App Suggestion: Simple Forum

Hi,

Know this has been mentioned before, but the threads I have seen are a few years old, and haven’t necessarily opened a broader discussion.

I’d quite like to see something akin to a forum in the official Nextcloud apps. I know there is some amount of Discourse integration available, but this still required deploying a large piece of software, with features we don’t need, and doesn’t offer the full set of integrations that would come from an internal app. Ultimately most forum software out there is for an externally-visible site. It needs to manage logins, profiles, emailing users, and all sorts of other features more suited to a public forum situation. When we are just discussing things internally, and we have this implemented already, I think a lot of this complication can be stripped away, and actually I’m not necessarily sure “forum” fully captures what I am thinking. “Discussion board” or similar might work better (details below) in the context of an internal environment. So for me this is one feature where a simple, integrated solution that we can get from the official apps would work better than re-using an existing piece of software and then trying to tie everything together in an integration. For some user stories, that might still be preferable, but in a small working organisation I think a KISS solution would better facilitate the type of discussions about our work I want to bring to this app.

Chat can be good for having ongoing discussions; but I’d like something where members of our time can post longer threads of discussion, ask questions, explain some of hat they are working on, brainstorm ideas for known issues, etc. Direct linking to files, kanbans, todos, messages, etc. would then work really nicely.

I think a basic level of interface would be sufficient. Nestable subfolders for different topics. Then people start a thread with the content of their discussion, and each post or comment below inserted using Markdown, re-using an existing rich editor for the web UI. My thinking is we need something that offers more visibility of ideas than Chat, and might ideally serve to replace the long email threads that have been the status quo in my organisation, and I would like to bring to nextcloud instead. Instant messaging has a lot of advantages, but some discussions are more structured than this. Some of our clients use Jira, and this is overkill for this situation, but we have these structured discussions around issues encountered, feature requests, etc. - and the core features of this are potentially similar to what I am thinking, if this provides another angle on the “forum” concept. Alternatively, something closer to Deck may make sense to some people. Pinning cards on a board, and allowing others then to add a thread of comments to these. People may want to draft ideas, presentations, diagrams, visual displays of something they have worked on, and open the floor for comments - e.g. in an organisation where a product design, marketing presentation, that sort of thing would be relevant to discuss. Really any app that allows a structured discussion on a topic ,that is visible/editable/etc. to all in a specified group, I think covers my thinking. Chat does not allow this same kind of structure, and requires making breakout threads and lots of scrolling back to locate messages.

Extra features could include:

  • Re-using tags from the todo app, deck app, or other tags that might be in the system might be a nice option. So topics are in a tree like filesystem; tags to help filter.
  • Managing indentation of comments and replies. Much like sites like Facebook have adopted - not doing this in the first place I think has made it harder to implement later. But a decision between a simple linear chain of replies, or a tree of subdiscussions that have replies to specific comments might me good to make early on.

Any thoughts?

6 Likes

This would be useful for my organization. We have been looking for a self-hosted forum that would be simple to maintain with flexible notifications. There are other features in Nextcloud that are useful, and I agree that a Nextcloud app would be more manageable than trying to administer and integrate a separate standalone system. However, we don’t have the time to develop a plugin of our own, and also we’re new to Nextcloud in general. Right now I have no idea how difficult it is to create even a simple app for Nextcloud.

This would be amazing indeed.
If only some of us were competent enough to create an NC app. :unamused:

Do you know which solution uses this help.nextcloud.com forum ?

discourse

It rules.

Thxs.
The last one I installed (15 years ago?) was under phpbb. I feel like a boomer.

Hey stellarpower,

Your thought of having a simple, integrated discussion board within Nextcloud is a wonderful one. I completely resonate with your want for a streamlined, internal communication platform that doesn’t require the complexities of external forum software or the limitations of immediately messaging.

In my experience, fostering structured discussions and collaborative brainstorming is vital for productivity, specially in a working organization. Your vision for nested subfolders, Markdown support, and seamless integration with different Nextcloud apps like Todo and Deck sounds promising. It would provide a holistic surroundings for team collaboration.

Yo, you should totally think about adding a threadin’ feature to the comments, ya know? It’ll make convos way deeper and help folks keep their thoughts organized. And that whole deal with reusing tags from different apps, man, that’s straight-up genius! It’ll make sorting and filtering stuff a breeze.

But here’s the real deal, making that discussion board super user-friendly, lookin’ fly, and super-efficient is the key, my friend. It’s gonna shake up how folks talk inside, makin’ Nextcloud a must-have tool for peeps like you.

I’m stoked about the potential of your idea, and I hope the Nextcloud crew takes it seriously, ya dig?