🌱Using Forem as an intranet website, yay or nay?
Hung Vu

Hung Vu @hunghvu

About: I write about various topics that I'm currently learning, be it front end, back end, cloud, DevOps, etc., you name it! For any questions you may have, you can reach out to me at: hello@hungvu.tech.

Location:
Washington, US
Joined:
Feb 2, 2022

🌱Using Forem as an intranet website, yay or nay?

Publish Date: Mar 7 '23
18 9

I'm looking into building an intranet website and is researching on available options. There are two solutions that I have at the moment:

  • DIY the website. This offers customizability but come at the cost of overhead such as development and maintenance time.
  • Use an existing open-source forum solutions like Forem, Discourse, NodeBB, etc. This cut down the overhead, but also reduces customizability (no tailored UX?) and might not scale well when requirements evolve.

Which options would you suggest? And what else should I consider? The draft requirements can be seen below:

  • There are 2 main classes of users: Authors, and readers. The authors have right to create contents (articles, videos), while the readers can only consume content. A user can only be one or another.
  • More advanced access control list: E.g., only authorized users can see the content.
  • Good user experience (navigation, search, organization, etc.) Cloud file-directory based options such as Google Workspace has become an obstacle for non-technical users in this specific environment.
  • Targeted audience: Certain type of content can be promoted or pin to dashboard of targeted audience.
  • User profile.
  • SSO.
  • Optional: Scheduling (calendar), and location (map) features.

Comments 9 total

  • Liftoff Studios
    Liftoff StudiosMar 8, 2023

    I'd say you make a custom site if you're willing to spend the time since it's good for experience

    But if you want a good set of features immediately make use of an existing project

    • Hung Vu
      Hung VuMar 8, 2023

      So that makes me wonder if there are any other options out there. In business context, the more options the better.

      • Liftoff Studios
        Liftoff StudiosMar 8, 2023

        There are many such as forem and discourse
        A google search for "Forum open source" will yield many such

        • Hung Vu
          Hung VuMar 8, 2023

          I agree, but they all categorized as open source community platform. In other words, they are closely related options and not diverse enough. I suppose there are other categories out there that I'm not aware of. Still reasearching though.

          • Liftoff Studios
            Liftoff StudiosMar 8, 2023

            But isn't that what you want? Ofc you could go with the paid and corporate ones too but I'm not to judge

            • Hung Vu
              Hung VuMar 8, 2023

              Maybe, maybe not, that's why I'm gathering more information to make an informed decision. On a surface, the community platform like Forem won many check boxes, but there might be more suitable solutions out there.

              • Liftoff Studios
                Liftoff StudiosMar 9, 2023

                I get your point, I'm just not informed enough to suggest more platforms ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  • Ben Halpern
    Ben HalpernMar 8, 2023

    We use Forem as an internal team knowledge base and place for team memos.

    Forem is still a bit too hard to set up, and we haven't done a great job pinging people about updates, but once it's set up, it is very useful for this sort of thing.

    Set it up fully and regularly update, and you'll have a great time!

    forem.team

    • Hung Vu
      Hung VuMar 8, 2023

      Thank you, it's great to have a confirmation that Forem is a viable solution!

Add comment