The team that brought us StackOverfow have built a new type of forum software and released it as open source.
Its called Discourse, check it out here or go to the sandbox to try it out.
I know you probably aren’t looking for extra work, but oh my… this stuff is sexy as fuck.
wat is this just a forum and they call the threads “converstations”?
Personally, I like the current vBulletin software more. The other looks a bit too much like it is meant for more instantaneous thoughts rather than the deeper discussions we get into here. It also just isn’t as nicely organized. It displays too much information. I’m sure a lot of this can be changed, but my point still stands. It does look nice, but I don’t think that it’s right for this forum.
Dear lord, it’s hideous!
Phil, as forum software, yes, but as something like StackOverflow, I don’t think so.
Whoa… wait what?
Man, I missed of missed something big!
Hey, we do have some deep discussions :p. They may not all be worthwhile or relevant, but people often delve deep into topics and have long discussions
It wouldn’t really work as a forum software at all. My description of it as hideous was in the context of it being used for a site like StackOverflow or UnityAnswers. While UnityAnswers has its problems, and I would say StackOverflow has a much nicer layout and usability, I’d take Unity Answers over what I can see of discourse any day of the week.
I really like it. Too bad it can’t be customized to fit your specific website (with custom styles, like phpBB, not open source coding).
There is a saying: if it works, don’t change it.
The design of that sandbox is ugly. And I dont like sites like stackoverflow and unity answers because they use too much javascript.
Ok, a little background info.
They wrote StackOverflow to discourage conversation and get people to answer questions.
Discourse’s main focus is to encourage conversation.
Please read through the feature list and give the sandbox a spin, because a casual glance will not do it justice.
And, please don’t judge it on that sandbox’s design rolls eyes
Changing the forum software is going to be a costly operation. Why do you think that cost justifies right now?
Not to mention the integration in the UDN (which for the forum seems to be stable and reliable right now).
Not to mention the irritation induced in the user base who like it as it is.
This looks indeed sexy as hell. And flexible. And perfect.
But how would you deal with the current posts retrocompability ? (people don’t “reply to” anyone, it’s only a stream of target-less posts)
Except that your users will typically do just that. People are lazy and easily bored. If they don’t “get” something right away, they walk away.
I approve of this thread’s title.
XenForo I think is awesome, we should have those.
Would be great to use that for unity answers, but not at all for this forum.
Can’t say I like that software very much. I really like the current one though.
I don’t have a problem with the current forum software. It does what it’s supposed to do.
The only thing that bothers me about it is the useless search. I know other (much larger) forums that have perfectly capable search functions, so I’m not sure why it’s so hard to find relevant results here at the Unity forums. The information is there… it’s just hidden behind an inadequate search.
It doesn’t look like a forum to me, more of a twitter feed with more than 140 characters. It’s definitely interesting though.
More than 1 year later…
You guys still think it looks so terrible?
I only know discourse since beta 0.9, or less than a year ago… Maybe I never had the chance to get such a bad gut reaction to it.
I love it and IMHO it should replace all forums everywhere!
The way to go would be creating a (yet another) new space. If people enjoy it enough, things will naturally get migrated over time. Eventually, after one year or so, you set one of them as read/search only, the less popular one.
Also, discourse has a potential to replace even answers and feedback as well, if you think about it.