I quite dislike the direction that this conversation is heading towards. The original scope of this topic was a general comparison between Flarum and Discourse.
Since then, the discussion has moved towards a lot of negativity towards Flarum and its developers. That’s not right, and I don’t support that.
If Discourse works for your community… great. If Flarum works for your community, that’s great too.
There’s no need to call someone’s work and effort “stupid” because it doesn’t work for you.
On a separate note:
I’ll keep this simple. The interface in Discourse being “simple” is an intentional decision.
The default Discourse theme is simple because we want it to be simple. This allows sites to customize it with ease.
Think of it as a blank canvas
If you want to create a painting… would you rather have a canvas with someone else’s work, or would you rather have a brand new canvas for you to create whatever you want?
That’s the mentality we have. So, yes… the default theme in Discourse is very simple.
But, the theme system is very powerful. You can literally do whatever.
Check out some of the themes here.
Discourse customers | Discourse - Civilized Discussion
This barely scratches the surface for the amount of customisability Discourse themes offer. Having a more opinionated default theme would hinder that.
To wrap this up:
If there are any nice features you would like to see in Discourse, create a topic in the #feature category.
If you want to customize Discourse or add new features to your site, start here.
Beginner's guide to using Discourse Themes
Developer’s guide to Discourse Themes
Designer's Guide to Discourse Themes
How to make CSS changes on your site
Beginner's Guide to Creating Discourse Plugins Part 1: Creating a basic plugin
You can also check the existing themes/components/plugins here on Meta
If you don’t have the time to customize your site, feel free to create a topic in the #marketplace category, and you’ll get a few quotes from our freelance community developers.
With all of that said. I think this topic has served its purpose. It’s been open since 2017, and almost all the unique ideas related to comparing Discourse and Flarum have been shared.
So, I’m closing it now.