The latest articles on DEV Community by serdar özdemir (@serdarname). https://dev.to/serdarname https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4150647%2F4b381440-101e-484f-a6ae-878b642fdc39.jpg https://dev.to/serdarname en serdar özdemir Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:44:48 +0000 https://dev.to/serdarname/is-self-hosting-forem-still-in-beta-or-is-it-considered-production-ready-mc5 https://dev.to/serdarname/is-self-hosting-forem-still-in-beta-or-is-it-considered-production-ready-mc5 <p>Hi everyone,</p> <p>I'm planning to build a community platform focused on member-to-member knowledge exchange, with a portal and a modern forum. I've been evaluating Forem alongside other options like Discourse and Flarum.</p> <p>I keep seeing mixed signals about Forem's self-hosting situation. On one hand, the Kamal deployment guide in the Forem repo is explicitly labeled "Deployment with Kamal (Beta)" . The official self-hosting docs also state: "We aren't quite ready for mainstream adoption of our platform" and "We aren't able to ensure support for new instances built from this project, yet" .</p> <p>On the other hand, I know Forem powers dev.to itself, and the API seems solid.</p> <p>So my question is: What is the actual current status of self-hosting Forem?</p> <p>Is the Kamal deployment path still genuinely beta, or has it stabilized?</p> <p>Are there people here running Forem in production for their own communities?</p> <p>What are the biggest practical gotchas for someone deploying it today?</p> <p>I'm not trying to bash Forem—I'm genuinely trying to understand if it's the right choice for a production community right now, or if I should look elsewhere until self-hosting matures.</p> <p>Any real-world experiences would be really helpful.</p> <p>Thanks!</p> devops discuss infrastructure opensource