Lemmy is structured in a way that backend (database, api, federation etc) and frontend (html, css, javascript) are completely separate. This makes it possible to create other frontends which can take the place of lemmy-ui. I have long been playing with the thought of having a Lemmy frontend that looks more like a traditional forum. Now I finally found some time to work on this, and get an initial proof of concept working.
To reduce the amount of work, the project uses HTML templates and CSS themes from phpBB, which are open source under GPLv2. This also has the advantage that many preexisting phpBB themes can be used for lemmyBB. It is written in Rust, because it allows for tight integration with the Lemmy API, and is generally a great language for webservers.
For now the funcionality is very basic, but nonetheless its already usable. You can:
- browse the local post listing
- browse comments
- login and logout
- create new posts and comments
To give it a try, run the following commands on your local computer, replacing lemmy.ml with your own instance:
git clone https://github.com/Nutomic/lemmyBB.git
LEMMY_INTERNAL_HOST=https://lemmy.ml cargo run
If there is any specific feature that you would like to see added, please open an issue. For now there arent any instructions for deploying lemmyBB to a server. If you would like to do that, please open an issue as well.
This post was made from lemmyBB.
This is great!
But let me think a little bit about the usability… if people relly want to use it instead of the original phpBB… there are more moderation-tools needed. Move Threads or parts of a thread to another community and so on. This is a backend-capability… will you implement such things?
And is it right, that i can not find a selector to show my followed communites, local or all?
For now it only has the basic funcionality mentioned in the post, nothing like sorting or mod tools. Once those things are added and the project has some real world use, I would definitely consider adding such backend funcionality.