You know, I actually actively dislike Discourse's UX. I've always found there to be a cognitive load to usage that I never found with PhpBB, other older forum software, or Reddit.

I think my issue with it has to do with too clean of a UI, not enough visual hierarchy, delineation between post replies, etc.

I only realized yesterday that all the company web support forums I use are using Discourse, and I really hate the UI. Information density is low and infinite scrolling is a usability disaster.

I'd say that Discourse is an alternative, some people consider it good, but I personally don't like it.

What I like in PhpBB forums I joined is the organization of topics, usually hierarchical; balance of information density, not too high, not to low; good pagination that is fast to load; ctrl-f does what you expect: search in current page; theming that usually makes each forum look unique; profile and signature customization; no gamification of usage; and probably many other stuff I forgot.

Many of these things are personal and YMMV of course.

This. NodeBB made me switch to Discourse, because it was a nightmare to update and backup.

Discourse is the single worst forum software I've ever had the displeasure of using. Everything is difficult to navigate and hard to discern. It's as if someone actively sought out to create the worst user experience.

The discourse UI is horrible. Adding insult to injury, it checks browser versions and breaks for anything it deems unworthy. Why would a text forum care about which browser is used?

I'll echo what other people have said about the UI. I've used it with a lot of family and friends, likewise there have been a lot of struggles.

I'm also still rectifying against the recent changes to a shared username. As an engineer I understand why they felt the need to do it, but it feels like it's started to bring my personal/casual persona and professional one closer than I'm comfortable with. But, maybe I'm just misunderstanding the interface.

No