Skip to main content

Welcome to oForum

Build your own community with a minimal, fast, self-hostable forum inspired by Hacker News. Deploy with one binary and a PostgreSQL database — no JavaScript frameworks, no complexity.

Get startedInstallation guide
$oforum init
$oforum migrate
$oforum
✓ Server running on :8080

Get up and running in minutes

Follow these steps to deploy your own oForum instance

1

Install oForum

Download and install the oForum binary with a single command:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/arcten/oforum/main/install.sh | sudo sh
Pre-built binaries are available for macOS and Linux (amd64/arm64) on the releases page.
2

Configure your database

Generate a .env file with your PostgreSQL connection details:
oforum init
You’ll be prompted for your database URL and port. The default configuration connects to postgres://localhost:5432/oforum.
Database URL (default: postgres://localhost:5432/oforum?sslmode=disable)
> postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/oforum

Port (default: 8080)
> 8080

✓ Created .env
3

Run database migrations

Apply the database schema automatically:
oforum migrate
Migrations are embedded in the binary and run automatically on server startup as well.
4

Start your forum

Launch the server:
oforum
Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser. Your forum is live!
Run oforum seed to populate your forum with demo data including 30 users, 20 posts, and 200 comments. Default admin login: alice / password123

Explore the documentation

Everything you need to deploy, customize, and manage your forum

Self-hosting guide

Deploy oForum with Docker, Fly.io, or manual setup on your own infrastructure

User guide

Learn how to create posts, comment, build reputation, and engage with your community

Admin panel

Manage users, create custom roles, organize with tags, and configure forum settings

CLI reference

Complete command-line reference for all oForum commands and options

Key features

Built for simplicity, performance, and self-hosting

Single binary deployment

Everything compiles into one executable with embedded migrations and templates. No build steps, no dependencies to install.

PostgreSQL only

One environment variable, one database. No Redis, no message queues, no external services required.

Server-rendered HTML

No JavaScript frameworks. Pages render in milliseconds with Go templates. Fast, simple, and SEO-friendly.

Rich community features

Posts, threaded comments, upvoting, user profiles with karma, admin panel, roles, tags, search, and leaderboards.

Ready to start your community?

Deploy oForum in minutes and start building your own Hacker News-style forum. Self-hosted, open source, and built for simplicity.

Get started now

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Get started for freeTalk to us