Discourse is the leading free, open source software application for modern web discussion forums, Webarchitects can provide fully installed and configured, managed Discourse virtual servers for clients.
Discourse has reinvented web based discussion forums and made them a joy to use.
Discourse is a feature rich, free, open source web based discussion board software which is elegant and easy to use and is ideal for building communities and providing a platform for peer to peer support.
Discourse can be used to replace email discussion lists and also allows private messages and private group discussions.
Discourse can also be use in place of WordPress comments, to provide a community forum for an organisation and allow discussion to follow articles. The WP Discourse plugin can be used to post WordPress articles to Discourse and also link to Discourse for comments, an example of this is the Common Dreams forum.
In addition to Discourse having a fully responsive web interface there are iOS and Android clients available.
Discourse comes with a simple but effective WYSIWYG editor and supports Markdown, images and video.
Webarchitects can provide supported virtual private servers with Discourse pre-installed (using our Ansible Discourse playbooks, with HTTPS certificates, powered by green energy running in our data centre in Sheffield.
An example of a Discourse site we host is the Co-operative Technologists Community Forum and there are a lot more Discourse sites listed at discourse.org.
Note that the minimum suggested hardware requirement includes 1GB of RAM, however in our experience at least 3GB is needed.
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