Discourse is a new software to be provided for free and as a cloud service by the company behind stack overflow. While browsing on the project itself, I could not stop from checking the features of the application to be developed.
I would argue that 90% of the web projects that need to be developed in these days have to include these features. Therefore here is a list of those features with focus on project He.al and others.
Mobile and Tablet
Designed for touch devices from day one. Automatic mobile and touch layouts that scale to fit your device.
Optimized for Reading
To keep reading, just keep scrolling. When you reach the bottom, suggested topics keep you reading.
Summarize Topics
Use the Summarize button to condense long topics to just the most interesting and popular posts.
Likes
Express agreement, support, and highlight interesting posts with the prominent ❤ button on every post.
Inline Context
Expand quotes, expand replies, or expand what this was in reply to.
Translations
Provide translations and a good strategy to make the application usable by different demographical groups.
Real Time Notifications
Know when someone replies interact with content being watched or otherwise. Options quotes you, mentions your @name, sends you a private message, links to your post, edits your post, or recategorizes your topic.
SEO
Friendly, human readable URLs and clean HTML. Optimized for Google indexing and searching.
Plugins
Allow a simple plugin system
Overlay Editor
Compose with an overlay editor which never interrupts your reading – even if you navigate to a different topic.
Social Login
Easily add Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, GitHub, and other common social logins.
Private Communities
Make your entire site private, or just certain categories.
Blog Integration
Use our WordPress plugin to integrate a HE.AL into your blog. Or embed HE.AL into static HTML sites.
Rate Limits
Rate and content limits for all user actions; stricter for new users.
Easy Spam Cleanup
Two click spammer delete, email + IP ban, and auto-removal of all content.
Spam Blocking
Comprehensive spam blocking heuristics including new user sandboxing, user flag blocking, and standard nofollow.
Analytics
Dashboard for staff that shows key stats on users, topics, and all user actions – along with top referring domains and topics.
Automatic URL Embedding
URLs to popular websites like Wikipedia and YouTube will include an inline summary. We fully support OpenGraph and oEmbed.
Advanced Image Handling
Add images through upload, drag and drop, or copy and paste. Large images automatically thumbnailed and lightboxed.
File Attachments
Include arbitrary file attachments of any allowed file type or file size in your posts.
Link Tracking
External links are shown with a visible click counter. Incoming and outgoing links to other topics are displayed next to each post.
Flexible Formatting
Mix and match Markdown, BBCode, and HTML formatting in posts.
Comprehensive API
Anything you see on screen, you can also do via an API call. HE.AL might be itself a JavaScript app that talks to our API.
Local Avatars
Built-in local avatar generation with no external dependencies. Alternately, select an existing Gravatar, or upload a custom avatar.
Email Invitations
Trusted users can invite friends via email to join and reply with a single click. Admins can batch invite users by uploading email addresses.
Automatic Drafts
We auto-save replies and topics to the server in the background as you type.
Revision History
Revision tracking on every edit, with a visual difference highlighter to show changes.
Wiki Posts
Mark posts as collaboratively editable by any trusted member of the community.
Badges
Encourage positive community behaviors through the included set of badges, or add your own custom badges.
Email Notifications
When you aren’t active on the website, your notifications will be automatically sent to you via email.
Email Replies
Reply to email notifications to post without visiting the website.
Inline Moderation
Fast inline controls to split, merge, close, archive, or recategorize topics.
Flag Queue
Highly visible moderator flag queue with optional email notification. One click to agree, disagree, or defer flags. Complete history.
Mailing List Support
Opt into a special mode where all messages are sent to you via email, exactly like a mailing list. Start new topics via email.
Community Hub
Official community support hub to discuss features, bugs, and support requests.
Private Messaging
Send private messages to a single user or to groups of users.
Web Backup and Restore
Backup and restore all your site data from your browser. Take your data to any host, anywhere, in a few clicks.
Automated Backups
Automatically back up your site data every day, either to the local filesystem, or to the cloud.
CDN Support
Easily plug in any CDN provider to speed up global access to your site.