forem/forem

Analysis updated 2026-06-21

★ 22,696RubyAudience · pm founderComplexity · 4/5Setup · hard

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Community platform software
      Powers dev.to
    Core features
      Article publishing
      Comments and discussions
      User profiles
      Moderation tools
    Who uses it
      Founders building communities
      Teams sharing knowledge
      Niche professional groups
    Tech stack
      Ruby on Rails
      Preact
      JavaScript
    Setup
      Self-hosted deployment
      Admin dashboard
      Markdown posts

mindmap root((repo)) What it does Community platform software Powers dev.to Core features Article publishing Comments and discussions User profiles Moderation tools Who uses it Founders building communities Teams sharing knowledge Niche professional groups Tech stack Ruby on Rails Preact JavaScript Setup Self-hosted deployment Admin dashboard Markdown posts

Click or tap to explore — scroll the page freely

What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Launch a community website for your product users where they write tutorials, ask questions, and help each other.

USE CASE 2

Create a niche professional community platform, like a dev.to for a specific industry, without building it from scratch.

USE CASE 3

Deploy an internal knowledge-sharing site for your team with blog posts, comments, and searchable member profiles.

USE CASE 4

Run a fan or interest community with article publishing, discussion threads, and member follow features.

What is it built with?

RubyRuby on RailsPreactJavaScript

How does it compare?

	forem/forem	homebrew/homebrew-cask	ruby/ruby
Stars	22,696	21,993	23,567
Language	Ruby	Ruby	Ruby
Setup difficulty	hard	easy	hard
Complexity	4/5	1/5	5/5
Audience	pm founder	developer	developer

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Requires Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis, and Elasticsearch plus significant server resources, not a simple one-command install.

In plain English

Forem is open-source software for building online communities. It is the platform that powers DEV (dev.to), a community website for software developers. Anyone can take the Forem code and use it to build their own community platform, a space where members can write articles, participate in discussions, build profiles, and connect with each other. The problem it solves: building a community website from scratch is complex. You need user accounts, content publishing, comments, moderation tools, notifications, search, and much more. Forem provides all of this out of the box, ready to deploy and customize, under an open-source license. How it works: you deploy Forem on a server, configure it with your community's name and settings, and it becomes a fully functioning community site. Members can sign up, write posts (in Markdown), comment, follow each other, and receive notifications. Site owners and moderators can manage content and users through an admin dashboard. The interface is similar to what you see on dev.to. You would use Forem when you want to launch a community website, for a fanbase, a professional group, customers of a product, or any group of people, without building the platform from the ground up. The tech stack is Ruby on Rails on the backend, with Preact (a lightweight JavaScript UI library) on the frontend.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

Help me get Forem running locally so I can explore the admin dashboard and understand how to configure a community site from scratch.

Prompt 2

Show me how to update Forem's branding, community name, logo, and color scheme, using the admin settings panel.

Prompt 3

How do I configure Forem's email settings so new members receive welcome emails and get notified about comments on their posts?

Prompt 4

Walk me through deploying Forem to a server using Docker Compose, including environment variables, the database, and the background job worker.

Prompt 5

How do I create a new article tag in Forem, set a description for it, and make it appear prominently on the homepage?

Frequently asked questions

What is forem?

Open-source community platform software, the same codebase that powers dev.to, for launching your own fully featured community website with article publishing, comments, user profiles, and moderation tools.

What language is forem written in?

Mainly Ruby. The stack also includes Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Preact.

How hard is forem to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated hard, with roughly 1day+ to a first successful run.

Who is forem for?

Mainly pm founder.

Open on GitHub → Explain another repo

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