What's different about it?
Discourse is a from-scratch reboot, an attempt to reimagine what a modern Internet discussion forum should be today, in a world of ubiquitous smartphones, tablets, Facebook, and Twitter.
We're civilized.
Our trust system means that the community builds a natural immune system to defend itself from trolls, bad actors, and spammers — and the most engaged forum members can assist in the governance of their community. We put a trash can on every street corner with a simple, low-friction flagging system. Positive behaviors are encouraged through likes and badges. We gently, constantly educate members in a just-in-time manner on the universal rules of civilized discourse.
Uncompromisingly open source.
There is only one version of Discourse – the awesome open source version. There's no super secret special paid commercial version with better or more complete features. Because Discourse is 100% open source forum software, now and forever, it belongs to you as much as it belongs to us. That's how community works.
Everything that most communities would want is included out of the box; a giant collection of complex plugins should not be required to have a great experience.
Simple. Modern. Fun.
Discourse pares all the complexity away and puts just the essential stuff on screen – the conversations you care most about, based on your participation.
All the modern amenities you'd expect from a big social website like Twitter or Facebook are present in Discourse. Mention someone by @name. Paste in a link or an image, and we make it awesome on your behalf. Simple quoting and linking of replies and topics. Reply wherever you are, online or via email.
And it "just works" on your phone and tablet.
No, seriously, what's different about it?
See our full feature set and you'll discover amazing features you and your community will love.
Better yet, play with a live demo forum at try.discourse.org – or check out one of our customer forums:
Browse some of our customer forums to explore more Discourse communities.
What are the minimum browser requirements?
Discourse is designed for the next 10 years of the Internet, so the minimum browser requirements are high.
Discourse supports the latest, stable releases of all major browsers and platforms:
- Microsoft Edge
- Google Chrome
- Mozilla Firefox
- Apple Safari
Additionally, we aim to support Safari on iOS 15.7+.
What tablets and phones are supported?
Discourse was built with high resolution touch devices in mind, and switches automatically to a mobile layout for small screens.
- Mobile Safari on iOS
- Mobile Chrome on Android
How do I get it?
We offer official Discourse hosting, or install Discourse yourself in the cloud in under 30 minutes.
Discourse is 100% free open source forum software, now and forever.
What was it built with?
Discourse is a JavaScript application that runs in your web browser, using the Ember.js framework.
The server side of Discourse is Ruby on Rails backed by a Postgres database and Redis cache. You can deploy our standard Discourse Docker container on any virtualized cloud server (digital ocean, amazon ec2, rackspace, azure) with 1 GB RAM.
What license is the code under?
The GNU General Public License, version 2.
We happily accept pull requests, however, we do ask that you sign a Contributor License Agreement so that we have the right to relicense your contributions.
Should I switch to Discourse right now?
Sure!
We started Discourse as an open source project in early 2013, offered our first hosting in 2014, and we've worked hard since then to continue improving Discourse for every community, whether we host it or not. We're confident we've built an amazing forum platform you and your community will love. Start a free trial and see for yourself!
We have robust, tested converters for vBulletin, phpBB, Vanilla, bbPress, SMF, Discuz, Drupal, and many more. We can work with you to migrate your existing forum software to Discourse. For more information, check out our migration FAQ.