Wlork It’s great that you've found Flarum approachable as a beginner, but there's a significant difference between managing a casual hobby site and running a high-traffic, professional community. Comparing Flarum's simplicity to the capabilities of a more robust, professional-grade platform is akin to comparing a basic economy car to a high-performance luxury vehicle. Sure, the basic car might seem easier to operate, but that's largely because it lacks the advanced features, power, and safety mechanisms that are essential for demanding, professional use.
Regarding your comments on Discourse: it's not a "traditional" forum software. From the outset, it has unique server requirements tailored for its performance and scalability. On the other hand, Flarum’s dependence on systems like Composer can become a critical vulnerability. If you lose access to that underlying infrastructure, your site could potentially break—hardly something that can be touted as a strength.
What might seem like "minimalism" to you is often perceived by experienced administrators as an absence of foundational features. Relying on dozens of third-party extensions to fill these gaps isn't "keeping it light." If anything, it demonstrates a lack of understanding about server resources and the security complexities tied to external dependencies. Each add-on introduces potential points of failure and increases the risk of security vulnerabilities. It's great that you're enjoying your entry-level experience, but for those of us focused on creating professional, scalable platforms, a lightweight script lacking essential management tools simply isn’t a viable option.
