Are PoE forums custom-made?

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Ondrashek06#5795 wrote:

Out of all the forum software I used, PoE's seems like the most lightweight one without any pointless extra features that barely anyone cares about.

Did GGG develop their own custom forum software to use on the website or did they use a pre-existing one? I've once hosted a Discourse forum and even though the stuff like an update GUI was nice, there was just a ton of bloat that required much more expensive servers to host. I'd like to host a forum again someday and whatever system PoE uses seems to be more fit for the job as I just need basic forum functions, nothing more.

Yes, Discourse forums are very bloated (scroll down a bit for comparison table) (at least from the user side).

But then this forum is also lacking some pretty essential features :
- As already mentioned, search could be better.
- It doesn't allow users to upload files (despite GGG having their own fake currency for heavy users to potentially pay for hosting !), which almost guarantees that any discussion (or worse, guide) will soon enough be broken, as the 3rd party hosts break the links. And these days people expect a working drag & drop.
- What probably annoys me the most : the lack of a proper «Your Posts» page (like phpBB has) so you can easily check new messages on threads you took part in. Instead you have to do it subforum-by-subforum («View My Threads» on bottom right). And also so you can easily search your own posts. (Especially since search is so lacking.)

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What kind of forum software did you have experience with ? (The abovementioned table lists a few examples).
I especially like (using) the phpBB forums used by Factorio or Matrix / Slitherine (updated not too long ago).
With more bloat, but still usable, CivFanatics now using an (updated) XenForo.

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P.S.: I'm suspecting that GGG have stopped using the forums for their own internal discussion needs, which guarantees that the forums won't get much love...

And it's particularly worrisome that GGG --
under the current geopolitical context (I'm in the EU), and the ever-growing threat that platforms pose to the open society
-- are still using YouTube, and worse, and are teaming up with Discord and Twitch, and the kind of scum that still makes money on YouTube / Twitch.

(Using platforms, and especially these ones, might have still been acceptable 10-20 years ago, but this is quickly coming to an end.)

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BlueTemplar85#0647 wrote:

But then this forum is also lacking some pretty essential features :

no one said they couldn't be improved

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BlueTemplar85#0647 wrote:

under the current geopolitical context (I'm in the EU), and the ever-growing threat that platforms pose to the open society

wtf? if this schizo take is real then we need these types of forums now more than ever