1. OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) in December
- 1390 views
After much deliberation amongst myself, I am strongly considering migrating this website to Discourse. I'm not keen on the idea of switching away from using software written in Euphoria, especially when we'd be switching to a "competing" language (Discourse is a Ruby on Rails app), but I think the pros far outweigh the cons in this case. Discourse is a mature open source project with hundreds of contributors and millions of users worldwide.
I've already been exploring the admin side of running a site and everything can be managed from the web interface. The only server-side work involved is the initial installation, migrating our data, and the occasional software upgrade (which is basically just a docker pull). Discourse comes with a whole suite of moderation features, supports wiki pages, and is almost endlessly customizable to fit our needs.
One caveat is that, like many modern web applications, Discourse is huge, at least compared to our current euweb platform. I would need to either expand the CPU/memory capacity of my current shared hosting VPS or provision a new VPS along side it (I'm leaning towards the latter) which would cost an additional $10/month to run. It's not a lot but it's twice what I'm paying now, although that's still less than the $20/mo "starter" hosting service offered by Discourse.
To support this effort and to help keep things moving forward, I would also like to introduce entirely optional paid memberships to the forum. This would likely come in the form of a small "pay what you can" monthly fee and a corresponding "premium" user badge. I don't want to paywall any part of the forum; everyone is welcome here and I want to keep it that way. Again, this would be entirely optional and provide purely cosmetic changes to those users.
The rough plan so far is this:
- Stand up an empty Discourse site
- Configure theming to match the current site
- Migrate the users table and verify access
- Migrate the messages table (the forum)
- Migrate the news table as a new topic
- Migrate the wiki table as a new topic
- Migrate the manual documents to GitHub
- Migrate the tickets table to GitHub
- Import dev mailing list from SourceForge? (optional)
- The downloads page is just a wiki page
- The recent page is already a Discourse feature
- Move messages around into categories (e.g. Phix, Off-topic, etc.)
Please discuss. I want as much input as possible before I decide to move forward. If we're in agreement I'll continue my efforts on this and hopefully complete the migration in early January.
-Greg
P.S. If I've seemed less involved here lately it's because we've been shopping for a house since September and we just signed on our new home last week. We're currently on track to move in the last weekend of December. The new house includes dedicated office space, which our apartment of the past ten years has sorely been lacking. This will give me more time and space to work on Euphoria. Good things are coming in 2025.
2. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by euphoric (admin) in December
- 1385 views
I am strongly considering migrating this website to Discourse.
Do it. I dare you. 
3. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by Icy_Viking in December
- 1383 views
I like how the small forum is now. However if moving to Discourse will help you, I'd say go for it. Would the paid membership thing be monthly or a one time free type of thing? Also, congrats on the new house. Looking forward to great things for Euphoria in 2025.
4. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) in December
- 1374 views
I like how the small forum is now. However if moving to Discourse will help you, I'd say go for it.
It would certainly remove the burden of having to repair or replace the existing euweb app we're running now. I think that would benefit everyone in the long run.
Would the paid membership thing be monthly or a one time free type of thing?
I think we can work out pretty much anything. You can read more here: Discourse Subscriptions
Also, congrats on the new house. Looking forward to great things for Euphoria in 2025.
Thanks! It's been a long time coming. I can't wait to move in!
-Greg
5. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) in December
- 1375 views
I spun up a test site yesterday to get a feel for everything and I started playing with adapting our current theme. I'd say it turned out pretty good!
| Light mode | Dark mode |
|---|---|
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-Greg
6. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by Icy_Viking in December
- 1372 views
I like the mock-up look of the site designed with Discourse. The dark theme is really appealing. Would moving to Discourse allows to bring back or have an archive of Eu programs again?
7. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) in December
- 1395 views
I like the mock-up look of the site designed with Discourse. The dark theme is really appealing. Would moving to Discourse allows to bring back or have an archive of Eu programs again?
Hypothetically, yes!
Discourse supports attachments, so we could make a The Archive category and inject the contents of archive.edb as topics, complete with the original date, author, description, and file attachment.
Assuming we've got the correct email address in archive.edb and the forum, this would actually give those users immediate control of their own archive posts. We might have to do some merging as well.
Some entries are links and not files, and those links could be included within the body of the post. However, it's likely that many external links are now dead. Do we keep them around for prosperity?
-Greg
8. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by Icy_Viking in December
- 1368 views
I like the mock-up look of the site designed with Discourse. The dark theme is really appealing. Would moving to Discourse allows to bring back or have an archive of Eu programs again?
Hypothetically, yes!
Discourse supports attachments, so we could make a The Archive category and inject the contents of archive.edb as topics, complete with the original date, author, description, and file attachment.
Assuming we've got the correct email address in archive.edb and the forum, this would actually give those users immediate control of their own archive posts. We might have to do some merging as well.
Some entries are links and not files, and those links could be included within the body of the post. However, it's likely that many external links are now dead. Do we keep them around for prosperity?
-Greg
I like the sound of that. I get quite a few old Euphoria programs are gone. However I think if possible, we should try to archive as many Eu programs as we can. I remember back in the early 2000s, there was this program called Eu Morift 3D, it was fun to play around with.
9. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) in December
- 1370 views
Here's a list of some programming, software, and tech-related Discourse forums and their user counts (where available).
We should all poke around a bit to see how they're using the software and how it applies to our use cases.
What seems to work well vs what doesn't work? Read up on FAQs, common problems, feature requests, etc.
| Site | Users |
|---|---|
| ClockworkPi Forum | 4,770 |
| Fortran Discourse | 1,721 |
| Go Forum | -- |
| KiCad Forums | 14,728 |
| Kotlin Discussions | 9,823 |
| LightBurn Forum | 56,221 |
| Maker Forums | 26,877 |
| OctoPrint Community | 21,694 |
| OpenEuphoria | 950 |
| Passbolt Community | -- |
| Python Discussions | 30,158 |
| Ruby-Forum | 2,977 |
| Ruby on Rails | 23,455 |
| Rust Forum | 31,843 |
| SitePoint Forums | -- |
| SQLTeam.com Forums | 6,404 |
| SWI-Prolog | 1,206 |
| Swift Forums | -- |
| Three.js Forum | 18,445 |
| Unreal Engine | -- |
-Greg
10. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by axtens_bruce in December
- 1363 views
Stuck my head into the Fortran one. This looks like a good direction to go, Greg.
-Bruce
11. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by Lnettnay in December
- 1365 views
I'm curious how you came up with the number of users for OpenEU. That seems like a lot. 
Lonny
12. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) in December
- 1349 views
I'm curious how you came up with the number of users for OpenEU. That seems like a lot.
That's the total number of users in the database, which includes anyone who was active on the mailing list prior to the forum, going back over twenty years. Several people might be in there multiple times if they changed emails or usernames.
I still think it's a valid comparison since the number I listed for the other sites is also their "total" users and not reflective of actual daily active users.
-Greg
13. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by ChrisB (moderator) in December
- 1323 views
Hi
It all sounds like a good idea - I'm sure I would be happy to buy you a cup of coffee a month.
Thanks to JM Duro, I have all the archive programs available, and the old website. I am just getting my head round Docker, Cloudflare and either Nginx or Lighttpd to host it on my own computer. If anybody wants a program from the archive let me know. You can use the wayback machine to access the old RapidEuphoria website.
Cheers
Chris
14. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by petelomax in December
- 1271 views
You can use the wayback machine to access the old RapidEuphoria website.
You can? Who can?
15. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by mitgedanken in December
- 1267 views
I haven't looked closely, but it could help you cut costs:
https://uberspace.de/en/
A very dedicated team!
16. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by ChrisB (moderator) in December
- 1265 views
You can use the wayback machine to access the old RapidEuphoria website.
You can? Who can?
Well, any body can, even Pete can
https://web.archive.org/web/20140804185853/httphttp://www.rapideuphoria.com/
Cheers
Chris
17. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) in December
- 1256 views
You can use the wayback machine to access the old RapidEuphoria website.
You can? Who can?
FYI the Internet Archive was offline for a few weeks back in October after suffering an attack: https://blog.archive.org/2024/10/18/internet-archive-services-update-2024-10-17/
This was only six months after suffering a sustained DDOS attack in May: https://blog.archive.org/2024/05/28/internet-archive-and-the-wayback-machine-under-ddos-cyber-attack/
Who attacks the Internet Archive? They're like the Switzerland of the Internet. I mean really.
-Greg
18. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by petelomax in December
- 1268 views
Well, any body can, even Pete can
https://web.archive.org/web/20140804185853/httphttp://www.rapideuphoria.com/
Ah, my word, I got in! Like others I've tried the above does not work for me, but these do:
As well as this forum messing up the links (presumably discourse won't) I've also had issues in the past with O2 and EE (here in the UK) blocking that site because, gosh, it contains pornography, and Google gets a bit picky with it too, but Sky who I'm now going through is a bit more sensible, let's hope they stay that way.
I suppose I could/should start replacing/alting all the broken rapideuphoria links (can take a while to load) on PCAN with working archive links... or maybe I should wait and see if anything better pops up.
19. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) in January
- 1038 views
P.S. If I've seemed less involved here lately it's because we've been shopping for a house since September and we just signed on our new home last week. We're currently on track to move in the last weekend of December. The new house includes dedicated office space, which our apartment of the past ten years has sorely been lacking. This will give me more time and space to work on Euphoria. Good things are coming in 2025.
Update: our move went well (albeit exhausting) but I'm still working on getting settled into my new office space. Need to get my homelab stuff set up so I can continue tinkering with the Discourse migration. Watch this space for changes.
-Greg
20. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by Icy_Viking in January
- 1007 views
P.S. If I've seemed less involved here lately it's because we've been shopping for a house since September and we just signed on our new home last week. We're currently on track to move in the last weekend of December. The new house includes dedicated office space, which our apartment of the past ten years has sorely been lacking. This will give me more time and space to work on Euphoria. Good things are coming in 2025.
Update: our move went well (albeit exhausting) but I'm still working on getting settled into my new office space. Need to get my homelab stuff set up so I can continue tinkering with the Discourse migration. Watch this space for changes.
-Greg
Sounds good. Looks like good things will be happening for Euphoria in 2025!
21. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by jimcbrown (admin) 2 weeks ago
- 385 views
As the last dev standing from the time when Jeremy convinced us all to go to a modern forum in the first place (replacing the old statically generated web site that was based on the email list), I think it's important to share my opinion on this vitally important matter.
I'm not keen on the idea of switching away from using software written in Euphoria,
The loss of "eating our own dog food" here will indeed be tough. However, given a choice between losing this for the website and losing this for the language (OE is still written in OE after all, aside from some Makefiles, configure scripts, and a small C backend component)... I'd rather keep it in the language and get a new website.
especially when we'd be switching to a "competing" language (Discourse is a Ruby on Rails app),
If we had to pick something else, I'm glad it was Ruby. Nowadays I'm much too busy with my day job to help out here - and it's Ruby that I'm using in my day job. It's the most Euphoric-like language I've seen out there thus far that's hit mainstream. They even have 'elsif' !
but I think the pros far outweigh the cons in this case. Discourse is a mature open source project with hundreds of contributors and millions of users worldwide.
After much deliberation amongst myself, I am strongly considering migrating this website to Discourse.
In fact I believe this is largely in agreement with what Jeremy would have wished. The reason he worked so hard to create euweb and the current forum is because he thought the community would benefit from having a modern website and forum, instead of one stuck back twenty years ago.
Sadly, that was close to twenty years ago. It wasn't possible to keep up with developments in the wider Web, and now the forum is again stuck back twenty years ago.
We should have a modern website and forum.
Discourse comes with a whole suite of moderation features, supports wiki pages, and is almost endlessly customizable to fit our needs.
The only disadvantage is that, as per https://meta.discourse.org/t/358131 , Discourse is so modern that they tend to drop support for older browsers and things (like older mobile phones) very quickly. Jeremy and I remained committed to keeping this website functional with much older technologies like IE on W98 or w3m (which I'm still using) - when ajax broke it (since w3m had no javascript at the time) it was a quick fix to make it work JS free again.
So, once we migrate ... I guess this is goodbye.
If we're in agreement I'll continue my efforts on this and hopefully complete the migration in early January.
-Greg
On the one hand, I'm glad you waited (so I was able to share my thoughts). On the other hand... hopefully this won't be delayed much longer. OE could use the facelift.
22. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) 2 weeks ago
- 350 views
On the one hand, I'm glad you waited (so I was able to share my thoughts). On the other hand... hopefully this won't be delayed much longer. OE could use the facelift.
Thank you for your feedback, Jim. I really appreciate it. Your timing is amazing because I actually some recent news to share.
A couple weeks ago I realized that six months had passed since I started planning this migration, and I still have little to show for it.
Discourse is a huge piece of software and, as much as I enjoy working on all this stuff, I don't see starting this any time soon, let alone finishing it.
So I'm bringing in some help. I'm reaching out to a few local contacts who work in related fields, including web hosting and software development.
My plan is to put someone in charge of powering through the migration. And then, hopefully, keep them on as an admin and moderator.
-Greg
23. Re: OpenEuphoria, Discourse, and you!
- Posted by jimcbrown (admin) 16 hours ago
- 39 views
A couple weeks ago I realized that six months had passed since I started planning this migration, and I still have little to show for it.
Discourse is a huge piece of software and, as much as I enjoy working on all this stuff, I don't see starting this any time soon, let alone finishing it.
So I'm bringing in some help. I'm reaching out to a few local contacts who work in related fields, including web hosting and software development.
Makes perfect sense. The whole point of moving is so that we'd be able to reach out and get help from outside the community.
My plan is to put someone in charge of powering through the migration. And then, hopefully, keep them on as an admin and moderator.
-Greg
Sounds like a plan. Also, perhaps consider removing admin from folks who aren't active on the community anymore. It made sense in the past since these were the only folks who knew the forum and the admin/moderation tools, but post migration the opposite would be true (we'd be the ones having to relearn everything). Of course if someone is more active then having a familiar face who's a quick learner does make sense.
