Metafilter clone for dummies

September 2, 2008 10:33 PM

Dear Lazyweb: I'm looking to create a MeFi clone for a relatively narrowly focused website, and would love to find something that can do so more or less out of the box. Any suggestions?

I've tried installing MetaPhilter only to have it die nastily after configuration. An earlier Ask Metafilter threat on this topic turned up a suggestion for Wordpress, but I'm looking for something a bit more multi-user friendly than that.
Drupal seems like it would be able to do what I want, but it scares me and Dreamhost's one-click Drupal installation is locked down so as not to allow installation of any new themes or modules -- and a lot of Drupal's functionality seems like serious overkill for this.
Scoop seems like it could do a lot of what I want, but I don't (and shouldn't) have root access on my server, so that's out.

What's the path of least pain here? Should I bite the bullet and try to write my own system, bearing in mind that my l33tness is limited in the extreme, or is there something out there that I'm overlooking?

posted by bokane to computers & internet (5 comments total)

a lot of people use phpBB. I personally find it a bit crummy, and I don't know if you can turn off threading of comments, but it is a message board out of the box.
posted by drjimmy11 at 10:47 PM on September 2, 2008

At metachat, we use a hacked version of Wordpress. You need to put the work in to get wordpress looking like a metafilter clone, but it's easier than writing your own CMS. I'm happy to furnish you with the source code for metachat if you want. It's a bit of a mess (being working software and all), but it's fine for hundreds of users. MeMail me if you're interested.
posted by seanyboy at 12:13 AM on September 3, 2008

Vanilla is forum software that doesn't look too much like phpBB. I haven't used it, though, and every time I look at the screenshots they look a bit more crufty.
posted by Leon at 1:14 AM on September 3, 2008

I'm not 100% sure what features of Mefi you need, but if you are looking for a clean and simple message board rather than the overblown giant of phpBB then bbPress (by the makers of Wordpress) is a pretty nice (strangely undersung I always think) option.
posted by Hartster at 5:43 AM on September 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

Functionality-wise, I'm looking for something like MetaFilter, so I tend to suspect that bulletin boards are not the answer: I'm looking for something on the user end almost exactly like MeFi.
posted by bokane at 2:53 PM on September 3, 2008