Lack of WYSIWYG Editor is the #1 stopper for using of flarum

ernestdefoe

hackshuu I understand the concern about it being a third part extension as well but tons of people are using it without issues but that doesn’t mean someone couldn’t have issues later on if there is a major change in Flarum. Something like this would be nice if it was done by either 1st party or by Blomstra or Friends of Flarum as I doubt they would be going anywhere any time soon. In fact me and @luceos was having a conversation yesterday because I was trying to post a link and didn’t do the Markdown tags right and the link didn’t show.

esbeeb

boc Lack of WYSIWYG Editor is the #1 stopper for using of flarum for me on my communities.

I've used Discourse and PHPBB a lot myself. Discourse is slow but convenient, and phpBB is fast but very inconvenient, when it comes time to post an image.

I'm more of a geeky user, so I can wield URLs to show an image from another place where I've uploaded an image. But a very strong majority of "normy" computer users aren't like me. Most of my friends can't manage wielding URLs - they'd sooner turn to Discord, passing over the world of Open Source entirely with no hesitation. Convenience is king in their minds.

I see Flarum as a hands-down replacement of phpBB (and thanks for that, Flarum devs), but it can't touch Discourse in the way of convenience, until it has that image upload, as per the OP.

I've been looking for something like Flarum - as I trust I could run it on a Raspberry Pi 5, whereas Discourse would be too bloated on a Pi 5. But without that convenient image upload in Flarum, alas, Flarum is a "non-starter" for me. I won't even test it on a Pi5 I have, eagerly awaiting such a test.

luceos

esbeeb until it has that image upload

Just so you know 👍️

composer require fof/upload:"*"

Upload allows you to even drag images on top of the editor and it automatically uploads and adds the link to the image, or a preview.

Ref: https://flarum.org/extension/fof/upload

ernestdefoe

luceos Was going to suggest that myself. Image upload has nothing to do with WYSIWYG at all.

esbeeb

luceos Upload allows you to even drag images on top of the editor and it automatically uploads and adds the link to the image, or a preview.

Ref: https://flarum.org/extension/fof/upload

??? I get a "404 not found" when I click that link.

navindra

The big lack with core in my opinion is that there is no preview for new discussions.

I find Markdown quite inflexible, but regardless, the core editor is very well-done and has a preview which is just as good as WYSIWYG in my opinion.

If we could get a preview for new discussions (without hacks) then I'd be happy.

tolgaaaltas

navindra What if the user click to "Start a Discussion" button and see blank discussion page? If the user type something for discussion title, blank page's title are filled at the same time. If the user select tag(s), blank template has a tag. If the user type something for content, the blank discussion template show preview for markdown.

Second scenario is full page editor usage; I think the full page editor should be splitted from the middle. Left side should be markdown editor, right side should be preview.

navindra

tolgaaaltas Sounds good! 🙂

luceos

esbeeb looking into it

luceos

esbeeb resolved

Oshvam

For those who just want to copy HTML, this extension allows you to paste the html and the extension reinterprets it to markdown. It is quite popular in one of my forums, people copy the news and paste it into the forum, the extension does the rest.

yohtozze/markdown-paste

esbeeb

luceos Thanks for that 🙂

Apricot

boc Lack of WYSIWYG Editor is the #1 stopper for using of flarum for me on my communities.

100% true

ernestdefoe

Apricot there is a WYSIWYG editor it’s an extension just like pretty much all functionality of Flarum. The simplest functions are extensions. Some by core developers and some by 3rd party developers but the functionality is there.

Apricot

ernestdefoe This topic is about Flarum, not third-party extensions! We can't rely on third-party extensions for such a critical part. The editor is the heart of the forum. WYSIWYG is a must-have, or Flarum will never be popular.

ernestdefoe

Apricot I’d say Flarum is already pretty popular. Plenty of people are using the WYSIWYG extension with no issues at all and I’m sure will be updated to work with the new version of Flarum when it’s released. Also there are way more people that like and use the Markdown editor so when more people use that why would they go another route when it can be included as an extension? You may consider it a must have but not everyone feels that way.

Umutcan

I think Flarum needs to make more important updates before they update their editor.

For example, Flarum unfortunately does not have an advanced, user-specific permissions system. Besides, SEO is very important and the development team should take it completely under their own protection, just like the sitemap plugin is in the FoF team, the SEO plugin should also be in the FoF team. Determining custom schema for each tag etc. etc.

There are a few more similar shortcomings. But these do not mean that Flarum is a bad software. I have never seen such an interested and active community behind any software. All software are commercialized and do everything for money. Of course, money is important to sustain life, but sometimes it is necessary not to increase the dose of work.

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