What forum software do you recommend?

Question

Asking here not just for tech expertise, but because HN itself is not far from what I like. Basically, I want to make a community for writers, as in an actual community and not a gathering of strangers.Reddit: Dying, not owned, but more importantly, it's bad at community.Discord: Decent for community but seems to scale extremely badly with more content. For example, you can't give users their own space. Forums and threads become a mess.Discourse: I can't put my finger on it. It works for support but I haven't seen it do well for community. The system with badges, Regulars, Leaders, etc seems to basically be designed to automod strangers to have power over one another.SMF/phpbb/vbulletin: Cozy, but feels dated, especially without mobile support.Invision Community: Actually seems good but also bloody expensive with the lowest amount set at $58/month?Any other suggestions? Anything that I'm misreading here?

CountGeek · Accepted Answer

https://flarum.org/ is really nice and modern. I donated to https://freeflarum.com/ and used my custom domain for their hosted free offering.

SirensOfTitan · Answer

You could also check out Xenforo, which a bunch of the old vBulletin developers started working on after Jelsoft was acquired.

brudgers · Answer

At their core, online communities are extensions of offline communities.
Yes, that core may attract people who never have and never will participate in the offline core and those people may dominate numbers (HN is a good example).
Online tools reinforce and amplify communities, but r/justinbeeber isn't bootstrapped. It exists because of the meatspace component.
Stackoverflow exists because people write code.
Facebook exists because people have offline lives...Facebook brings up the important point that there is no "Facebook community" all it's many communities have real world basis.
Anyway, "writers" is too broad. Experts will commune with other experts when they aren't busy writing and the platform will be dominated by people who like to dominate online communities (just like HN).
For what it's worth, if you don't care fifty-eight bucks a month that might signify your commitment level to the project. Or not.
Good luck.

farseer · Answer

Install Wordpress with a nice theme and use bbPress to start with. Or you can start with phpbb, that is also tried and tested.Once you have built some traffic and have actual users. Only then move to a paid solution such as Invision or vBulletin.

tikkun · Answer

Side note: It'd be nice if there was a paid Discourse alternative that was upvote/downvote style and also really well designed. Discourse is nice but I prefer upvote/downvote, I've seen other reddit clones but I prefer more easy to use UX.

cpach · Answer

There&rsquo;s also Vanilla forums: https://github.com/vanilla/vanillaAnd the engine behind Lobste.rs: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters

What forum software do you recommend?

https://flarum.org/ is really nice and modern. I donated to https://freeflarum.com/ and used my custom domain for their hosted free offering.

You could also check out Xenforo, which a bunch of the old vBulletin developers started working on after Jelsoft was acquired.

Install Wordpress with a nice theme and use bbPress to start with. Or you can start with phpbb, that is also tried and tested.
Once you have built some traffic and have actual users. Only then move to a paid solution such as Invision or vBulletin.

Side note: It'd be nice if there was a paid Discourse alternative that was upvote/downvote style and also really well designed. Discourse is nice but I prefer upvote/downvote, I've seen other reddit clones but I prefer more easy to use UX.

There’s also Vanilla forums: https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla
And the engine behind Lobste.rs: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters