Discourse forum software upgrade

[Chendy]

Hi

Im sure there are many reasons not to, but check out https://www.discourse.org/ for a superior forum experience. Its open source and gaining popularity http://www.discourse.org/faq/customers/

cheers

[yorik]

Yes I like discourse a lot... The problem of course would be the transition from our current forum. Maybe we could test it some day...

[jmaustpc]

I don't know if it is a good idea or not. What is it like to administer? How fast is it with a forum of our size? I assume it will still allow files to be attached to posts, it says it can optionally import attachments so I suppose it does. Can our current hosting service supply it or can we install it on their server?

I found these links that show to import PHPBB into Discourse
http://learndiscourse.org/importing-from-phpbb3/

and

https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing- ... pbb3/30810

Sounds like it would take a while to import with such a large forum as we have though.


I think transitioning would be a big deal, we would need a good reason to make the effort worth while, and of course someone/s who are willing and able to do it.

[dimitar]

As a fairly new user of this forum, and a regular user of multiple discourse forum sites, I am surprised how much easier discourse has made online forum communication. For example, Bart from blendernation/blenderartists said that since switching blenderartists to discourse, the site receives twice as many responses as it did before. It also seems that the platform has some great moderator features - https://blenderartists.org/t/blender-ar ... ld/1159306

blenderartists had a kickstarter campaign to migrate the old forum into discourse. However, there are other instances where, an old forum has been kept for archival purposes without transitioning it - https://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum and the new https://discourse.mcneel.com/

[Kunda1]

Another great example of a really good use of discourse and FOSS is https://discuss.pixls.us

The problem is that the FreeCAD source code/bug tracker/forum/git repos (FreeCAD and 3rd party) all link back to the phpbb forum. This also includes google searches and ranking etc... so changing to discourse would need to address all this 'breakage'

[Joyas]

I prefer the current implementation (phpBB), also, I hate the "infinite scroll" pages.

[yorik]

My opinion is that phpbb (as well as mediawiki ) is an old dinosaur, complicated to maintain and upgrade. For both these apps, I would find it good to switch to something better at some point, i like discourse a lot too. But also, these are very complex migrations, indeed all our "web history" (the links to this forum all over the web) would vanish, etc...

So these things need to be thought and done very carefully.

The forum doesn't seem such a high priority to me... It's not the best forum in the world but it serves us well enough for now... I would prefer to start with the wiki, actually, for ex. migrate it to some git-based structure

[dimitar]

Good to know the current priorities.

In the possible future, leaving the forum as is without the ability to post further, and starting with a blank discourse forum could be a solution? This way all the links throughout the web are kept intact.

Just to mention a few more issues with the current forum: posting images is very cumbersome currently and the forum's format is not really suitable, as it seems images are pushed to the width of the forum, meaning that posts take up way too much space. Whereas the format in discourse is much more friendly towards posting images/gifs, as they are kept in the 600px or so width, with the ability to click and see them in full screen. Also, in discourse, if there is an image on the clipboard, it can be pasted directly in the post, as opposed to uploading it.

Search and notifications also work really well in discourse.

[chrisb]

as it seems images are pushed to the width of the forum, meaning that posts take up way too much space.

I cannot confirm, see e.g. https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 10#p318542

[dimitar]

as it seems images are pushed to the width of the forum, meaning that posts take up way too much space.

I cannot confirm, see e.g. https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 10#p318542

I see. Yes, i guess the images don't get pushed out, but when having larger snapshots, which browsing through the forums, many users seem to place, the images are shown within the max boundaries of the width of the forum text space, which makes it quite hard to read when there are many images.

I would prefer to start with the wiki, actually, for ex. migrate it to some git-based structure

What are the current thoughts on the wiki? i tried to search the forum but couldn't find wiki discussions related to the actual wiki update process
Github-pages/Jykill? Hugo? Gitpress? Gatsby?

The new Blender wiki (https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Main_Page) is apparently still using mediawiki. - https://devtalk.blender.org/t/info-abou ... -wiki/8209