Talkyard
Create a community, where your users can suggest ideas and get questions answered. And have friendly open-ended discussions and chat (Slack/StackOverflow/Discourse/Reddit/Disqus hybrid).
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GitHub repository information
Fetched · June 5, 2026 ★ 1,805 Latest: tyse-v1.2026.003-f220a7d9f-regular Updated: June 4, 2026
README
<!--
Old GitHub one-line description:
- Discussion forums with Question & Answers and Team Chat features. Plus embedded comments for your blog.
Current:
- Open source StackOverflow, Slack, Discourse, Reddit, Disqus hybrid — for your online community.
Other alternatives?:
- Community software, brings together the best from StackOverflow + Slack + Reddit + Discourse.
- Online community software. Find ideas and answers together, and pick the right things
to do, to change society, or grow your startup.
-->
Talkyard
=============================
Forum software, with chat, and anonymous comments.
- Thoughtful discussions.  Insightful comments rise to the top.
- Upvote ideas.  Sort by votes.
- Question-Answers.  Discuss, select an answer.
- Chat channels.  Pretty basic features.
- Blog comments.  Listen to your readers.
<!-- Community discussion platform, or Structured discussion platform? A/B test?
Or "Structured discussions, for your community — Talkyard brings together ..." ?
A structured discussions platform — brings together the main features from
StackOverflow, Slack, Discourse, Reddit/HackerNews, and Disqus blog comments.
-->
<!--
Create a place to talk,
where your audience find answers to their questions, and discuss ideas.<br>
Place it at `talkyard.Your-Website.org`.
- **Solve problems** step by step, in traditional flat forum topics.
- **Save time.** People find help "instantly", in Question & Answers topics.
- **Crowdsource feedback and ideas.** Discuss, upvote, choose the right things to do.
- **Collaborate,** in team chats.
- **Talk with your blog readers,** in embedded comments.
For your co-workers / customers /
students / volunteers /
contributors / users.
You can use Slack and Mattermost etc for day to day teamwork,
combined with Talkyard for the more important discussions
that you want to find in a nice-to-read format, months and years later.
Or use Talkyard for customer support, or for schools and students helping each other.
-->
How does it compare with other software?  
<a href="https://business.talkyard.io/compare/">Find out here</a>.<!--
StackOverflow for Teams, Discourse, Slack, Facebook Groups, Disqus? -->
**Self-Hosting:**  See [talkyard-prod-one](https://github.com/debiki/talkyard-prod-one/tree/ty-prod-one-v1) <!-- Or use our hosting service: https://www.talkyard.io. -->
**Demo:**  https://insightful.demo.talkyard.io
**Discussion forum:**  https://forum.talkyard.io
**Documentation:**  https://docs.talkyard.io (incomplete)<!--
Features: Copy a https://www.talkyard.io/compare/(something) page and show only Ty? -->
**Development:**  That's this repo! See: [docs/developing-talkyard.md](./docs/developing-talkyard.md)
<!-- Immich has these links: https://github.com/immich-app/immich
Documentation
About
Installation
Roadmap
Demo (although there's a Demo paragraph just below!)
Features (although there's a Features list just below)
Translations
Contributing -->
<!--
For your students / volunteers / colleagues / customers / donors /
open source users / city / community. -->
<!--
- **Improve your API docs**, by embedding comments at the end of each docs page, to make it easy for people to ask and tell you if something is unclear.
-->
<!-- (The staff configure the topic type just once, in a per category setting.) -->
<!--
Use Talkyard for your workplace, as a self building FAQ. Or for customer support.
Or for your teachers and students, to help each other. Or your non-profit volunteers.
Or an open source project and its users.
We'd like to build a tool tha *people who change the world or their neighborhood* can use
to solve problems and pick the right things to do. That's why we have
find-solutions Question-Answers topics, and HackerNews & Reddit type topics
where good ideas rise to the top.<! - — And you can use this tool,
for your workplace and your colleagues & customers,
or your non-profit and its volunteers,
or an open source project and its users,
or a school and its students, etc. -->
<!--
Talkyard (formerly EffectiveDiscussions) is discussion forum software, with chat and question-answers features.
And embedded comments for static websites / blogs.
Inspired by Discourse, Slack, StackOverflow, Reddit and Hacker News, Disqus. -->
<!--
### Project size
It's sort of possible for one person to understand all of Talkyard —
as May 2021, `https://github.com/boyter/scc` says
Talkyard is 140 000 (111 359 + 32 653 = 144 012) lines of code and comments
(excluding blank lines). **and** that was with some other changes, different branch.
Plus about 60 000 (59 425) lines test code.
Server side code complexity: 5538, client side (a React.js web app): 8478.
scc modules/ed-core/src modules/ty-dao-rdb/src/ client/app-* client/embedded-comments/ client/serviceworker/ client/*.ts app/ s/ Makefile to-talkyard/src/ gulpfile.js images/web/ty-lua/ images/web/*.conf images/app/Dockerfile.* images/rdb/
scc tests/
-->
Features
-----------
### Good comments rise to the top
Find the interesting stuff, also in big discussions.
<br/><br/>
<table><tr><td>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/ty-media/refs/heads/p/m/9/for-docs/2017--estimate-unfamiliar-task.jpg" />
</td></tr></table>
<!-- SVG doesn't seem to work at GitHub:
<svg width="100%" height="600" xmlns="www.w3.org">
<rect x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%" fill="#222" stroke="none" stroke-width="2"/>
<image y="3%" href="... something ..." width="100%" height="94%" />
</svg> -->
<!--
 -->
<!--
-->
### Tags with values
Create your own tags with **values**, list and sort by value.
For example, a _priority_ tag: `tags:priority:desc>2 is:open`,
here: https://forum.talkyard.io/-/search?q=tags:priority:desc%3E2+is:open
<br/>
<br/>
### Upvote ideas
<table><tr><td>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/ty-media/refs/heads/p/m/9/for-docs/upvote-ideas--aqua-planet-mind-writing-b0a--blue-marks--dimmed.png" />
</td></tr></table>
<br/>
<table><tr><td>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/ty-media/refs/heads/p/m/9/for-docs/2026-01--upvote-ideas-settings.png" />
</td></tr></table>
<br/>
### Anonymous comments
So e.g. students can post embarassing questions. Or for anonymous feedback, etc.
<table><tr><td>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/ty-media/refs/heads/p/m/9/for-docs/2026-01--anon-disc.png" />
</td></tr></table>
<br/>
<table><tr><td>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/ty-media/refs/heads/p/m/9/for-docs/2026-01--anon-never-always-menu.png" />
</td></tr></table>
<br/>
<table><tr><td>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/ty-media/refs/heads/p/m/9/for-docs/2026-01--anon-purpose-menu.png" />
</td></tr></table>
<br>
### Chat
Notifications via email, as of now.
<table><tr><td>
<!-- /images/web/ty-media/for-docs/2017-09-12-chat-ex.jpeg -->
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/ty-media/bf78d26ec3f4da976d9c694a660d40b718d86043/for-docs/2017-09-12-chat-ex.jpeg" alt="A chat channel"/>
</td></tr></table>
<br>
<!--
-->
<!--
-->
<!--
Hacker News / Reddit style discussion:
-->
<!--
**Admin-getting-started guide:**
<br>
-->
### Users online
<br>
### Avoid mistakes
There's a _Disagree_ button. <!-- See if others disagree with something. so you can avoid following the wrong advice. -->
<table><tr><td>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/ty-media/refs/heads/p/m/9/for-docs/penguins-can-fly.jpg"/>
</td></tr></table>
<!--
 -->
<br>
### Big discussions
**Find new replies** by clicking **Recent** in the sidebar,
when you return to a discussion a day later.
<!--
(But at GitHub, Reddit, HackerNews, you need to skim the whole discussion
from top to bottom to see if anything new has appeared.) -->
<table><tr><td>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/talkyard-media/bf78d26ec3f4da976d9c694a660d40b718d86043/for-docs/2019-08-10-recent-replies-ex-anon-arw.jpg" />
</td></tr></table>
<!--
-->
**Jump to the parent comment** and back:
<!-- Doesn't work:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/ty-media/refs/heads/p/m/9/for-docs/jump-and-save-time.mp4
<video width="500" data-height="260"
src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/ty-media/refs/heads/p/m/9/for-docs/jump-and-save-time.mp4"></video>
But uploading via GitHub's user interface works: (url must be in its own paragraph) -->
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fc1b34d7-75e3-4baf-95e1-8de364cdfdf2
<br/>
### Topic list
<!--
the old demo forum looks better? so use instead. -->
<!--
-->
<!--
 -->
<br>
### Blog comments
Like Disqus — but no ads, no tracking. Configure in the Admin Area | Settings | Embedded Comments. Read more here: https://blog-comments.talkyard.io
<!--
There's a Disqus importer — talk with us [in the forum](https://www.talkyard.io/forum/) if you want to migrate from Disqus to Talkyard.
-->
<table><tr><td>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/debiki/talkyard-media/bf78d26ec3f4da976d9c694a660d40b718d86043/for-docs/2019-02-21-blog-comments-ex-anon.jpg" />
</td></tr></table>
<!--
-->
<br>
<!-- Now implemented, see Anonymous Comments above.
### Embarrassing questions, creative ideas:
Let your students ask anonymous questions. Maybe they feel ashamed for not knowing?
— Or let your co-workers submit ideas and feedback, anonymously.
Maybe they feel worried their ideas has crossed the border from Creative to Crazy?
They can un-anonymize themselves later if they want to (per page).
(Anonymous posting first needs to be enabled, by admins.
Here you can read more: https://www.talkyard.io/-239/is-there-anonymous-messages-support-for-the-full-talkyard )
Anonymous posts has been implemented, but not code reviewed and merged.
-->
Old Code
-----------------------------
Old code from before January 2015 is available here:
https://github.com/debiki/debiki-server-old.
That repo, squashed, is in this repo.
License
-----------------------------
Copyright (c) 2010-2026 Kaj Magnus Lindberg and contributors.
Talkyard is licensed under AGPLv3 or later, see LICENSE.txt.
<!-- Later, add this, but first ask someone if the wording is ok:
Starting on 2032-01-01, this specific version of Talkyard (see ./version.txt)
is also licensed under GPLv2 or later. That is, AGPLv3+ until year 2032, thereafter
dual licensed under AGPLv3+ and GPLv2+.
Note:
- We try to bump the above GPLv2 date each year, so it's 6–7 years in the future.
- After the above GPLv2+ date, you can *not* redistribute Talkyard under GPLv2
— Talkyard includes Apache2 software and Apache2 is incompatible with GPLv2.
You can, however, after the GPLv2+ date, redistribute Talkyard under GPLv3+.
-->
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
above-mentioned licence texts for more details.
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