Announcing forem.dev
Tags: meta, forem, showdev, news
Published: 2020-08-10 18:13:36

Saturday was the two year anniversary of [DEV going open source](https://dev.to/ben/devto-is-now-open-source-5n1), the first step in our OSS journey. Today we announce another important initiative.

A couple of months ago, we announced the name for the underlying software that powers DEV — it’s called [**Forem**](https://forem.com). You can read or revisit that post here:

{% link https://dev.to/devteam/for-empowering-community-2k6h %}

We also updated the open-source repo from `/thepracticaldev/dev.to` to `/forem/forem` to reflect the new name and our renewed focus on building open-source software that is generalizable to communities. While DEV will remain an active and growing community, we now think of it as just one example of a forem YOU can create.

{% github https://github.com/forem/forem %}

## [Forem.dev](https://forem.dev)

Today, we are excited to officially present [**Forem.dev**](https://forem.dev) — a meta-forem for anyone interested in building with, contributing to, or just staying up-to-date on Forem. The Forem team will be spending plenty of time there to share progress, answer questions, and start conversations where we hope to benefit from your feedback and ideas.

[Forem.dev](https://forem.dev) is a place for async communication, where we can chat through big ideas, revisit conversations, engage in distributed brainstorms and spitball sessions, and generally stay up-to-date with everything in the Forem project and ecosystem.

[Forem.dev](https://forem.dev) is still somewhat experimental in that we have not nailed down strict rules about what _should not_ be a GitHub issue, and should instead be a post on [forem.dev](https://forem.dev). The meta-form will be a place for plenty of high-level discussions, individual help, and general chat; so long as you are looking to help the project and get involved, please feel free to join us there. _Specific bug reports or feature requests should still be GitHub issues._

## Forem Progress

When can I start my own forem???

It is becoming more and more viable to use Forem for your own community needs, but we still have some work to fully recommend this path. A lot of our work these past few years has gone into addressing the needs for a large community like DEV, so we’re still making progress on newer priorities — such as seamlessly standing up a new Forem instance, and doing so in a way that keeps hosting costs low.

We’ll be sharing our progress on these initiatives at [forem.dev](https://forem.dev). We look forward to continuing the conversation there. To share one specific post over at [forem.dev](https://forem.dev), be sure to check out [this technical write-up](https://forem.dev/jdoss/a-big-day-for-forem-systems-5g89) from @jdoss if you’re interested in some of the early progress we’re making on the systems front.

[Forem.dev](https://forem.dev) is hosted on our own "new" WIP systems stack, and we will have some occasional downtime and hiccups as we fully get up to speed with deployments and our FOSS-first caching approach, among other things.

## Forem for the browser

The Forem idea is that each app is its own codebase with its own domain and database, but we want to also make it as easy as possible to string together a user experience which allows folks to take part in several communities in a user-friendly way.

The first Forem ecosystem “bridge app” is the Forem Browser extension— Currently for Chrome only. The code is now available for installation, and we welcome your help in improving the functionality:

{% github forem/forem-browser-extension %}

![Forem Extension](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/amyllhdw3zvjwgjldnuu.gif)

Service workers help keep each Forem in its own sandbox while providing a fairly seamless switching experience. Individual Forems are also technically available as PWAs, which is an option as well. We want to work with you to ultimately provide an experience that will appeal to a completely non-technical audience.

Have any questions about the extension? Feel free to spark up a conversation on [forem.dev](https://forem.dev)!

_Heads up: This extension is entirely in "works on my machine" mode, so if you can't get it working, let's figure that out together._

---

To that end...

- Having trouble installing the Forem code? Get help on [forem.dev](https://forem.dev). Want to chat about a high level architecture choice? Find us on [forem.dev](https://forem.dev). Looking to take part in more regular check ins with the core team or meet other contributors? Join the conversation at [forem.dev](https://forem.dev).


## Action items for you…

- Sign up at [forem.dev](https://forem.dev)
- Clone and install the forem browser extension [from source](https://github.com/forem/forem-browser-extension)
- Follow [@forem](https://twitter.com/forem) on Twitter
- Star [forem/forem](https://github.com/forem/forem) on GitHub if you have not. ⭐️

Looking forward to seeing you on Forem.dev!