Heh, well that homepage would be enough to make sure I didn't waste time with Flarum if you hadn't already communicated how bad it was...

The database structure appears to be described here - a converter would involve mapping each table/field of Flarum to an equivalent in Beehive then doing a bunch of SQL select/insert statements in the right order - it's not necessarily difficult (for someone knowing SQL), but it could be time-consuming.

Beehive has themes, which means anyone who knows CSS can change the colours to whatever they like.

Creating a "dark mode" would probably involve starting with the "Black" theme (which is more a mix of greys) and updating all the bits of it which are still black text and white backgrounds.

So by what you saw in the structure, you could tell it was bad, or what was it on the home page?

I'm asking because I am trying to figure out why it would have been selected in the first place, other than it is free.

It is too bad Beehive is a well kept secret; to be fair, I only know about it because of Jim Lynch.

BTW, the Wikipedia page is way out of date. I don't know if forums will make a comeback, but if they do - Beehive should be the first and last stop.

I'm referring to the visual style, the content, the markup, and ... well just about everything about that page...

* Things like wasting so much space on the oversized title.
* The term "modern" has become a euphemism for "limited features and a crap interface".
* Their feature descriptions are simply terrible. The word "sky" doesn't end in e.
* The poorly chosen generated artwork they've used.
* Behind the scenes, the markup is an ugly mess - they use CSS classes as if they were inline styles.
* etc

Others might not see some of those as issues, but it's their combination along with many other individually minor things which collectively say "this is shit".

> I'm asking because I am trying to figure out why it would have been selected in the first place, other than it is free.

People are attracted to things that are familiar, so the more people have used similar "modern" software in the past, the more crap like Flarum will appeal to them.

> BTW, the Wikipedia page is way out of date. I don't know if forums will make a comeback, but if they do - Beehive should be the first and last stop.

A double-edged benefit/drawback of Wikipedia is that they don't like people too connected to a subject to write about it - in some ways we should be happy that the Beehive article still exists at all; a lot of other Open Source software articles I previously tried to create haven't survived.

To get a better article (and more attention/use in general) would need reviews in credible tech websites, and they generally need a reason to write about a topic in the first place.

Thanks, Peter!

These people have a marketing thing going on, unusually slick for an open source outfit. Also, the project is still in active development, which is one of the very first things I look for when adopting some framework (or when I did).

What's an example of using classes like inline styles? Is that bad? From what I've read, styles are auto-generated using SASS.

The forum may well have auto-generated SASS styles, but I'm referring to the website which has hundreds of classes with names like "border-0" which contain a single declaration, and markup that then mixes dozens of those classes.

"Active development" is also a way of saying "incomplete" and "subject to change". Too much weight/credit is given to stuff which is new and unproven.

I would figure the website would be equally as crappy as the forum is, which is my experience. Maybe it has so many extensions partly because they couldn't figure out how to make it work all in one go, or just lack imagination. I think " incomplete" is pretty accurate.

One other thing, I thought that maybe another attraction was that Flarum also hosted for free, which would appeal to someone who wants a forum at no cost, but they do not.

I not interested in beta testing anything new and unproven, I'd be looking for: how long has it been around, what's under the hood, and is it still supported/in development. Is it overbuilt? Does it try to do too many things? Then I would look at user forums and see what kind of problems people are having with it. Then I might install it to a virtual machine for a test spin and look at the code.