[HN Gopher] Forem Self-Host
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       Forem Self-Host
        
       Author : boling11
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2021-07-20 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (forem.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (forem.dev)
        
       | antifa wrote:
       | What kind of JS and HTML templates is the front end? It's not
       | clear from a quick skim of the github mobile website.
        
         | k__ wrote:
         | Last time I looked, the frontend was built with Preact.
        
       | wilshiredetroit wrote:
       | I LOVE Forem and Dev.To
       | 
       | The stack is very rational.. and "easy-ish" but its not wordpress
       | easy..
       | 
       | most groups..and social networks.. dont burst outside 500 monthly
       | active users.. at best.. 5000~
       | 
       | most groups are small and doesnt need a sophisticated scaling
       | system.
       | 
       | I often test out communities with a very simple wordpress install
       | running buddypress... it suits most communities and its so easily
       | movable to cloud...
       | 
       | anyway.. i love Forem the dev.to guys have really created
       | something phenomenal
        
       | beaconstudios wrote:
       | how did dev.to and hackernoon appear so suddenly? For the longest
       | time it was just medium and random people's blogs and all of a
       | sudden these two platforms just got huge.
        
         | agustif wrote:
         | Hackernoon at least was on medium as a publication for along
         | time... They might decided to transition off when medium
         | dropped the own domain support
        
       | indigodaddy wrote:
       | I'm disappointed that there is not a "cloud-agnostic" version. Eg
       | a script that you can deploy to any cloud/provider ssh/instance
       | endpoint.
        
         | Something1234 wrote:
         | Or any shared hosting provider. It bugs me so much how every
         | project seems to think I want to run a cloud instance to host
         | it and bring in that maintenance burden. It's stupid. Give me
         | shared any day for the small stuff.
        
           | 0des wrote:
           | While it would be nice to have these things, think about it:
           | this isn't a product someone is selling us, they were doing
           | their own thing making something that worked for them and
           | stopped and thought "dang I bet the other nerds out there
           | would use this" and then did what they could to open source
           | it. That in itself this is generous, and nowhere does it
           | imply any other types of agreement. Does that make some of us
           | sad? sure! Is that this dev's problem? absolutely not.
        
       | gabereiser wrote:
       | What's the reason there isn't a docker compose-able way to run
       | this? Did I miss something?
       | 
       | I like the software, and congrats on making it available to all.
       | Wish there was a simple compose up option.
        
       | andrewmcwatters wrote:
       | Very strange and undesirable to launch with such specific cloud
       | options.
        
       | canadaduane wrote:
       | I'm a big fan of software that makes better communities possible
       | online. Ever since Discourse set the standard for "good self-
       | hosted open source forum software," I've always wished there were
       | something simpler to deploy. However, my first impression of
       | Forem is, "this software looks complicated."
       | 
       | Can anyone more familiar briefly speak to the trade-offs that
       | were made? Why podman, butane, ansible? Most communities are
       | small, but it looks like the expectation here is that communities
       | might grow to hundreds of thousands (or millions), so
       | orchestration etc. is necessary?
        
         | kissgyorgy wrote:
         | I had the same kind of thought when I saw the requirement for
         | deployment. It's such a random stack and definitely not the
         | right abstraction for a flexible deployment (for smaller
         | communities as you mentioned). It seems also expensive to host
         | it.
        
         | bhalp1 wrote:
         | Yes, Forem is extracted from dev.to-- which was built to reach
         | millions-- With crowdsourced moderation, feed algorithms, rich
         | editors, etc, and we're working backwards from there. So yeah,
         | it's a little complicated at this layer of the stack, and
         | getting simpler over time as we work to extract from the core.
         | 
         | Background processes, on-the-fly image optimization/caching--
         | It's more shopify for independent social networking than it is
         | classical forum software.
        
         | gizdan wrote:
         | > Ever since Discourse set the standard for "good self-hosted
         | open source forum software,"
         | 
         | I know this is besides your point, but I wouldn't credit
         | Discourse with any standards but horrible UX. It's the worse of
         | (new) Reddit combined with the worst of forum software.
         | Horrendous.
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-20 23:00 UTC)