Storyden

Storyden takes the bulletin board forum and rebuilds it for the present. A single instance can run a forum, a blog, a news feed, a curated set of links, a directory or a knowledge base, so a community does not have to scatter itself across a chat server, a wiki and a link aggregator.

Trying it takes one command. A container image published to the GitHub registry runs the whole application and opens on port 8000, and the project documents self-hosting on a plain VPS.

A few conventions are worth knowing before running it in earnest.

• Version numbers: releases combine a fixed major, a year marker and a counter, which reads more like a build number than a semantic version.
• API stability: semantic versioning is not used, so breaking changes are avoided and, when unavoidable, called out in release notes and a separate list.
• Development builds: versions outside a release commit carry a post suffix to show you are off a stable release.
• Content types: discussion threads, wiki style pages, structured data and shared links all live in the same instance.
• Deployment: the container is the supported path, with local development instructions kept in the repository.

The stated motivation is that most forum software is decades old, insecure, abandoned or simply unattractive, and Storyden answers that with a modern language, simple deployment and a design meant to be looked at. It suits someone who remembers 2000s internet forums and wants one without the maintenance that came with them.