I am curious what people think of the new Discourse forum. How does it compare to the old Plush Forums forum?
I am especially interested in the opinions of the moderators, given that they have a lot of experience with the two different forums in toto.
To start things off with a few simple observations, I like the general layout of Discourse where you can collapse the left column by clicking the three horizontal lines in the upper left-hand corner or by using the shortcut ‘=’. This provides for a full-screen mode, which is something Plush lacked.
The Discourse home page is impressive once you get the hang of it, as there are many tools at your fingertips. I like the way that each thread row displays the user who created the thread, the most recent poster, and three other users who are active within the thread. It gives you an overview of who is participating in the thread at a glance. The columns to the right also provide useful information (i.e. Replies, Views, Activity, Created), and you can click on the heading to sort the thread list according to that criterion, either ascending or descending. The ability to see the category to which each thread belongs is something that Plush was sorely lacking. The various search/browse capabilities are also quite effective (i.e. General search/browse, Category search/browse, and Tag search/browse).
I suppose the biggest strength of Plush was its clean, non-nonsense look, but the settings that this forum uses for Discourse are also quite clean, and I always felt that Plush’s static two-column layout created clutter within the threads themselves.
I wasn’t loving it at first (mostly because I had to download a special browser to even use it), but it’s really intuitive and a joy to use. Not significantly better than Plush in any way, from a user perspective, at least in my opinion. It has nice bells and whistles but anyone who’s not a child is here for intellectual discussion. It’s like writing a letter. You read letters and you write them, then you reply, and read said replies. Nothing too complicated in principle. We could be doing the same using a 1999 forum software.
It’s more ideological for me. The idea that someone who has a computer from before 2015 is basically barred from using any popular mainstream forum is kind of creepy and dystopian, if not outright crypto-authoritarian. Sure, new PCs are cheap these days. You can pick up a decent laptop for around 200 USD new, even less for used.
Kind of a “follow the trends that exist for little to no reason or disappear and vanish forever (aka die)”. Like if all the dictators in history won, got together and said “hey, let’s enslave everyone”, that would be pretty much the result.
But that’s off topic. As far as “pros” that the previous forum didn’t have other than “various bells and whistles” I cannot think of too many other than it seems “prettier”, I guess.
As far as cons, well let me offer a disclaimer. I generally dislike the whole “single page app” phenomenon. As someone who grew up on dial-up and who still to this day generally uses a mobile hot spot that can (and does) get throttled to speeds not much faster than 1990’s dial-up, let me just say it doesn’t play well with slow connections. Whereas traditional web pages with static HTML tend to fare better with slow connections. I haven’t really had many problems thus far so, but they have occurred on occasion when my internet happens to be particularly slow.
I guess I find it annoying and awkward there’s no real pagination, and you just have a little scroll bar that you have to ambiguously guess how far back or forward a particular time frame of the discussion is when you want to re-read a certain post or segment that happened to interest you. Like before mentally I’d be like “I really like what people were saying on page 3, some of it was over my head so I kind of glossed over those posts but let me go back to it” whereas now it’s just a shot in the dark and guessing game. But I suppose one could bookmark posts and keep a tally and track that if it’s that important. It was just easier before. Especially for intellectual in-depth forums like this. It could be like a reading assignment or lesson. “Let me study, reread, and make sure I understand all posts from page 1 before moving on to page 2.” Something like that.
No reason they can’t just offer a “pagination” option in user preferences for users who want it. Which again, irks me and seems to reek of forced obsolesce/conformity. But whatever, I enjoy reading what you guys have to say and contributing when I feel I have something of relative value to add. That’s all that really matters, I guess. It’s just a hobby. Something to do and pass the time, maybe learn something along the way.
I think it’s a definite step up in terms of features and usability. In hindsight Plush was extremely minimal especially when it comes to markup and handling links and the like. For composing long or complex topics or replies, I’m able to use the delightful Bear.app (iOS/Mac) which uses the same Markdown conventions as Discourse (with some slight differences.) Agree with the above that orienting yourself in a long thread can be a bit of a hassle, but overall it’s an Audi compared to a Cold War Skoda.
I can definitely see some of the benefits of Markup. Can you say just a word about how Bear.app works and integrates with Discourse? I assume PC or Linux might have similar options.
Outlander, I presume? 
I actually think you make some very good points. Pagination is something I value, and I agree that the human mind is location-based in a way that suits pagination. I also think pagination should be offered as a user preference, as it is elsewhere. The downsides of an SPA are also worth talking about, as I do sometimes work from a hotspot.
Here is one thing I disagree with:
I think full-screen reading and full-screen composing are superior for philosophical engagement, and Plush simply did not provide these options. You could read or write a letter on Plush, but your desk was necessarily cluttered.
What you say is true when it comes to finding a section of a thread, but one thing Discourse does well is it provides the possibility of traversing threads based on the lines of discussion. I can traverse backwards through a discussion (as I could on Plush), but I can also traverse forwards through a discussion with the “Replies” dropdown attached to each post. More, I can expand each quote within a thread to read the things that were being responded to.
It’s possible Discourse allows for better search engine visibility because of SEO, but I am not sure. The only people who say for sure are the owners or site maintainers. Discourse is a very popular, widely-used forum tool. It is also open-source, actively maintained, and updated.
I’ll refer you to an article I wrote on my techwriter site (I’ve effectively retired as a techwriter but wrote this some time ago) Markdown for Tech Writing – Texterity Documentation & Training
I discovered Bear App preparing for that article, it’s just a beautiful little markdown app, very responsive, works across desktop and mobile. So if I’m responding to comments from different contributors or posting a long OP, it’s less restrictive than working in the Discourse window, but all the markdown (bolds, italics, quotes, headers etc) copies from one to the other. That review has some other Markdown apps but in the OSX world, Bear.app is hard to top.
If you folks are talking about the operating system we’re now using, it’s a bit annoying for me. I only have a cell phone. I have to close it entirely many times every hour, because it will not let me leave the draft window. I can’t go back to the post I’m responding to to read more or grab another quote. There’s an x in the top right of my screen that lets me leave the draft window, but it just stops functioning often.
It also stops allowing me to close the keyboard. I do that and flip my phone to landscape in order to preview my post. So I have to close out entirely to get that back, also.
Yes, I also use this site exclusively on a cell phone, and it is very glitchy. Th screen will often freeze when I’m trying to copy and paste and I’ll have to refresh. Or when I’m composing text it will suddenly lose
track of where the cursor is at.
@Patterner, @Joshs - Interesting. I am surprised to hear this. I would have expected the opposite.
Yeah, that’s the weirdest thing!!
The “ignore” list is quite helpful.
I haven’t used it much yet–no reason, just haven’t. It works; that’s the main thing. Somewhat to my surprise, I like the white on black background option. Discourse provides more information about the threads – how many views, users, etc. That’s a plus. The main drawback is that it is new software and one has to learn its peculiar characteristics. Not difficult, at least on a desktop.
You sure about that? I’m an iPhone user not Android but on iOS a draft can be closed before being finalised by tapping the X at top right of the entry, after which it is nested under My Posts in the hamburger menu. That sub-menu will show any unposted drafts you have in time order of composition. If you have no drafts it will show you your previous posts. I’ would be surprised if it didn’t work the same way on Android.
I have iPhone, and yes, it works as you describe.
Except for when it doesn’t. Sometimes I hit the X in the top right, and nothing happens. It doesn’t close. And sometimes I hit the checkmark above the keyboard on the right to close the keyboard, and nothing happens. It doesn’t close. In it’s Case, I have to close the window entirely and reopen. My draft is always fine, and I can start editing again. Until one of those things, or the one Joshs described, happens, and I have to close the window entirely again.
I suppose, going into Helpdesk mode, you’re running the current iOS on a reasonably current model? I only ask, because I’ve never encountered those bugs, and as you can see, I’m a fairly prolific poster here, via both desktop and mobile platforms.
//oh, and I exclusively access via Google Chrome browser.//
I use neither iOS nor Chrome and it works very well for me. But I think you’re probably right that @Patterner’s issue is connected with operating system and/or browser. But it’s probably more their age than which specific brand it is.
EDIT: When I wrote this I hadn’t seen @Patterner’s reply above
For what it’s worth, it works well enough for me on Firefox on a Google Pixel. No bugs or glitches that I’ve noticed.
That said, it certainly feels desktop-centric.
The funny thing is that in the past I’ve somewhat avoided Discourse because I prefer desktop-centric forums and I assumed it would cater heavily to phones.
I have iPhone 16 with IOS 26.5.
Frankly, I don’t know how this site opens. It is always by itself, not in with the groups of Chrome, Safari, Edge, or Firefox sites I may have open.
