Hey nso, thanks! I'm the maker of collective.energy - as you identified, it was originally based on NodeBB but has been highly customized to the needs of our community. Over time, we're moving more and more to our own tools & stack. What specifically are you enjoying about it?

I really liked how snappy it felt, and how minimalistic the thread view is. It's hard to put in words but it feels like a combination of many other software I've seen, but that it hits a sweet spot.

I'm currently building a BB software \in c# .net core for my own use and with plans to OS it, and your site gave me some ideas and made me question some of the choices I've made. I've been adament agains AJAXifying the navigation between pages, but seeing how well it works on NodeBB I am having second thoughts.

NodeBB is one of the better engineered forums. The code is a pleasure to read. It's very modular -- makes uses of Node emitters frequently to implement plugin modules via PubSub.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=psychobunny did a great job.

Thanks for the feedback, best of luck with your project. Feel free to come join us also if you're into saving the earth!

Snooping into the resonse headers I found my answer, NodeBB. Will leave it here if anyone wondered the same. The price was pretty hefty, tho.

Discourse looks similar and is less expensive. Both are open source and thus free if you want to self-host.

https://www.discourse.org/pricing