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

Hung Vu - Mar 7 '23 - - Dev Community

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.
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