The leading bulletin board/forum/blog software for the new Internet.

Nah, just kidding, it's a pretty innocent package that's hardly going to hit the headlines, ever. Still, it represents about 8 man-years of work from skilled and very dedicated developers. And it's software to be proud of, that still works fine over ten years later. Hopefully, it will make your lives a bit less unbearable.

First, ensure that your server meets the requirements (PHP 5.4, MySQL 5, etc.)

Go to the github.com/Wedge/wedge repository. If you're already there, then hello!

Click the 'Download ZIP' button. Unzip the file, and upload the resulting folder to your FTP account. Point your browser to http://mywebsite.com/my_wedge_folder/index.php and follow the instructions.

• If it works, then great.
• If it doesn't, then skip to any fork that works best for you. SMF has an official board that lists them all.
• If you're getting an Error 500 or something similar at install time, it might be due to a configuration error. Ask your host about it. Perhaps switching to a newer version of PHP will help. Alternatively, make sure you don't have a malformed .htaccess file in your root folder. It's the cause of 90% of Apache server crashes.

• Check out the Wedge/importer repo at GitHub. It allows you to import a forum installed on the same server (and, preferably, same MySQL server.)
• Supported source forums include SMF 1.1, SMF 2.0, MyBB 1.6 and a few others that are totally untested. Well, really, only SMF 2.0 import is tested and supported for now.
• Importing Aeva Media items and Custom folder attachments isn't supported for now. Feel free to bother @eurich so that he gets started on these! ;)

It's like Facebook, but not for dummies.

Or, for a longer definition: Wedge is basically a Community Management System where you post messages on boards, and others can reply to them. It's revolutionary. It's the future. Building your own forum requires some technical skills. If you don't have any, you can still learn from scratch. I did. If you don't feel up to the task, you can use a hosted forum (can't help you here), or if you already have some hosting space somewhere, a forum system that will take you by the hand. Commercial software is okay, but usually doesn't have enough to justify its price tag. Free (as in beer) forums are legion, with one of the most popular being SMF (Simple Machines Forum). Once you got used to these, you start asking for more. This is where Wedge comes in.

If you think SMF is pretty good but not ambitious enough for its own sake, then you'll want to try out its forks. Wedge was the first (started in 2010), and one of a couple of realistic solutions to use. It basically takes everything that we thought sucked in SMF, and rewrites it how it should have been from the start.

Of course, your opinion may differ. There's this little thing called 'you can't know without trying', so here it is, in all its installable glory. You can run Wedge side to side with another forum system, and determine which one suits you best.

What are you waiting for? Friends to talk with? Well, can't help you here.

Read contributors.txt

• Wedge is now released under the MIT license. It's very permissive, but please be kind. Thanks!
• If you have any questions, contact me on Telegram. My user name over there is Naolog.

-- René-Gilles Deberdt (Nao), from Paris, France.