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Hey everyone! Thanks so much for checking out my little project. Hope you find something new. If anybody has any suggestions for the directory or any feedback on the site itself at all I'd love to hear them! I've worked hard to make sure only quality (imo) resources feature in this directory. It is not just a scrape of everything I can find.

I know there are quite a few of these style sites, but I have tried to improve on them by including real up to date website screenshots (a websites hero says much more than an icon!), a bit of pricing information where available, favourites functionality and some better organisation.

I've been using this in Chrome for Mac in YouTube for a while. It is in Safari too. Just have to double right click a YouTube video to get the browser menu instead of the YouTube one.

Though many web developers rejoice at the increased adoption rate leaving IE behind.

Based on Google's reputation of maintaining both products and API's I think I will give this a pass.

Thanks so much! :)

I wrote some thoughts on why I think a traditional forum is better than other platforms for some things: https://webwide.io/threads/why-webwide.65/

I'm sure it won't be for everyone and that's fine. There is a super welcoming community already for anybody that would like to dive in.

Please feel free to AMA about it!

Such a great idea! Will only get better as it grows. One for the bookmarks.

I hate Medium with a passion! I totally understand your reservations and I would be the same. Running costs are low and I've enjoyed the forum world for 10+ years so I don't foresee there being any need to undertake any of those awful tactics.

Good point! Found it difficult to get out all the ideas and features of the platform within the public discussion board system without being intrusive to people who just wanted to lurk. I've made some clearer routes from the landing to people who just want to browse as a guest.

My ideas for writing benefits would be both that people can make their replies and new threads as long/short form as they want.

There's also plenty of categories where we welcome blog style posts whether you want to write a tutorial, development log, share an achievement, etc. Self-promotion rules are relaxed because as an industry we're creators and I think platforms such as Reddit can really stifle this.

Hi, sorry! Didn't want to mislead. I am of the impression that not knowing it's all in the open is a bad thing so definitely not something I wanted to hide away.

Of course the page was built with conversions in mind, for the good of the project I want to spell out the benefits and convince people to sign-up but certainly not in a dark way.

I've added some more links including the logo, a view all discussions button and a browse as guest down by the bottom CTA to communicate this better.

Sort of! For starters, Discourse, Flarum & Vanilla all share a similar structure of a single feed of posts organised by tags which is quite different to an "old style" forum where there are individual boards. These kinds of set-ups are possible in those ones but aren't highlighted as much. But not only that...

Flarum is not at v1 yet and isn't really recommended for production. It's also quite feature light and I would be hesitant to expand upon it while it's not stable yet.

I've never seen a Discourse forum that doesn't look like another Discourse forum, have you? They all look the same! I had a pre-launch landing page up where something like 75% was on desktop. Discourse seems to have a mobile first, desktop never approach to its design and appears to be difficult to customise. I felt it was a sub-optimal experience suited better to communities centered around a single topic or perhaps support.

Vanilla is the most mature of these new style options but just wasn't doing it for me.

I don't think going a bit "retro" is a bad thing. I thought XenForo had a great balance between retaining that classic, nostalgic, familiar vibe while still providing lots of nice QoL features to go with it.

As I say I am no lawyer but will be getting some more personalised advice on wording since we seem to be growing! I hope you can see there are no ill intentions but I understand that it is good to have these things in black and white. Many thanks. :)

I hope we get a pass with the word. At this stage any revenue made from supporter memberships, the only revenue stream atm, is being funnelled back in to the platform and documented transparently in monthly updates.

I love it! Forums were my first experiences on the internet and I'm thrilled to be able to share that passion with others now.

GDPR applies to personally identifiable information, this may apply to some content posted. Of course no ToS can override your rights under GDPR and there are tools built-in to comply with any data requests.

Me neither, the wording is referring to the license to display the content rather than the content itself. I couldn’t go back and check all social posts, newsletters, quoted messages etc. every time somebody edits a post or changes their avatar, for example.

I think I can do more to guarantee certain rights with regards to a users content though and will get some advice on communicating that.

Thank you!

No worries thank you for your thoughtful comment and feedback!

I longed for an active traditional style board for many reasons. There’s pros and cons to every style of community and they’re all great for different things.

A bit down this post I did a pros and cons of Webwide vs. Reddit style, Twitter style and Slack/Discord style

https://webwide.io/threads/why-webwide.65/

Great question! XenForo is mature software developed over almost a decade by a great team in the UK. It is unfortunately proprietary and this was a decision making factor when choosing a platform.

The only other contender that matched my vision for a revival of a more traditional style forum was phpBB and I don’t think it would have been up to scratch for the eagle eyed and fairly demanding tech community.

Discourse, Flarum, Vanilla are all great options but I don’t think they were well suited to what I wanted to build. Not enough to set them apart from other communities in this space.

Building a bespoke solution wasn’t an option when time commitments and budget are considered.

The data is all well portable and neatly organised so if those needs change and can be reconsidered as we grow what is the best decision.

All public discussions are available on the main domain without a login: https://webwide.io/

Sorry that wasn’t clear! I’ll add a browse as guest button to the landing page.

Ha, I see what you are saying. I’ll look at how I can word that better. Thanks for your feedback!