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Comment by julianlam | Hacker News Reader

As the maintainer of a self-proclaimed "modern" forum software, I always get really excited when new board software comes out.

You've probably discovered that building forum software is a lot more complicated than it looks. Those early boards really had a lot more going on under the hood than you thought!

It took us (a team of 3) two solid years before we considered ourselves on par with those old boards, feature-wise.

I'll say what I always say when I discover new board software — give me a run for my money. Good luck!

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> It took us (a team of 3) two solid years before we considered ourselves on par with those old boards, feature-wise.

This is really interesting to me, because I created an "old" style forum from scratch for a gaming community about a decade ago, and it only took me a month or two to build.

I built it with Python and Angularjs. I think I had pretty much all the typical features: subforums, threads, posts, user profiles, signatures, full moderation tools, etc.

I'm actually genuinely curious about what I did differently from you. Do you have any blog posts or anything like that going into more detail about the hidden complexities that you guys dealt with under the hood?

Edit: Aha, I found your product through your profile and had a quick look. I guess it probably just comes down to amount features - you guys have a LOT more stuff going on that just a typical old forum did.

NodeBB looks nice. A mobile first experience for a forum was lacking in the old ones. Your blog doesn't seem to have an RSS feed!?

what got you into making forum software? and what kept you going for those 2 years?

haha oh totallllyyy. i started writing the backend back in february of last year and i just had issue after issue, but overall super fun to solve the problems

i'm also curious how you got into making a product around it

NodeBB is a great piece of software and one of the few modern forums that I'd agree actually holds up to par with the old boards

I'm amazed at your pricing but it looks from your community forum activity that you have a market. Well done in an era where everyone expects stuff for free.

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