Discourse is an open source community software developed by Jeff Atwood. One week ago we started KnowledgeIDea forum by Siraj Mahmood. We developed this community forum to engage our readers on one platform to find out the best solutions. Almost our readers send us feedback emails/Q&A/suggestions etc so our experts or team members think that is the good time to launch our own forum community where every new beginner can interact with another one users and community members.
Even my experts team include me working on KnowledgeIDea forum to make it more splendid for initial starters. We already wrote an article on KnowledgeIDea announcement of our community forum. Let’s talk about discourse review which we experienced in the earlier one week.
Discourse Review:
We was running KnowledgeIDea since 15 June 2014 and from that time we were not assume about any community forum. Before launch our community forum, we analyze and test each forum software and their infrastructure like PHPBB, Vanilla, bbPress, SMF (Simple Machines Forum), MyBB, vBulletin and discourse.
We were need an appropriate and fast trendy forum platform for our journey. We found Discourse the best one, fast, new style forum software. Two huge reasons in discourse, which grab our attention first is discourse is free open source software secondly it has all possible characteristics which are incredible such as user trust level system, super page loading speed and so many optimized integrated features in it.
More than one week ago, we finalize our decision and go ahead with discourse. 20 Sep 2015 first time I personally installed discourse on linux, it’s taken probably 45 minutes for me because it was slightly complicated and first time for me to install something on linux based server. We followed the discourse installation guide step by step.
But after installation, everything was pretty good. One important thing, I was forgotten to mention because it is crucial to know for you. Discourse can not install on any shared hosting, you should need to buy VPN server to run it. Personally we are using most powerful and affordable Digital Ocean crafted cloud servers.
I would recommend you to join from our reference and get $10 credit in your account, thus your first month will be totally free. Because you should need at least to buy digital ocean $10/month package to run discourse comfortably.
Discourse Major Features:
Discourse has lots of features. Let’s talk about each of them respectively,
- Ease of use
- Fast Speedy interface
- Light Weight Coding
- No redundant widgets
- User trust level system (Badges)
- User profiles
- Login via Facebook, G+, Github, Yahoo
- Email broadcasting or notifications
- Global chat system
- Backups
- Deeply settings and configurations
- SEO friendly
- AdSense, DFP, Amazon friendly
- Topics/threads like system
- Topics/threads flag system
- Dozens of light plugins and much more.
There are other’s numerous characteristics of discourse but above are prominent and essential.
Ease of use:
Discourse is designed under consider user convenience. Simple, create topic/threads and start discussion among forum users. Interaction on discourse is too much easy due to his ability and simplicity.
Fast Speedy Interface:
Speed 100% matter and you are responsible for that. Discourse page loading time as much as faster than other forum software’s, that is my one week experience. At this time, my forum page loading speed approx 2.45 sec and that is great news for our all members because here is no waiting mode.
Search engine also prefer fast web pages content delivery sites not slothful.
Light Weight Coding:
Discourse is developed with light weight coding scripts and languages. Light weight coding is better than tricky and hefty coding scripts because hefty coding can make your website more slow.
No Redundant Widgets:
Discourse has no additional widget even by default have no sidebar. That is why, discourse speed reliable because additional sidebar and widget scripts takes long time in browser to load. If you are interested to add sidebar then install discourse dynamic sidebar plugin.
User Trust level System:
Discourse have different and many badges for every different level users. Every badge comes with excited permissions in community. A regular member trust level badge user can edit, modify next member thread/reply easily. Thus every trust level badge have comes with interesting and stunning characteristics.
User Profiles:
Every user can manage their profile username, emails, short description about himself and can manage or mute notification with a single click. Badges/reply/created topics/private messages can be managed from user profile page.
Login Via Social Network:
Discourse allow user to sign up via Facebook, Google plus, GitHub, Twitter and Yahoo. Simply give authorization on your social profile to access first name/last name and your email during sign up. Keep remember that, your info for registration will keep private.
Email Broadcast:
Discourse have an appropriate interface, where you can send test emails to check it out that is your connection on the way or not. Registration, email conformation, reply notification, your created topic reply by another user notification and further forum newsletters notification via email. You also can manage these notification from your user profile interface.
Global chat system:
Discourse also consider as a global chat system among their community members. Any community user can also chat with another member with ease. See this plugin here.
Automated Backups:
Discourse will take automated backups daily of your discourse local files. So there is nothing to worry about that be chill.
Deeply Settings:
Every and each aspect of discourse is customizable even their headers, body containers, CSS stylesheet and also can add up additional stuff as per your requirements.
SEO Friendly:
Discourse is designed according to Seo modern trends and strategies. Sitemap doesn’t exist in discourse software, therefore read do we need sitemap anymore? Keep remember that, setup your discourse meta title and description under settings option.
Advertisement Friendly:
Every user likes to monetize its community forum because this one aspect increase his interest in forum interaction. Discourse have by default option to add up top header banner and footer banner. But if you want more ads like inside or under your forum replies and topics then install light weight discourse ad plugin.
Topics/threads Like System:
Now every discourse community user express his support and highlight his interest in following topic/replies by like their topic or replies, this “Like” button will be appeared under every topic and reply.
Topics/threads Flag System:
As we discussed earlier that discourse is designed by considering security issues and troubles or avoid spamming issues. Discourse have flagging system, by this feature community senior member can flag suspicious topics and replies then community moderators will manipulate, modify or finalize those flags. Flags system working as an anti-spamming support.
Dozens of Light Plugins:
Discourse have numbers of plugins from which you can extend his capabilities and characteristics. Prominent and vital discourse plugins are following as, discourse letter avatar, bbcode color, discourse API, discourse tagging, discourse docker, discourse answer solved, spoiler alert, Akismet hipchat and many more.
Conclusion:
Our more than one week experience was so graceful and excellent. Discourse is one of the best one community forum software, which I had ever seen. Discourse features are incredible and priceless. Discourse is totally free open source, if you have any problem in installation and further problems in category related field then let me know via KnowledgeIDea forum.
