I think it’s discourse or something, the software/backend the site uses. I’m sure I read that when I came here at first.
It’s making the other places I go seem so annoying. It seems so far ahead in everything I wonder why everyone isn’t using it. I’ve never seen it before.
I’ve seen one other site that uses Discourse and, like you, I now hate going to other sites that don’t use it. It’s so clearly better on the UX side (not sure about on the admin side); hopefully more sites will switch over to this in the future.
And over time, using some of the features and discovering new ones, you will love it even more. Some big gaming communities are using it (Blizzard, Gearbox, lot of Xbox studios too).
I use the 3D tool Blender almost everyday and as it’s open source, there’s a dedicated forum at devtalk.blender.org which is built on this same base, so coming here and finding everything working like I was used to was pretty endearing!
It takes a LOT of adjustment to get used to but I’m starting to like it very quickly. Particularly fond of the post scrollbar on the right, that’s handy.
I was very sceptical at first, but @Sikamikanico s smooth voice in that video calmed my fears and I decided to give it a chance… And yep, he was right. This is soo good once you get used to it, I can’t believe not everyone is using it.
Awesome site, awesome forums… and I’m starting to sound like a fanboi but seriously I’m just happy to have such a great place to visit.
Yeah it runs much better on my mobile browser than other forums. Doesn’t take a hour to post something because the post function is crawling to a halt. Great choice on software.
I love the fact that you can like posts here and be identified. On other Era/reddit, you basically have to reply to say that you agree or look like you’re ghosting. Sometimes a like speaks a thousand words.
Also, I love the achievements here. Nice touch. To the extent that I have any recommendations, it would only be to get a daily email with notifications instead of one per. But I may just not know how to do that.
Yes, it can feel empty on huge screens or resolutions and main reason for narrow width is focus on content. Our eyes and brain much better follow text if there is 50 to 75 characters in the main column. Above that you are gradually losing focus, eyes are under more pressure while brain tries to connect where is the next line (and this can be taxing for longer text forms). Of course, it depends from person to person.
And this is why Discourse is structured in this way and when you look around the web, every good website where text is main content, has this type of layout. Easy to read and consume.
I get that people used to super wide classic forums can feel that something is lacking reading Discourse forums.
The good thing is that Discourse can be themed and once we are out of launch period, we can do a theme that can use more space as option for members who want to use it that way. We already saw some examples posted by community, so it can be done.
Personally I find it harder to read, it one of the many reasons I hate Facebook, same extremely narrow view that I find hard to read. ResetEra for example is twice as wide (though still not full width) on my monitor and that feels more comfortable.