get a business model going that seems to support development of software. I haven’t been to market place, but I’m sure I would if I was operating a business vice an all-volunteer community. The hosting and configuration support offered from Discourse is re-assuring because the rates are reasonable, and it helps reassure me that development will be supported into the future since the company can stay financially healthy. PhpBB dried up because there wasn’t a lot in it, and folks do need to put food on the table. Only exception I saw was Fully Loaded PhpBB… but that had a lot of performance issues.
All-in-all…very appreciative to the community.
3 Likes