[jayroh]

Discourse is a large, huge, very successful project and company but the direction they approached the goal of "open source messageboard/forum" was very different than the way Thredded did. I had hoped to make Thredded a drop-in solution -- they, Discourse, did not. I had hoped to make Thredded as vanilla and "boring" as possible -- they did not (a SPA [ember] on top of rails).

In terms of features, the breadth of their product is larger, more complex, more opinionated. Thredded, on the other hand, hopes to get out of the way if and when you want it to (just look at what @druseph did with notebook.ai/forum).

They did a great job, though. They built a sustainable business on the foundation of "internet messageboards" and for that I applaud them. That was always my goal and I never got there, sadly. That was my dream.

In all fairness, it's been years since I've looked at Discourse so my assumptions may be out of date at this point. Take all this with a grain of salt.

[teh_klev]

Thanks for the reply. I'm tentatively in the market just now for a discussion forum app for a client and this posting on HN was somewhat serendipitous.

[jayroh]

If you end up trying thredded out and need any help or extra set of eyes, I'd be happy to help. Just lmk :)

[teh_klev]

I will do, and appreciated. Just waiting for the client to firm up their interest before spending any more time on this.