Our aspiration has always been to offer up our community platform for others to use as well.

One major reason why I enjoy working for DEV so much is the company's commitment to transparency, integrity, authenticity and community. I cannot describe how EXCITED I am for Forem! I believe it will be a major game-changer in the online-communities space.

Being part of a community serves so many different purposes depending on context, and we hope the idea of what constitutes a community will expand as creators like you get creating.

I grew up spending a lot of time in independent online communities hosted on vBulletin, phpBB, and other forum software. I went to some communities for entertainment, others to learn entrepreneurial and technical skills, and some just for a sense of belonging. I could find my place in these dynamic and culturally rich online spaces.

These communities have largely faded away over the last decade or so, as larger platforms offered a more modern consumer experience (that they're eager to offer in exchange for user data).

Many of the new communities being started these days are forced to build directly on the backs of these giants. They exist as a Group or a sub-space, but they lack the same character and sense of community of their earlier-internet ancestors.

I hope that Forem is able to level the playing field. That now community leaders of all have backgrounds and perspectives are able to build a space that is modern, safe, and independent. That community members can enjoy an engaging and delightful experience, while also knowing that their privacy and safety is being protected.

It's a very big task and it will be a long journey, but I can think of few challenges more worthwhile than working to build software for empowering community.

We don't intend to build niche open source software that only appeals to a technical crowd; we resolve, along with you, to build universally accessible, delightful, and enriching software for everyone.

I'm really excited about this. As someone who started out as a DEV community member years ago who now helps build the platform itself, the technical challenges of extracting and constructing software that works for everyone is really thrilling. I love the idea of taking the great foundation of DEV and extracting it into something that is a delightful experience for any—and maybe one day, every—user of the web who is on the search for a community where they feel like they truly belong. 💖

This is the coolest thing ever and I'm so excited to see where it goes.

Our learnings from DEV have shaped and help us understand exactly what we’re working towards with Forem. Thank you all for being part of the community, and continuing to build alongside us in the open. We hope you’re as excited about Forem as we are.

Like Ben mentioned, if you’re a community leader with ideals around privacy, inclusion, and an open and equal web, please don’t hesitate to reach out through this form. We’d love to hear from you. ❤️

We want to support a healthy ecosystem, we do not want to unilaterally become the ecosystem

As a new member of the DEV team (week two!) I can't help but feel that I've joined at the perfect time. I'm really pumped to help serve a community that really is by and for developers, which Forem will reinforce all the more. Being able to communicate a message that is true, through and through, makes my job as content manager enjoyable — and personally sustainable. This is gonna be an awesome journey to witness and participate in. Onward!

A journey to unbundle the power dynamic of social networks, to take some old ideas about the web and make them new again, to heighten the focus on protecting our society's most vulnerable, and to empower a diversity of cultures and ideas.

It's so exciting to be apart of a team / product / business who wants to tip the "control" of the web back to the people to empower community. I feel like these days — especially most pronounced during the quarantine — we're seeing the importance of people coming together in communities to find and offer support, to find a common ground, to learn something or enrich others. These days though, we also see the stratification of power in who moderates & polices these platforms, so it feels really cool that we can give people the tools to build the webbed communities they want to see.

It's been really neat to see this project grow and unfold. It was also really amazing how each DEV team member, even the much, much less technical ones like me, were given the opportunity to really collaborate on what this thing would look like, and not just from an aesthetics and functionality level, but from a values and ethics standpoint. I couldn't be more proud of the DEV team, and am excited to see what communities y'all build in the future. Hit me up if you make anything related to banjos, podcasts, art/sculpture, biking, or cocktails 😊

If DEV is the first Forem, ThisMMALife is the second. Community member Lee Wynne was the first to take our early indications that this was in the pipeline and to go through a lot of pain to stand up their own community instance. Lee has been a tremendous partner in helping lead the way.

I’m stoked for Forem. Although I’ve only been working at DEV since January, I’ve been a contributor to the codebase for three years now, so even before the code was public! I’ve seen DEV evolve over these past three years as a code contributor, community member and moderator.

We still have lots of work to do, but seeing an instance up and running like Lee’s is really cool. So to future community administrators and community members, we're giving you the power to make awesome inclusive communities! ⚡

I feel like I hit the Jackpot being the Lead SRE for DEV at a time like this while we roll out this new project. Not only do I get to instill good SRE practices for our DEV community, but I get the challenge of reproducing it so that it applies to many different communities.

We all know that creating a single software application is challenging. Creating one that can be reproduced with a click of a button hundreds of times, even more so. I look forward to tackling that challenge and coming up with new and innovative solutions along the way. I think it's safe to say once our world opens back up and conferences resume there will be plenty of new talk material coming from this girl 😉

We're not here to immediately bestow perfect software on the world, we're here to bring you along on a shared journey. A journey to unbundle the power dynamic of social networks, to take some old ideas about the web and make them new again, to heighten the focus on protecting our society's most vulnerable, and to empower a diversity of cultures and ideas.

Being a part of this journey, and working through the challenges to see the DEV codebase take shape for Forem has been absolutely phenomenal. I look forward to this phase where Forem helps to bridge the gaps between people and empower diverse communities. Let's continue writing good software that bring people together! 💜

I am so grateful that the Dev team enabled me to build our Mixed Martial Arts community, it mirrors the same ethics. 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

Forever grateful. Amazing platform, love the name, love everything about it 🌈

THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH UNICORNS FOR THIS!

I strongly believe in truly owning the data you put online and this is why I joined DEV! Being able to self-host your Forem gives the control back to the end users so their data doesn't get abused by large corporations.

I want to help enable people to build and grow online communities with Free Open Source Software. My systems engineering work here is focused on building a secure, stable, and reproducible platform for Forems to thrive. I am so excited to get to work on such a project with not only my awesome coworkers but our FOSS contributors.

Let's do this!

Awesome news! Good luck on the road ahead and getting it launched.

we want to support a healthy ecosystem, we do not want to unilaterally become the ecosystem.

I love this line and DEV's continued commitment to that vision, keep it up!

It speaks volumes that this feels like such a natural progression and, at the same time, an entirely new beginning. That's a testament to the team we have in place and how far DEV has come. I'm especially excited to see more bridges start to form across communities that have been more starkly separated in the past!

I have a domain I am sitting on called the thedev.cloud and its cloud computing version for DEV. I today cannot spin up the DEV platform even though I am a Ruby on Rails developer of 14 years. I would rather leverage an open-source platform than build my own.

The question is what is the ETA? 3 months, 6 months 1 year?

My favorite parts of the internet are niche and fueled by passion. Over the last decade, I've seen those corners of the web shrink and become inaccessible. For me building a toolkit to revive independent hobbyist and niche communities is a dream true. I think the internet is (was?) about the free exchange of ideas and empowering individuals. A shift away from centralized content production and curation is overdue if you ask me. :)

It might be more important, though, that Forem is providing an alternative path to the terrifying model of surveillance capitalism. I hope we're able to empower communities, but especially alternative methods of making viable businesses around those communities that don't violate the privacy and rights of their participants. Instead of exploitation, those new businesses and communities can take advantage of the ethos baked into Forem to empower their users.

It also doesn't hurt that I'm pumped to build an open source project and make a bunch of new developer friends along the way. :D

Huge if true.

P.S: F*cking awesome!

This is really cool Ben!

I can't express how happy I am for all these changes.

This will really empower people to foster, grow, and enrich every possible niche.

Huge thanks to everyone involved!

Some of the first Forems we launch will be meta-forems designed to help facilitate the software development process as well as the administration, moderation, and promotion of individual communities.

Very specific to my role here at DEV, but I'm super siked about developing a community platform that really gets moderation and user safety right. We're lucky that DEV draws in so many kind, inclusive folks — an excellent recipe for a healthy community — but of course we also regularly combat spam and conduct-breaking behavior. We're always working to better our tooling and reshaping processes here on dev.to to make us more efficient and effective at this, and I'm excited to link up with Forem community managers to continue this process and bounce ideas off folks with fresh eyes.

This is awesome!
@DEVteam: Thanks so much for your hard work and making the web a better place!
@ben : Time to update your GitHub profile 😊

If you're interested in reading some past posts along the way that got us to this point.

dev.to is now open source

Ben Halpern ・ Aug 8 '18 ・ 4 min read

#meta #opensource

Medium Was Never Meant to Be a Part of the Developer Ecosystem

Ben Halpern ・ Jun 3 '19 ・ 5 min read

#meta

Project Benatar: Fending Off Data Black Holes

Ben Halpern ・ Jun 17 '19 ・ 6 min read

#meta #opensource #projectbenatar

DEV Went Open Source One Year Ago Today, And We Have So Much More Planned!

Ben Halpern ・ Aug 8 '19 ・ 4 min read

#meta #opensource #github #rails

The Future of DEV

Ben Halpern ・ Nov 4 '19 ・ 4 min read

#meta

And the first post musing on the potential value of open source in this space. This dates back to before we even decided to shift to open source. The enthusiastic response was definitely catalyst for continuing down this path.

How dev.to could topple Facebook

Ben Halpern ・ Mar 22 '18 ・ 5 min read

#meta #opensource

This is... Sooooooo it's just great.. It's just awesome ! 🎉🎉🎉❤️

More decentralized, more community 🙌🙌🙌🙏☕

Very cool! 🔥 I remember being part of the IPB / vBulletin / phpBB days, all the way through Vanilla. It seems like everyone just has a Slack/Discord now, or maybe a Spectrum -- but regardless of the platform, none really achieve the success and accessibility that message boards have. Looking forward to see this platform evolve and become a standard for publication-based communities. Could easily see this being used by artists (like a DeviantArt of sorts), writing groups, lots of potential.

Great vision!

Y’all this is absolutely amazing and it makes me feel so proud to be a part of this community. ❤️

I’m very excited to watch this develop and hopefully help by being an open source contributor. Good luck!

I love the vision Ben!

Are there any intentions of offering hosting of the software similar to the way WordPress does?

Is forem open source? I didn't see. You have to apply to make one?

This is amazing. Thank you so much for doing this. It means a lot. I've been looking for something like this, but I don't have all the technical skills (yet) so to have something like this out of the box. wow. Thank you.

What would you say are the major differences, both conceptually and technologically, between Forem, Discourse, and any other similar-ish forum-type software?

I’m an old fart who’s been kicking around online communities since the late 1980’s (Usenet anyone?). I’ve seen ‘em come. I’ve seen ‘em go [spoiler: I’m NOT going to whine about kids nowadays, and you’re welcome to hang out on my lawn. Social distance, please.]. I was fortunate enough to be a small part (heavy emphasis on ‘small’) of streaming media in the early 2000s and ‘Hamilton’ gets it right: it IS fun to be in the room where it happens.

All that said, my only point here is to cheer you on and say “go, go, go.” I’ve watched a lot of people do it wrong, and you’re not doing it wrong. You’ve got a lot of smart people and you’re collectively wired to listen to each other. God, that’s rare . And all you folks who work there and are excited about it? Be excited. Savor it. It’s lightning in a bottle. It’s magic when it works.

Those people who did it wrong? They made crap-tons of money, but have basically sent the world down the darkest timeline (why yes, I’ve been rewatching ‘Community’, why do you ask?). Do this right, though, and you’ll make the world a better place. There’s nothing better.

Loving the way this community is improving, and all the philosophies behind it. Since I joined a year or so ago I've been an ambassador for the platform, I can't recommend it enough.

Thanks for all the work that goes into it, and I hope to be able to contribute when I have some time for it :)

I can't wait until Forem is out, I would love to create a Climbing community with it... I've been struggling to find a good climbing community in my area, and Forem would definitely be a nice tool to accomplish it.

PD: The editor looks cool, and definitely enables non-techy people to be able to set up a community with ease.

Cool, cool, cool!

A couple of days ago I wrote a post about Mastodon's federated social network and secretly hoped that some day DEV would become closer to that. A network of hubs sharing the best content of the open web. Yesss! 🚀

From Ben's post I also started envisioning Forem to be a competitor for Basecamp and the like. Setting up a company-wide Forem instance with profiles, chats, public posts, and group or 1-on-1 chats could be a huge asset to software development teams. 🤔

I wish we had Forems (and DEV) when I was learning to program. I can't wait to help build an ecosystem of privacy concious inclusive communities where users can seamless move around and spend as much or as little time as they want in each of them. Be able to take a breathing whenever they like and come back when refreshed without being followed around on the web by emails and advertising.

I am really happy to be a part of this journey to empower people create their own little islands of joy on this thing we call the world wide web.

This is a really neat community platform.

I have a few questions regarding structured data islands embedded in HTML using <script/>, in regards to profile pages:

1. You already make this available via cURL, but I am not able to access the same data via view-source:

2. Have you considered making profile pages similar to github pages re configurability? For example see my github profile page.

I'm very happy to see this well-oiled, open source project move into a new home outside of the Web Programming Internet Software Tech People. 🌟

As a person who runs countless communities on countless platforms, I feel like this is a really simple way for me to manage multiple communities (all developer focused keep in mind). Especially the fact that all the content is saved forever and easily searchable on the web.

What would really sell me on migrating communities and pushing others to use the instances I'd create on dev.to's platform would be a few things:

1. An option to link other ways to connect with the community: Slack/Discord link, and buttons for external links (main landing page, about the community members landing page, etc)
2. Gamification - It would be nice to know what community members are the most active. I'd have different categories, in an "MVP" type of program, i'd have a section for every part of the program for them to submit their activities and show others what they've been working on (maybe they spoke at an event, want to share a CFP, want to share their developer content, they created a plugin or tool, or want to share about the code contributions to an open source project), it would be nice to be able to see each other's content. Right now, finding that information in social media/chat channels is impossible, and it is unmanageable for some to just fill out a form for each activity as they are doing countless things in a weeks period. I think it would be more fair to see their activity when it comes to posts and comments here as a great measurement tracking method. But that's just my thought.
3. Swag Shop built in - Similar to Dev.To we can build in a swag store, but the big part of it is being able to enter a "Code" that is provided by my company and they are able to get an item for free. Not sure if you are using an external platform or if this is something that's custom written. (I haven't checked the open source code yet).
4. Extensive profiles where they can list out more than just their standard links, (multiple blog links), an option to write an entire "About Me" page, not just a short mini bio, so we can really get to know others in a shorter period of time.

I understand that everyone will have different needs for their communities, but these are my main 3 areas.

Thank you for making developers first and caring about what communities need!

WOW this is such a cool idea 🔥🔥🔥! That UI of the POC that changes between Forems reminded me of Discord's UI, like changing between servers 😅.

Hi Dev Team,
I have waited for 6 months for this feature because I love dev.to and wanted to use the same. But it seems the waiting time line is crossing and I am getting pressure from my students to have a support and discussion forum somehow.

Please do let me know if this is possible in the near upcoming months or it was just a discussion thread with no work in progress so i can plan my requirement accordingly to find alternate solutions.

I have like almost 8 communities all on telegram.
How can Forem build asynchronous for discussion posting update via telegram?

I saw tribe.so and circle.so they have beautiful design, but i can't afford their pricing plan for now as i have alot of cost to cover.

You guys are awesome !!!!

This is cool. Very much looking forward to seeing how it develops. There are so many 'community tools' out there, but none of them really get me excited.

Wow! I can't believe that I'm only discovering this post now. I've been designing and building an open source federated community platform engine for the past couple of years part time on my own. The name that I gave it is the Better Together Community Engine. Better Together is an organization that I founded to help bring people together and support communities. @ben , I'd love to chat more with you about this and will be taking a look at what you and your team have put together so far. I'm really happy to learn that my favourite positive and inclusive dev community is also working on this kind of project! I'm hoping we can collaborate, because working together is what Better Together is all about! You can find out more about what I'm working towards on our website at bebettertogether.ca

Awesome! Following. I like the sidebar as you build a network, with hopefully a shared login - more like discord than slack. speaking of which any thoughts on realtime stuff, like the direction Spectrum was going in (before github made them just "Discussions" tab?)

how is your platform aiming to be significantly different from Medium, apart from openness (which is a huge thing to be sure!)?
They have a very different approach to cross-promotion of traffic, and the main reason people stay there is traffic.

Hey DEV & Forem team!!

I just wanted to say that I will probably be doing something similar, I mean, building a community platform, and I will try to take some inspiration out of Forem, hope you don't mind! :-)

Not sure if it will be Open Source or if I'll try to monetize it somehow, as I also seek to make some profitable product in the near future.

The tech stack in my case will be LAMP with Yii framework, instead of Ruby/Rails.

How come I am doing this? Well in the past I have built this website:

crazypoems.org/index.php?lang=ro

A poems community for romanian language speakers. I have written it with classic php and smarty templates somewhere around 2008 I think. And it has a couple hundred users and like 5k poems, and even if it is very abandoned, there are a few users who don't stop posting so I've decided to try to bring it back to life.

Anyways, I guess my main focus will be to rebuild that site and then see how to convert it into a community platform that can be reutilized.

I like the ideas behind Forem, and also like, for example, the StackOverflow/StackExchange approach, it has been on the back of my mind for a while to try and build a community platform.

All the best with Forem and looking forward to see how both things turn out!

Is there a follow-up post to update the progress?

I study open source platforms and teams developing self hosted applications. Content management, commenting systems, blogging, social media, collaboration systems, hybrids of these core concepts.

Anyone want to do a 3D art and software community? I kind of do but not on my own.

In our tech community, social media platforms have been an important venue for us to attract students and developers to learn and build progressive web apps. Unfortunately, lately, the way social media handles hate speech has been inefficient. As per our community, it is our view that tech should promote what's good for the people and accept people for whatever race, religion or ethnicity they belong. With this, we are looking for ways to lessen our dependence on them. That's why I'm excited and look forward to seeing Forem come to life, witnessing how dev.to has been a vibrant and thriving community for developers of all kinds.

Thanks to the awesome OSS community, the DEV API library for .NET now references Forem throughout the codebase (still need to update the repo name): github.com/Turnerj/devto-dotnet

Wow!!! You guys are legend.
Its a lot of effort, years of work and you guys have open-sourced it all together.
Amazing.

Great, thanks so much!!
I will join as soon how it's possible)

Nice Ben

Wow, this is promising... honestly your platform is unique other than communities out there.

Awesome

Hi Ben I filled out a (earlier?) version of the form but please let me know if there is something you would want to know about my community. Excited to receive info on the next steps!

I love that you are doing this. Congratulations! For these new Forem instances. Will each one also be supporting the API beta? Or is that specific to dev.to for now?

Hlo I need some to you guy's.

this is so amazing I'm just reading this and its simply wonderful holy smokes

Sooo happy and proud to read this!
Congratulations e good luck on this journey! 🚀🚀🚀

Great insight!

We filled out the form a month ago, and no response?