Moot – A Modern Take On Online Forums

Online forums have been around since the dawn of time, or at least it can seem like that given the 1990s designs that many forums still use. It’s time for an upgrade, and Moot is a platform that can make that happen. The web-application re-imagines what online forums and commenting systems should look like, and provides publishers with a stylish alternative that they can add to their websites with just a few lines of code.

Enter the name of your website or organization to reserve your Moot URL for free, then log in through Facebook to become the administrator of your forum. Choose titles for your forum’s discussion areas, and embed the new forum you’ve created on your website. You can use Moot to design the commenting section of your blog or website, as well. Moot offers a unified commenting and forum system, which means visitors can switch back and forth between the two without logging in twice or signing up for an extra sets of credentials. Ongoing discussions can be posted on multiple domains in real-time, and users can view all the incoming comments in one main feed.

Comments made on the Moot system are permanent, which means your visitors can’t make controversial remarks and then remove them an hour later. Although publishers can use Moot’s tools for free, the company does plan to charge for for private posts, custom branding, and its single sign-on solutions at some point in the future.

Practical Uses:

• Create an online forum where people can discuss your favorite TV show
• Boost visitor engagement by adding a forum to your blog
• Encourage readers to leave comments underneath your articles
• Make it easy for your website visitors to engage with one another

Insider Tips:

• Moot has no traffic limits for publishers
• Publishers can customize Moot to match their website’s design
• Moot offers an open source API
• Moot’s grammar-aware feature corrects misspelled words
• Forums are formatted for viewing on all screen sizes

What we liked:

• Moot doesn’t limit the number of forums a user can create
• New replies show up on the Moot platform in real-time
• Publishers can choose between flat or threaded commenting
• The same discussion can be embedded into multiple domains

What we didn’t like:

• Nothing

Alternatives:

• DISQUS – http://disqus.com

Company Info:

• Launched: April 2013
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Portland, Oregon, and Helsinki, Finland
• Founded by: Courtney Couch, Tero Piirainen, and Janne Lehtinen
• Web site: http://moot.it

Costs:

• Free