Why nobody made a proper forum, with a good UX/UI? Discourse is the closest existing software but it's not well designed, user profiles are a pain in the a<i></i>…
Something as well-designed as branch.com but that you could use privately.
Any ideas?
You are seeking a solution to a non-existing problem.<p>People seem quite content using shitty-looking forums.<p>Measure ease-of-use as 1 of the key elements.<p>No point making a great UI/UX when nobody knows where the login is.
I think it's just a problem people moved on from awhile ago. There were a few years when building a forum-solution (as a wordpress plugin or a standalone solution like VBulletin or PHPbb) was good business. But these days, who would you be building it for exactly? Many of the popular forums are either perfectly happy with their old solution, or are running on something completely custom.
I'll answer everybody here but I was thinking about something I could use for a company.
A place where you can both talk and manage people - a bit like Discourse but with proper profile management.
I don't think people are used to shitty forums, I think they accept it because of a lack of other solutions.
But thanks for the recommendations, I'll give it a look.
Have you checked out Muut <a href="https://muut.com/" rel="nofollow">https://muut.com/</a>? It's completely customizable with CSS, uses a lightweight javascript client, minimal design and focuses on the conversation (text). You can also use it privately. That requires a subscription. It's a hosted service.<p>Disclaimer: I work there.
Idk if it's just because I am used to it or what, but I love the old forums. They don't look the best but I enjoy using t hem. When I try to use discourse or something similar I have no idea what I am doing.
so i believe one of the StackExchange founders left full time work at SE to build a start-up directed to here. (<a href="http://www.discourse.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.discourse.org/</a>). i I think this was maybe two years ago--no idea about their product.
I have spent many hours looking, only to come up empty. Discourse looks great, but I do not like Ruby and it runs like a fat pig with a lame leg. In other words, it needs decent hardware and careful tuning to get it to run well. Their only supported platform is Docker under Ubuntu, which is a bit restrictive. All the PHP forums look ancient and I hate PHP with a passion, too.<p>I would love to have something like the D language forums (<a href="http://forum.dlang.org/" rel="nofollow">http://forum.dlang.org/</a>). Very snappy performance. But last time I checked there was no documentation whatsoever for the software.<p>Muut is an option, but I much prefer hosting it myself. Less expensive and more control.<p>I would love to see an open source forum coded in a high performance safe language like Haskell. In another year or two, Rust might be an option, too.<p>I get so frustrated about it, that sometimes I dream of launching a Kickstarter campaign. That is how the blogging platform Ghost got started, and it looks to have worked for them.