📦 Flarum-In-A-Box

One command. 80+ extensions. A fully working Flarum 2.x forum.

Inspired by the discussion about demo sites + the fact that PianoTell itself is already on Docker, I built Flarum-In-A-Box — an all-in-one Docker container that gives you a complete Flarum 2.x forum with 80+ popular extensions pre-installed. No server setup, no configuration, no database provisioning.

Now everyone can have admin access and customize Flarum 2.x at will in the comfort and safety of Flarum-In-A-Box.

Quick Start

Install Docker Desktop
Search for pianotell/flarum-in-a-box
Click Run — in Optional Settings be sure to set the host port to 8080

Open http://localhost:8080 and you're in. 🚀

This is the One Command:

docker run -d -p 8080:80 --name flarum-in-a-box pianotell/flarum-in-a-box

To update to the latest release, run these three commands:

docker pull pianotell/flarum-in-a-box
docker rm -f flarum-in-a-box
docker run -d -p 8080:80 --name flarum-in-a-box pianotell/flarum-in-a-box

Screenshots

Homepage

Showcase

Why?

This makes it effortless for anyone to:

🧪 Demo Flarum for fun and profit
💻 Develop extensions against a real, fully loaded Flarum instance
📚 Learn and experiment with features and extensions
🏗️ Test themes like the included Avocado theme

⚠️ This is a demo/playground image — not intended for production use but perfect for testing and development. Data is ephemeral for the lifetime of the container.

What's Inside?

PHP 8.5 on Alpine Linux, with nginx, MariaDB, and s6-overlay — all in a single container. Multi-arch (amd64 + arm64), so it runs on Intel PCs, Apple Silicon Macs, and ARM cloud instances.

~70 Extensions Pre-Installed

Enabled by default — Tags, Likes, Mentions, Lock, Sticky, Suspend, Markdown, BBCode, Emoji, Flags, Nicknames, Subscriptions, Approval, Statistics, Extension Manager, plus:

Composer & posting

📸 PhotoSwipe — Full-screen tap-to-zoom image lightbox (try the Photo Gallery seed discussion)
Flamoji — Intuitive emoji picker 😉
Drafts, Formatting, Polls, Upload, Rich Text, BBCode Details
BBCode FA, Mermaid (diagrams — sample ones sprinkled across the seed discussions), Markdown Tables, Inline Audio

Discussions & navigation

Best Answer, Byobu (private discussions), Categories, Follow Tags, Frontpage, Sitemap, Synopsis, Discussion Views
Stickiest, Last Post Avatar, External Links in New Tab
Menu Control, Mobile Search, Mobile Tab

User experience

Reactions, Gamification (voting + rankings), User Bio, User Directory, Ignore Users
Profile Cover (GIF/WebP), MagicSlider, MagicRead
Profile Messages (XenForo-style), Profile Views (view counts), Passkey (passwordless sign-in), Topic Rating, Forum Widgets

Moderation & admin

Moderator Notes, Impersonate (log in as any user), Split, Merge Discussions, Move Posts
Diff (post edit history), Recycle Bin, Backup (on-demand DB + storage backups), Log Viewer (browse Flarum logs from the admin panel)

Other

Linguist, Links, Post Search, AutoVerify (skip email verification on signup)

Installed but not enabled (try them from Admin Panel → Extensions):

🥑 Avocado — Modern, polished theme with hero banner and rich customization
🎨 Colored — Colorful usernames by group
🦶 Modern Footer — Responsive footer
🔤 Font Sizer — Adjustable font sizes
🧰 MagicBB — Extended BBCode toolkit (extra composer icons)
👋 WelcomeBox — Customizable welcome banner
🃏 Discussion Cards — Card-style discussion list
💬 Shoutbox — Lightweight realtime chat box
🔐 OAuth — Social login framework (Google, Discord, GitHub, etc.)
🟡 Yandex OAuth / SmartCaptcha
And several utilities (Terms, Pages, Share Social, Discussion Thumbnail, Anti Spam)

Ready Out of the Box

The container comes pre-configured with:

Default accounts: admin (Admin), moderator (Mod group — try the moderation tools), user, plus user1–user5 — all with password password
8 sample tags with icons and colors (General, Announcements, Support, Feedback, Showcase, Off-Topic, Guides, Bugs)
9 seed discussions including a 🛠️ Moderation Playground — a deliberately-heated thread where user1–user5 argue about moderation policy so you can practice locking, hiding, suspending, and reviewing logs (via Log Viewer) on real-looking content
Email auto-verified on signup — no mail server needed
Rankings page accessible to everyone

Tips & Tricks

Run Flarum CLI commands directly from the host:

docker exec flarum-in-a-box php flarum info

Get a shell inside the container (to run Composer, edit files, etc.):

docker exec -it flarum-in-a-box /bin/sh

Copy files to and from the container:

# Host → container
docker cp my-logo.png flarum-in-a-box:/var/www/html/public/assets/

# Container → host
docker cp flarum-in-a-box:/var/www/html/config.php ./config.php

Technical Details

Base: PHP 8.5-FPM on Alpine Linux (multi-stage build)
Web server: nginx
Database: MariaDB (bundled, internal)
Process manager: s6-overlay (nginx + PHP-FPM + MariaDB)
Architectures: amd64, arm64

Feedback Welcome!

Is this useful to anyone at all?