General Cerca: the lean forum software

[Cpvr]

lean forum software

Meaning:

• to search, quest, run (it)
• near, close, around, nearby, nigh (es)
• approximately, roughly (en; from circa)

Circa was created after a long time of pining for a new wave of forums hangs. The reason it exists are many. To harbor longer form discussions, and for crawling through threads and topics. For habitually visiting the site to see if anything new happened, as opposed to being obtrusively notified when in the middle of something else. For that sweet tinge of nostalgia that comes with the terrain, from having grown up in pace with the sprawling phpBB forum communities of the mid noughties.

It was written for the purpose of powering the nascent Merveilles community forums.

Features​

• Customizable: Many of Cerca's facets are customizable and the structure is intentionally simple to enable DIY modification
• Private: Threads are public viewable by default but new threads may be set as private, restricting views to logged-in users only
• Easy admin: A simple admin panel lets you add users, reset passwords, and remove old accounts. Impactful actions require two admins to perform, or a week of time to pass without a veto from any admin
• Invites: Fully-featured system for creating both one-time and multi-use invites. Admins can monitor invite redemption by batch as well as issue and delete batches of invites. Accessible using the same simple type of web interface that services the rest of the forum's administration tasks.
• Transparency: Actions taken by admins are viewable by any logged-in user in the form of a moderation log
• Low maintenance: Cerca is architected to minimize maintenance and hosting costs by carefully choosing which features it supports, how they work, and which features are intentionally omitted
• RSS: Receive updates when threads are created or new posts are made by subscribing to the forum RSS feed

Cerca supports community customization.

• Write a custom about text describing the community inhabiting the forum
• Define your own registration rules, instructions on getting an invite code to register, and link to an existing code of conduct
• Set your own custom logo (whether svg, png or emoji)
• Create your own theme by writing plain, frameworkless css

Source: https://github.com/cblgh/cerca

 

[Timelord_]

Seems to be fairly inactive from a development perspective. No code commits in over three months.

 

[Ravenfreak]

It's always nice learning about a forum script I didn't know existed. Seems too minimal for my tastes though, it's even more bare looking than Reddit IMO. But hey if it gets the job done for the community powered by it, then that's all that matters I suppose.

 

[Timelord_]

Yup - it is the community that makes a forum, not the software that powers it.