For various reasons, I'm considering moving the GameDev.net platform to Discourse (https://www.discourse.org/)​, and I wanted to solicit any opinions from the community on this idea.

One interest is that Discourse follows the same sort of categorization/tagging model the current GameDev.net platform uses (filter content across categories/tags), so a lot of the intent behind this platform that is somewhat half-baked might have a bit better implementation for viewing content across the site.

And of course, Discourse is open source, has a team working on it, a vibrant community, much better moderator tools and forum capabilities most people expect, etc. so there's all those benefits as well.

I don't know if it would reduce server expenses for GameDev.net. I sure hope so, but it's not a primary motivation.

From initial analysis the data models are similar, and I don't have any concerns on losing data. There will be some development work required though.

Anyway, Discourse does take a bit of a different approach to the classic forum, so I wanted to throw the idea out there and see if anyone had strong opinions or feedback on the idea before I went too far down the rabbit hole in figuring out how to migrate everything over.

I think that makes a lot of sense. I have no experience with Discourse, but from the look of it, it would fit GameDev.net well.

• Your link to discourse.org is broken,
• sometimes images aren't showing up right and
• seldomly it happens that nothing happens when I try to post. Also,
• the way ads are merged into content looks off.

This is all anecdotal, but I'm sure it would be nice to be able to deal with all the quirks of the forum like this. Good idea.

What's going to happen to all of the old content? Is it going to be archived?

BradleyAuerbach said:

What's going to happen to all of the old content? Is it going to be archived?

Yeah good question - or migrated? (again?) I have 15 year old posts I've likely changed opinion on, that I for some reason would like to see, but can't.

BradleyAuerbach said:

What's going to happen to all of the old content? Is it going to be archived?

It would be migrated like we've done for every system change in the past (this would be the 6th or 7th in 25 years?). We've never deleted content from GameDev.net, although some content may be hidden for one reason or another.

@supervga Chances are it still exists. If you have any clues I can probably find and figure out why you can't see it.

khawk said:
a lot of the intent behind this platform that is somewhat half-baked might have a bit better implementation for viewing content across the site. And of course, Discourse is open source, has a team working on it, a vibrant community, much better moderator tools and forum capabilities most people expect, etc. so there's all those benefits as well.

A less-buggy, more fully-featured, platform sounds good.

khawk said:
For various reasons, I'm considering moving the GameDev.net platform to Discourse (https://www.discourse.org/)​, and I wanted to solicit any opinions from the community on this idea. One interest is that Discourse follows the same sort of categorization/tagging model the current GameDev.net platform uses (filter content across categories/tags), so a lot of the intent behind this platform that is somewhat half-baked might have a bit better implementation for viewing content across the site. And of course, Discourse is open source, has a team working on it, a vibrant community, much better moderator tools and forum capabilities most people expect, etc. so there's all those benefits as well.

Discourse is mainly for forum/boards. Other than that, I don't really have anything against - Discourse platform is open source and under GPL-2.0 license. I've used it on other sites as user, it's quite stable, and good format that would imo suit forum (and maybe not just those) needs here.

khawk said:
I don't know if it would reduce server expenses for GameDev.net. I sure hope so, but it's not a primary motivation.

Discourse (when not paid service) can be built as Docker container - my advice - try to run it on arm instance (if GameDev.net is using cloud based service), instead of standard amd64. It's possible you can decrease costs this way to some extent without too much additional work (while it's not primary thing, ~20%-30% decrease in costs is always welcome … which is what we got for services we got running on arm fast enough).

khawk said:
Anyway, Discourse does take a bit of a different approach to the classic forum, so I wanted to throw the idea out there and see if anyone had strong opinions or feedback on the idea before I went too far down the rabbit hole in figuring out how to migrate everything over.

I think it might fit the forum part here. I'm more concerned about other parts of site (blogs, projects, tutorials, news, …). It may get very confusing and swarmed really fast (double that for newcomers). The question is though - will Discourse be used exclusively, or is there going to be some other way for the mentioned categories?

I agree 100%. Let's move to the better one. 🙂

khawk said:
I don't know if it would reduce server expenses for GameDev.net.

I hope you're not paying more than the budget hostgator plan for this absolute f'ing garbage hosting. It's one of the worst I've EVER seen.

But as far as the forum software, it can't get much worse. And if it can, I'm sure you'll find it.

It wasn't explicitly pointed out, but what is the scope of this? Are you going to replace the forums with Discourse (which seems like a fine idea) and keep everything else intact, or since you say “the GamDev.net platform”, are you considering replacing the entire site with a Discourse instance, getting rid of features like articles/project/tutorials as well as devlogs?