Why was XenForo chosen for freeBSD?

dbdemon said:
Personally, I think Xenforo has managed to continue looking like what we tend to associate with an Internet forum, just more modern, whereas Discourse looks more like what we tend to associate with "social media". And that's not what I want when I come to this place.
Click to expand...
I agree with you here.
 
dbdemon said:
Probably because Discourse didn't exist at the time they switched to Xenforo, and because Xenforo seems adequate and maybe even preferable for the job now.

Personally, I think Xenforo has managed to continue looking like what we tend to associate with an Internet forum, just more modern, whereas Discourse looks more like what we tend to associate with "social media". And that's not what I want when I come to this place.
Click to expand...
But still, I prefer Discourse, after that, the look is not really important, but the experience is, the infra structure of a forum is built on is rule and moderation, I have found my experience more smooth on discourse. A good alternative to discourse and xenforo :

Flarum Community

Get support using and extending Flarum, the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun.
discuss.flarum.org discuss.flarum.org

About Flarum | Flarum Documentation

Flarum is a delightfully simple discussion platform for your website. It's fast, free, and easy to use, with all the features you need to run a successful community. It's also extremely extensible, allowing for ultimate customizability.
docs.flarum.org docs.flarum.org
nomagic.uk

Nomagic - Your life, Your data

Forum for your association!
nomagic.uk nomagic.uk
Also there is no clear line that differentiate "social media" and a forum. Its the same thing.
 
nxjoseph said:
I thought it was open source, isn't it? Btw, I was a moderator on a Turkish Linux forum (btt.community) which is using discourse but after using xenforo here, I think that xenforo is better imo.
Click to expand...
You are right, I confused Discourse with Discord.

Why FreeBSD does not use Discourse is probably because

a) it is based on Ruby on Rails and
b) you will get only szpport when nunning from a Docker container.
c) installing it ffrom scratch without docker is possible but s a PITA and updating it then a nightmare.
 
hardworkingnewbie said:
You are right, I confused Discourse with Discord.

Why FreeBSD does not use Discourse is probably because

a) it is based on Ruby on Rails and
b) you will get only szpport when nunning from a Docker container.
c) installing it ffrom scratch without docker is possible but s a PITA and updating it then a nightmare.
Click to expand...
What about flarum ?
 
Flarum? Well, I am not involved in running this forum, so I can only speak from my point of view.

I've once evaluated Flarum for a personal project, this was v1 though. There were too many features not included I consider myself as necessary for a modern forum to run a community such as this one.

Some might be included in the v2 beta, which is in the making right now. But then again this is still a beta, and of course nothing a forum like here should be run with. Back at v1 there was too much stuff I do consider core functionality of a forum in plugins only, if so. And that's not a good way to run a platform when some of these plugins are 3rd party stuff.

For example the ability to send direct messages was a plugin in Flarum v1. This is for me a core feature of a forum software.

IMHO Flarum is a software which you can use to run small to medium sized projects. But for something like here it is lacking too much stuff in order to give a great experience.
 
I've been on low-bandwidth cellular for a little while; forums using Discourse would initially load to a triple-dot loading screen, sit there for a minute doing something, then load. FreeBSD forums currently just load quick and simple :p
 
dbdemon said:
.. whereas Discourse looks more like what we tend to associate with "social media". And that's not what I want when I come to this place.
Click to expand...
100% agree.

I recently dipped my toe into the Home Assistant world and when the forums page loaded I was like .. great .. Discourse.
 
SirDice said:
We started off on phpBB, but updating it proved to be quite a chore, especially with regards to various anti-spam plugins we used.
Click to expand...
Sorry SirDice .. the first public incarnation of forums.freebsd.org was vbulletin for several years before the change to phpBB:


I know it was a heavy lift to move from vbulletin to phpBB to xenforo but it sure has stood the test of time.
 
johnblue said:
the first public incarnation of forums.freebsd.org was vbulletin for several years before the change to phpBB
Click to expand...
I remember fun times of acquiring that and IPB back in the day :p

I thought they were cooler for being paid, but eventually found phpBB and myBB to work fine. I don't recall anything with phpBB to not use it, but my last forum set-up was myBB.
 
Of all the modern forum software, IPB is the most pleasant one in my (strange) opinion. However, I really don't like Discourse, NodeBB and/or Flarum either. Using them with a command-line browser is almost impossible, long discussions are hard to follow, the "design" isn't my cup of tea and they feel more like chats than like discussion platforms.

edit: The FreeBSD forums, 2009.
 
johnblue said:
Sorry SirDice .. the first public incarnation of forums.freebsd.org was vbulletin for several years before the change to phpBB
Click to expand...
You're right. Must have entirely blocked it out of my memory. Looking through the wayback machine it had been running vBulletin for a lot longer than we did on phpBB. Perception of time is really weird when you have AD/HD.
 
SirDice said:
You're right. Must have entirely blocked it out of my memory.
Click to expand...
No worries .. after the complete unusability and collapse of bsdforums.org it was a pretty rough patch for the community there for a while. Props to daemonforums.org as they really tried hard to fill the void but, honestly, IMO it was freebsd.org's mantle to assume all along.

My only regret is that I did not know about forums.freebsd.org when it was opened up .. could have got a lowerrr userid.

:p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top