New potential competitor for Flarum?

Prosperous

Someone's got their undies in a knot.

Flarum is in beta and ED isn't. At the end of the day does the word 'beta' really make any difference? When Flarum goes stable what really is the biggest difference than using it now in its beta state? Aside from the possibility of uploading it via FTP as opposed to installing it via Composer is there that much difference that you couldn't use it now? I know it doesn't make a difference to me and a lot of us that do use the product now.

I'll make a forum called Beta and you may not be able to use it because it has the word 'beta' in it. And you'll forever be dissatisfied. I've never understood why people put in the effort to complain about something that isn't to their expectation or standard; find something else and move on. Stop wasting your time. Seriously. You make yourself look like a whinger.

/endrant

Forums will always have their fan boys/girls and the consumer (you and I) will always have different (and sometimes unique) preferences and expectations. Find the forum software that caters to those needs and wants and use it. You'll eventually find one that you will like and can work with easily. I first started with InvisionFree back in the day, then moved on to use IP.Board, SMF, phpBB, MyBB, FluxBB, XenForo, you name it. Flarum is perfect for me, it's free and it's homegrown. That's why I stick around no matter what state it is in.

KajMagnus

( Prosperous actually ED isn't really in Beta yet. It's more like in between Alpha and Beta, almost-Beta. If one signs up to use ED, then there's an Under development ... functionality ... missing ... something ... broken info message, + there's a not-totally-ready message on the install-it-yourself-GitHub-page too. ... Flarum is further ahead than ED. ... Actually I'm doing an a-little-bit off-topic side project right now, instead of focusing 100% on ED, and this side-project will hopefully make it easier to promote ED & make it popular, ... later when it's more ready :- ))

jordanjay29

Prosperous As Digital said, let's keep the discussion on topic (ED) here. Don't feed the off topic tangents. ?

FlarumPower

KajMagnus It's alway a good thing to have competition. I wish you the best in developing ED.

thephotographyblog

MasAntok They appear to have renamed themselves to TalkYard and they still aren't as good as Flarum. #FlarumForLife

KajMagnus

thephotographyblog They appear to have renamed themselves to TalkYard and they still aren't as good as Flarum.

Can you plz tell me what's required to become as good as Flarum? (in your opinion.) Maybe some of those things I can actually do / implement :- )

Yes i renamed EffectiveDiscussions to Talkyard. (people said E.D. was to generic & a bit boring, & hard to create a brand around)

Here's an a bit more active community: https://usability.testing.exchange/forum/latest/queue — actually I think it looks fairly nice (but I'm biased).

FlarumPower It's alway a good thing to have competition. I wish you the best in developing ED.

Thanks! :- ) Yes competition is good. People copying each other's good ideas, but still building slightly different things, for slightly different needs = good for everyone.

Maybe a Beta open source version will be ready in a month or two ... but last time I thought so, was like eight months ago.

ChadJessen I see no competition here. Flarum is way better in every way.

Can I ask what are the two most important ways in which Flarum is better?

ChadJessen

I see no competition here. Flarum is way better in every way.

thephotographyblog

ChadJessen Exactly.

Drilling-Billy

JeffSantana Can we update Flarum with the functionality to give multiple likes? Then I can give Jeff 10+ likes!!! And I think after reading 35 "Flarum is way better" posts Jeff (just like me) vented his two cents... Absolutely "On Topic".

jordanjay29

Drilling-Billy not really on topic, actually. If you want a feature request, start a new discussion.

Frink

luceos Flarum targets ease of use and installation.

I don't mean to seem like a pain, but flarum is currently not very easy to setup. Once ssh is not required, flarum will be a lot easier to setup.

luceos

KajMagnus Can I ask what are the two most important ways in which Flarum is better?

Toby and Franz because they have so much experience and an extraordinary insatiable need for precision. And in addition the community, because they believe ? Without those factors flarum would never be what it is today.

ChadJessen

KajMagnus It is super fast, easy to use and very extendable along with the awesome community. The two people that are building it are putting a tremendous amount of care into it to make it the best forum software ever. Then you have those that are willing and are putting out extensions for free to help the development of this forum software and to expand it. I could touch on many more things, but I would be here all day and my wife wouldn't approve of that. Hope that helps.

Pollux

KajMagnus Can I ask what are the two most important ways in which Flarum is better?

It's difficult for me to judge which software is better, unless I have investigated every aspect of it thoroughly. That having said, I try to figure out whether a software fits my needs and that includes (very important for me) skipping those parts I don't need. I don't want to turn off a lot of bells and whistles knowing that they are still under the hood and slow down my forum.

Toby and Franz are both well known advocates of the KISS-principle, furthermore they have undertaken tremendous efforts to make the software extensible, so that a lot of third party developers became interested to help out with missing functions. In my opinion, that's the perfect approach to software.

The third aspect I really like is the attention to details, details which - on the programming level - are neglected all to often and then later turn out to be very costly. Take a look at Flarum's open issues, especially those opened by the developers themselves, and you may understand what I mean.

I haven't taken enough time to look at TalkYard in detail, but what I saw at the surface didn't encourage me to look a lot further. Visual elements are not aligned properly, proportions look weird in some places etc. pp., and then there is this table like look of the topic list I never found compelling (but that's probably just me). Tables are for statistical data (in my opinion), they don't encourage interaction very much.

luceos

SteveSmith So, my point is that this forum has a lot of potential and for the record, is the only forum I'd like to use, only if it were more stable.

Isn't that the whole idea of working from a beta to a stable?

Let's not drift off topic, so please stick to the discussion about talkyard and/or the question by its author KajMagnus

SteveSmith

luceos Well, I certainly love the idea behind Flarum and what it could become, but currently it's completely broken. It's broken in every way you can think of, at least on mobile devices, which by the way, most of the people today use.

Writing new posts is a horrible experience because the pop-up window moves behind the keyboard. The cursor is also showing the wrong location half of the time. Scrolling down snaps uncontrollably after 20 posts instead of loading smoothly. Scrolling up is broken as well because it snaps to the post which is yet to come and not to the next one in line so you lose track of where you were going.

So, my point is that this forum has a lot of potential and for the record, is the only forum I'd like to use, only if it were more stable.

KajMagnus

luceos Toby and Franz because they have so much experience and an extraordinary insatiable need for precision. And in addition the community

Ok yes. Toby and Franz seems like great people, both at writing software, & good judgement at planning-the-right-stuff, and at community building :- )

ChadJessen It is super fast, easy to use and very extendable along with the awesome community ... [Toby & Franz] ... extensions for free to help the development of this forum software

Ok yes

Pollux KISS-principle, ... tremendous efforts to make the software extensible ... attention to details ... open issues ... Talkyard ... there is this table like look of the topic list

Ok. Yes the GitHub issues seems detailed & lively discussions.

I changed how the topic list looks by default, so now a bit less table-like: https://www.talkyard.io/-/img/create-site/topic-list-excerpt-below-title.jpg — It's actually configurable, there's a no-tables view too: https://www.talkyard.io/-/img/create-site/topic-list-news-feed.jpg )

SteveSmith broken in every way you can think of, at least on mobile devices ... Writing new posts is a horrible experience because the pop-up window moves behind the keyboard

Ok. On iOS, I had to do some weird things to make the keyboard & the whole textarea be visible at the same time: I reserved an empty blank gray area for the keyboard. Weird that Apple forces one to do that :- /

Maybe this empty-blank-space iOS keyboard problem workaround is something that could be useful for Flarum too? Here's (most of) the workaround: https://github.com/debiki/talkyard/blob/15e4115e3597b92236d9a7d0c251586419337986/client/app/editor/editor.styl#L326

Razor new forum software u should focus on adding something new ... roadmap is important

Ok that is great feedback I think :- )

I think if you look at each feature/benefit, in isolation, then there's not that much new with Talkyard. (There're some stuff, like a new & more "positive" (?) voting system, and a better algorithm for finding the best comments. But this is "invisible" stuff that people won't notice.)

Instead, something that I think is new, is the combination of different other stuff:

There're Q/A features like at StackOverflow. But also open-ended discussions & chat topics. So one can build a Q&A site, that also becomes a community where people get to know each other and can have open-ended & a bit more informal discussions too. (Other Q&A software doesn't let people do anything else that posting questions and aswers.)

Also Talkyard is a bit like Reddit, but with @mentions and images and chat and such "modern" stuff that Reddit lacks, that one can install on one's own website. I think that combination is also new.

I rewrote parts of the homepage, to hopefully make it more clear how Talkyard is (I think) different. I tried to focus on the Q&A-with-community-and-open-ended-discussions "feature" in Talkyard.

(I added a roadmap: https://www.talkyard.io/-61/talkyard-roadmap-2018-03-13 )

SteveSmith The only thing I would change, yet pretty much everyone today is using, is the indentation with replies

Actually I think that's been solved with Talkyard. If you make the screen narrow, it'll remove indentation, and the discussion will become flatter. You'll see "In reply to (username)" texts that show who replies to who. One can click those "In reply to" texts to jump to the parent comment and read it, and then Back to continue reading.

If you, on a tiny screen, scroll down to the comments section here: https://www.talkyard.io/-01jn7/solving-problem-nested-replies-indentation you will (I think) see what I mean.

Marianox

Not to mention something as basic as having the DNS well configured is not done properly.

www.talkyard.io works
talkyard.io doesn't

SteveSmith

luceos Well, I don't know what this talkyard is, I just want my Flarum to work well. That's why every single one of us is here. Because we recognized what this forum is and also, can become!

Franz

Also, let's not turn this into a thread where we bash talkyard in order to feel better about Flarum. ?

jordanjay29

SteveSmith You're in the wrong discussion, though. Read the title, the first post, and then stay on topic or start a new discussion if you want to talk about Flarum.

SteveSmith

jordanjay29 You're quite right. Let me check out this TalkYard and get back to the topic with my opinion!

SteveSmith

jordanjay29 Well I looked it up and it does seem interesting since it offers things Flarum doesn't. At least not without extensions. Seems to me its more aimed at discussions about trouble shooting, which is fine.

The only thing I would change, yet pretty much everyone today is using, is the indentation with replies. Please people, look at Reddit, it becomes completely unreadable when you reply to many times and your reply window gets so narrow that it's really hard to read what you wrote.

It's fine if it's a single level indentation, but this thing doesn't scale well. Please find another way to indicate that you are replying directly to a previous post, other than constantly indenting your posts and making them unreadable.

Ralkage

Feedback:

I like the concept, though, the design is far from original. I would hope to see something more "modern" and "unique" when it comes to competitive forum software.

What stands out about TalkYard? I'm not even sure, I don't see a full features page or mentioning the greats about TalkYard.

I love seeing new forum software, especially open sourced. Why? because it gives us all a chance to work on bugs together!

Is TalkYard extendable in it's current state? Not even sure where to start if I were to ever want to develop add-ons and extensions.

Custom styling? Not sure how that works 100% yet.

Docker installation based? Not that many people know what Docker is or know how to use it. You should focus on easy set up and be ready to razzle dazzle your community! People are generally lazy and want things to have a 1,2,3 setup process.

There is tons of growth for TalkYard and I see developers even from here possibly looking it to what it has to offer.

You should also work on a Roadmap, those are very important to have!

KajMagnus

Ralkage What stands out about TalkYard? I'm not even sure, I don't see a full features page or mentioning the greats about TalkYard.

Thanks! That's good to know. I wrote a bit to @Razor about that just above; if you search for "the combination of different other stuff" you'll find it.

Since what's-the-point was unclear, I rewrote parts of the homepage, to hopefully make it more clear how Talkyard is (I think) different.

Ok I should add a full features page ... a bit later.

Ralkage Is TalkYard extendable in it's current state?

No. And extending Talkyard is a bit tricky since it's written in Scala, and one cannot just add a Scala file to create an extension (like one can, with PHP). (With Scalal & Docker, one needs to recompile & repackage & build a Docker image etc.) — However, Javascript also runs on the JVM, so I can probably let people write extensions in Javascript later on (and upload to an already running server).

Ralkage Custom styling?

One can add one's own CSS and customize everything but ... not many people know CSS, so, not user friendly. I'd like to add a color picker at least.

Ralkage Docker installation based [...] Not that many people know what Docker is [...] want things to have a 1,2,3 setup process.

I'm afraid that, in this case, the alternatives are worse. Without Docker, people would need to install PostgreSQL and Java and Redis and Nginx and more stuff, themselves. I think that's worse, than only Docker. Also, with Docker, upgrading the software is simple. I just push an image with a never version of, say, ElasticSearch, and it will auto-upgrade without people even knowing it's there at all.

Actually, to me, not being used to PHP and Composer, installing Flarum seemed complicated. I was going to install Flarum to see how the initial setup & configuration worked (maybe copy some ideas :- P) but in the end I didn't.

Ralkage There is tons of growth for TalkYard

I hope so. I feel it could be more popular, if I was better at explaining things and creating homepages :- /

Ralkage work on a Roadmap

Ok, yes. I just created one here: https://www.talkyard.io/-61/talkyard-roadmap-2018-03-13

Thanks a lot for the feedback

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