The forum app connects to the NodeBB fediverse

Before social media, there were internet forums. Millions of forum sites continue to live, so it’s notable that NodeBB, a forum software provider, is now joining the forum. fediversealso known as an open social network.

Fediverse today includes applications such as the decentralized X competitor Mastodon, Instagram alternative Pixelfedopen YouTube competitor PeerTube and others. These “federated” services are powered by a protocol called ActivityPub that enables decentralized social networks.

As users began to move away from centralized social media apps owned by billionaires like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and X’s Elon Musk, the ActivityPub protocol was adopted by a wider range of software applications and services. This includes the ActivityPub integrations it enables WordPress (and WordPress.com), Flipboard, Mediumand even with Meta himself Instagram Threads app. Substack competitor Nightmare also works for the federation.

With the addition of NodeBB, forum operators will also have the opportunity to join the decentralized social network.

As NodeBB co-founder Julian Lam explained in a postthe idea first appeared in mid-2023 when there was an idea to connect the NodeBB forums together. He says that initially it will be a centralized service. But while researching the concept further, Lam came across Mastodon and ActivityPub and realized the project could be decentralized instead.

In addition, finance NLNet Foundation Enabled NodeBB to implement the ActivityPub protocol faster. “Their funding was instrumental in providing the financial stability to experiment with ActivityPub and participate in developer circles like SWICG, FediForum and more,” Lam said.

Any new forums created with NodeBB in the future will automatically integrate with the wider open social network. However, existing clients will be able to interact with other NodeBB forums and any other software supported by ActivityPub, such as Mastodon.

Unlike other internet forum solutions, Discoursethe federation option will be native to NodeBB, not just an add-on.

“We decided to make this a core feature instead of a plugin because there were so many changes to core to support the concept of ingesting content,” Lam noted in his announcement.

The new feature is available in v4 of NodeBB and has already been used to federate Lam’s announcement. NodeBB for Mastodon.

Lam tells TechCrunch that since NodeBB is open source software, they don’t have usage numbers. (Also, they try not to track that information for privacy reasons.) However, you can get an idea of ​​the approximate number by looking at the download counts for the default NodeBB theme. Although not directly translating to the number of NodeBB installs, the project was downloaded 4,582 times last week.

Currently NodeBB powers Forum sites like Opera, Moz, MLB: The Show, Bleeding Edge, The Daily WTF, Vivaldi, f.lux and others.