Switching forum to discourse?

[9axqe]

Just an idea, I am conscious it's a lot of work. BB makes me nostalgic but discourse is just nicer.

[Patrick M. Hausen]

It's not phpBB but Simple Machines Forum.
https://simplemachines.org

[9axqe]

My mistake, I haven't used PHPBB in a long while.

I understand it's a question of taste, as Discourse has layout which requires some getting use to.

[franco]

We are exploring alternatives at the moment, but I have to say that the other firewall did also change its platform and I can't say I've been there much ever since. It's not a rant, but at least to me it feels like a step in the wrong direction.

Something minimal, but perhaps not as archaic as a message board from the early 2000's with all the benefits of it kept.


Cheers,
Franco

[Patrick M. Hausen]

At least SMF is 100% open source and quite reliable. Also not as much of a mess to administrate as I remember phpBB ... I'd stick with it until there is a real motivation to switch.

There are as far as I know 2 moderately priced commercial products that provide a more modern look and feel and administrative functions:

https://www.woltlab.com/
https://www.vbulletin.com/

By "moderately priced" I mean low three figures either for each new version or per year. Both should be well in the budget of Deciso considering that the administrative manpower necessary to run it is much much more expensive.

vBulletin is used by the DHV (Deutscher Hängegleiter Verband) with a couple of thousand paraglider and hangglider pilots. Woltlab by various car related communities like the "Skoda SUV Forum". To my knowledge these are larger than this community here and the products scale quite well.

I don't know anything 100% open source that is substantially better than SMF.

HTH,
Patrick

[franco]

Thanks, we will check these out too.


Cheers,
Franco

[9axqe]

A better experience on mobile devices would be nice for example. I'm writing this on a phone and it's not great...

Is discourse expensive for commercial use?

[vpx23]

Is discourse expensive for commercial use?

It doesn't cost anything for commercial use, they earn their money with hosting and support.

But I don't like the style of discourse, it's like made for ADHD people, just a narrow wall of text for endless vertical scrolling (obviously optimized for smartphones).

SMF is much nicer on a wide monitor (while there's still a alot of space on the sides). But version 2.1 claims to have smartphone support:

Detection of mobile devices

https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Differences_between_SMF_2.1_and_SMF_2.0

And I think discourse doesn't fit to OPNsense because it is Linux-based.

https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-doesnt-work-on-freebsd/30253

The only thing I miss on SMF are browser push notifications but that requires 3rd party software which the developers don't like for security reasons.

We try not to depend on anything involving third parties, with the exception of PayPal, it is unlikely that we willimplement anything as a core feature which requires a third party interface

https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=560226.0

Maybe upgrading SMF from 2.0.19 to 2.1.4 would be enough modernization.

A secure forum software for a secure firewall.

[9axqe]

SMF is much nicer on a wide monitor (while there's still a alot of space on the sides). But version 2.1 claims to have smartphone support:

I want to pause to outline how ridiculous "claims to have smartphone support in version 2.1" sounds to many people. (it's sort of a more polite way of saying "seriously?!?")

But, I want to be open minded, do you have a sample forum using SMF 2.1 which can be dry tested (so to speak)?

[vpx23]

Yes, their own forum of course: https://www.simplemachines.org/community/

[9axqe]

It looks like reading on a mobile device is now possible on SMF indeed, which is significant improvement.

The editor is still inferior though, I feel. Markdown is significantly better than BBCodes...

I also feel discourse is seeing significantly more development and traction than SMF. That does not mean it's better for this community, but it does mean it's more future proof.

And in general, I dislike like PHP ;) But that's my personal, totally irrational view.

[Monviech (Cedrik)]

I'm a lot in the Caddy forum which runs on discourse.
They're very efficient to help, because they have a mandatory help template that people who ask for help "must" fill out. It really reduces a lot of chasing for details. Having something like this here would reduce a lot of pointless posts and make getting help more efficient.

Example:

- Opnsense Version
- Hardware
- Full output of pfctl with nat and pf rules
- xml configuration of the plugin/core plugin they need help for
- small network topology

etc...

[Greg_E]

Would it be better to update to the latest SMF and give it a try before leaping to something completely different?

Looks like there is a "Large Upgrade" package to move from 2.0 up to latest with the exception that customizations will need to be uploaded/installed again. If things are plain vanilla, then it might be an "easy" task. https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?PHPSESSID=14a880c329c1d2f15d23deb2ad625c47&topic=586097.0

I do see a conversion method to head to discourse, but that's way over my head. https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrate-an-smf2-forum-to-discourse/90314/38

Personally, I like the old PHPBB style here, I kind of grew up on it so it's very comfortable. There are things I don't like about discourse, mostly because I haven't updated my knowledge.

[9axqe]

At the moment, reaading this forum on a small/mobile screen it is an exercise in frustration – hence "comfortable" depends on your setup.

Upgrading to the new SMF would significantly improve this, but I still prefer Discourse by far: formatting of messages is easier, templates are possible, long threads are easier to navigate, tags, etc.

I think we should not invest energy in upgrading to a newer version of SMF to "give it a try", this is potentially wasted effort. We should have a clear decision on what the software will be for the foreseeable future and upgrade/migrate there – just my humble opinion, as I won't be the one investing effort here.

[passeri]

If it has the features to list new posts (as this does) AND to jump to the first unread thread post (which I have not found here) then I am for it. Otherwise I am against it.

Across different boards over many years, these are the two things which consistently affect my experience. The rest is either expected or nice to have or tolerated.