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Welcome to Multiforum

Multiforum is a modern, open-source platform for community-driven discussions, events, and knowledge sharing. Its cross-posting architecture lets one discussion reach several communities without fragmenting the original post or forcing every channel to share the same conversation.

Try It Now​

Experience Multiforum in action at topical.space - our hosted demo instance.

What is Multiforum?​

Multiforum combines the best features of traditional forums with modern social features:

  • Cross-Posted Discussions: Publish one discussion in multiple channels while keeping each channel's conversation and moderation context independent
  • Rich Discussions: Threaded conversations with markdown support, upvoting, emoji reactions, and comprehensive moderation tools
  • Event Management: Organize and discover events with Google Maps integration, recurring event series, and calendar views
  • Knowledge Sharing: Build collaborative wikis with version history and edit tracking
  • Downloads & Files: Share files with version tracking and virus scanning
  • Moderation Tools: Issue-centric moderation with full audit trails, suspension management, and granular permissions
  • Plugin System: Extend functionality with custom plugins and pipelines
  • Open Source: Transparent development with community contributions welcome

One Discussion, Many Channel Contexts​

Most cross-posting systems create separate copies of a post. Those copies can drift apart as the author edits them and people respond in different places. Multiforum instead stores the discussion once and connects it to each selected channel through a DiscussionChannel:

                    ┌─ DiscussionChannel A ─ Channel A
Shared Discussion ──┤
                    └─ DiscussionChannel B ─ Channel B

The shared Discussion holds the content that should stay consistent everywhere, including its title, body, author, tags, attachments, and edit history. Each DiscussionChannel holds the context that belongs to one community, including its comments, votes and ranking, flair, subscriptions, and moderation state.

Adding another channel therefore creates a new connection rather than a duplicate discussion. An edit to the shared post is visible in every channel, while replies and channel-level decisions such as locking or archiving remain local. This gives authors one canonical post and gives each community control over its own conversation.

See Creating Content: Cross-Posting for the publishing workflow.

Technology Stack​

  • Frontend: Vue 3 + Nuxt 4 with TypeScript
  • Backend: Apollo Server with Neo4j graph database
  • Authentication: Server-side Auth0 sessions in production, with a constrained local-development mode for evaluation
  • Optional File Storage: Google Cloud Storage
  • Optional Maps: Google Maps with marker clustering

Getting Started​

  1. Installation - Try Multiforum locally with Docker Compose or plan a production deployment
  2. Authentication - Understand how user authentication works
  3. Roles & Permissions - Learn about the permission system
  4. User Guides - Find documentation specific to your role:

Contributing​

Multiforum is open source! Check out our contributor guide to learn how you can help improve the platform.