Comment by buro9
5 years ago
I have something in Go that isn't too bad... it looks like this https://www.lfgss.com and powers sites like this http://forum.espruino.com/
Does need a bit of polish on the getting it to run side though... it was designed as a platform rather than a standalone, so it's hard to set up. But the fundamentals are sound as it's just a PostgreSQL database with a Go API which is documented here https://microcosm-cc.github.io/ and at the moment has a Django Web UI (just calls the API, it has no database) but to make it easier to run I'm very very slowly porting Django to Go so that there'll be a single binary to use.
Those home pages look pretty good and I like the go, single-exectable approach, but I have to say those docs look like more than I want to hassle with. That said, looks like you might be on a good path.
The docs shouldn't be needed by anyone wanting to run a forum.
But the whole forum is web API first, and the web site is just a client. The docs are there to say "anything you see this website doing, you can do it through a client you create"... and it doesn't have to be everything, if all you want to do is list publicly visible new conversations on a different website then it's a single API call that you can do from client side JavaScript.
But... if you do want to create an entirely new application using the forum as a platform for it, i.e. a full blog system with the forum hidden but driving discussions, or an app where the forum is at the heart of it but the app looks like a cyclists ride database oriented around events and a calendar but with discussions per ride... well knock yourself out, the API makes that pretty easy and there are apps that do both of those things (though natch, they're closed source and the rides one charges over $200 per year per user for it).