I actually feel that Discourse is perfect for what we have/need right now, but probably will be slowly phased out once the game hits release. Right now, its the perfect platform for sharing and spreading ideas, as well as allowing new people to integrate in the community. Post-release, however, I feel there will be a natural shift to a more standard forum with the usual structure, simply because I doubt this willl really work for 20+ thousand players…
What makes you say that?
I don’t see it becoming any less useful with larger amounts of people.
ugh. I had the perfect way to articulate it, and now I can’t express myself…
But basically, theres a bit of a learning curve that doesn’t exist in standard forums (not that thats a bad thing) and I feel that a lot of content would get buried because of the way Discourse handle posting; that is, new stuff jumps to the top. And since it doesn’t separate into groupings well (for example, I can’t make the dash only show Qubicle Creations, etc), it would make organization a massive pain.
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You can split it into the respective categories by either clicking ‘categories’ on the front page. Hitting the breakdown menu thingy between your picture and the search function at the top right, or by simply clicking the category button of each post.
That should help with the majority of organisational issues, as long as we have the right categories in place, it’s really no different from a traditional forum setup.
You are right about perhaps things being less obvious, because I think people are so use to certain types of forums, which is why I’ll work on a kinda “new to Discourse” or “Discourse tips and help” thread" which should help alleviate a lot of these issues … there’s probably already one somewhere out there so I might just have to steal it (and obviously give credit, god, don’t want you thinking I magically come up with stuff 
)
I don’t think is any different to any other type of forum set up is it? Posts with the most recent comments are shown on the pages closest to the front? Maybe I’m wrong … luckily the search function is pretty nifty on here, and all the good content usually tends to find it’s way to the top I suppose!
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one of the main selling points for me…
@Paranundrox I think you need to play with Discourse a bit more. Go to the discourse site www.discourse.org and learn a little about the project.
From everything I can see Discourse will do the exact opposite of what you are thinking. Discourse is the best forum system I’ve seen for keeping relevant info accessible. In short, it’s very intelligent, it’s default views are brilliant. As an IT guy for over 25 years now, it reminds me of the old days of initially adopting Windows. Like Windows, compared to DOS, Discourse has much more functionality and options, as well as many more ways of doing things compared to traditional forums. I remember back in the day how so many computer users hated using windows because they liked remembering commands and knew exactly how to do things in DOS. Having to learn a completely different way of doing things was frustrating for them so they would complain about how badly designed it was and how it made things more difficult. In retrospect no one could claim that a command line interface is superior to a mouse / windowed operating system. There are still people out there who prefer a command line interface, but they are definitely the minority. There are a some things that a command line interface is still good for and more efficient than making a bunch of mouse clicks, that is why you can still use a command line in all windowed operating systems, just like you can still do the things that a traditional forum does in Discourse. Trying to use Discourse the same way you use a traditional forum is totally missing the point, once you start to do things the way Discourse was designed to you will start to see the magic that is Discourse. Using Discourse like a normal forum is akin to having windows start up as a full screen cmd window and not even looking at the desktop, task tray, or start menu. You could use your computer, but would you really be getting anything out of having windows on your computer?
Discourse is a NEW way of thinking about web forums altogether, like windowed operating systems were a new way of thinking about operating systems. It is still in Beta and it is this amazing. I can’t wait until it is finished. I predict that Discourse will be more and more present on the web as time goes on. More sites will start using it, and other forum software will start to adopt features used in Discourse.
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Oh, I totally agree that Discourse is amazing. I’ve never been one for regular forums, but I’ve been on this on and off for the last week. What I was saying is that I have a feeling that other forums are going to grow more in size than Discourse will. First off, Discourse just gives off this “feeling” that the topics and comments and stuff need to be just one step away from the game and be directly relevant, whereas in standard forums, theres more of that feeling of “freedom” to break away from the “game” section of community and just interact with the people in it outside of the context of the game.
Just my 2 cents, for what its worth.
(note: My 2 cents probably have a crappy exchange rate to reality)
Many people tend to create their website from scratch if it’s for professional purposes, but I was just asking if it would happen.
I did not mean to offend you.
oh, right… i havent heard of any interest on their part… but i suppose anything is possible… 
i cant imagine why they would, but if they did, it would probably be much later in the year, once they have a good rhythm of distributing the clients, and can devote some attention elsewhere…
I was thinking that they would do it when their game gets noticed by and bought by a lot of people, they may need to make a new website so that their servers won’t overload. Plus, it seems like a lot of developers make their own website.
well, they have (probably) around 25k backers already… 
well, they arent hosting the client downloads themselves… unless you mean standard site traffic?
They are using Wordpress, so I don’t really expect for the Wordpress servers to take a lot of requests.
I am quite sure that WordPress is also used by some popular sites with high traffic. Based on my experience I cannot share concerns why WordPress should not be able to handle more workload. It is all about how you run it and most of the time some strange plugins or bad implemented templates do cause the issues.
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Wordpress is open, so you can download, modify and run it on your own servers as well.
If you buy a individualized theme or make your own it can even look so different, that you would not be able to identify it as wordpress.
I have used multiple systems, frameworks as well as CMS and it really took me by surprise that a blogging system was able to tackle so many of the difficult problems in the right way. It has outstanding modding and skinning capabilities, while still being able to work after upgrades and updates.
Its a great choice to use on a low budget - I’d rather have Radiant use wordpress instead of wasting a 100K on a design studio that will deliver a webpage that is not much better.
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i’ve never used it myself (probably just about every other CMS out there though), but that was my understanding as well… thanks for the informative reply! 
I guessing you said this for a similar reason for creating their own website i.e. so the servers don’t crash due to increase traffic. If that is the case then you should worry not; the forums were able to weather the first week after the kickstarter finished with only a few crashes and I’m guessing we aren’t going to get the same amount of volume as we did then mainly because we’ll all be playing the alpha
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good point… and there have been a number of updates (behind the scenes) by the discourse folks that have improved the infrastructure… not to mention all the updates to the discourse client itself…
another good point!
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Maybe not a popular position, but I find this ‘discourse’ forum site the most difficult to navigate and use forum I’ve ever seen. There’s a lot to be said for a good, solid cookie cutter forum that everyone (new and old) would be familiar with at first glance/use, because that’s what the rest of the web is using.
I know there’s been discussions over this before, however I don’t think there’s been anything on it from Radiant.
As for me, this is my first forum. So although that may make me biased, I have seen other forums, so I have some experience. However I will admit I haven’t sufficiently used them.
For me, the look of this forum is a mile ahead of any other forum I’ve seen. The steam ones I’ve visit are horrible; so dark and dingy. Yuck.
All of them are so much less pleasant to read, and none of them have the feel of a user interface, but more just a tool. It doesn’t feel like something designed for you like Discourse does.
How you can find it difficult to navigate is beyond me, what with the search feature and the ability to just see topics in certain categories.
But as I said, I have little experience with alternate forums, so for anything incorrect/wildly assuming, please don’t eat me.
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Apparently me recollections aren’t quite the same as yours, I seem to remember having difficulty finding it up for 30mins at a time (or even 5) quite regularly for those first few days, bad gateway errors I think it was a good 70%+ of the time when visiting. However it got fixed fairly quickly and the forums have been pretty reliable ever since, of course the alpha may change that but myeh, it should adapt better now.
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