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I am currently looking to deploy a web forum on the azure platform.

I made some research and I've been able to find a total of 6 ASP.Net forums so far:

As far as I know:

  • Telligent Community is complicated as hell to have the simplest bit of information so I'm kinda dropping this one for my research
  • InstantForum.Net is a website project, which is not compatible with azure but on their forum the subject has been mentionned in may 2011, so far no new answers
  • YetAnotherForum could be compatible with Azure since it is a web application project and they posted a procedure for SQL Azure deployment, also the subject have been kind of tried but I have not yet attempted to deploy the solution to confirm it
  • NearForums is a new project that can be deployed to Azure but since it's really young I am unsure and would like a more mature project
  • MvcForum is still in alpha stage and is at the same level as NearForums
  • No informations yet on Jibit forum

Am I missing something ? Is there other forum solutions I haven't heard of or any other experience on forum listed here ?

The criterias that I'm looking for concerning the "support" part is that it can be deployed via web role and do not require a VM.

Community
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Erick
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    [Stack Overflow doesn't provide product or service recommendations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/128562/131968) – Kyle Trauberman Jun 26 '12 at 19:44
  • I am not looking for some subjective advice, I know it's definetly not the place. I must admit, I'm definetly looking for something that *exists*. – Erick Jun 26 '12 at 19:54
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    You might check if one of the pre-packaged Application Gallery solutions will do what you need. There's a number of CMS systems that I suspect have some level of forums support. – Mark Berryman Jun 26 '12 at 20:26
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    Can you please define what you mean by "supports deployment to Windows Azure?" As @Avkash pointed out, you could install forum software of your choice into a Virtual Machine, but that is simply installation (and doesn't address scaling, statelessness, shared storage, etc.). Are you looking for a forum app that has extensible storage that works with blob storage or Windows Azure SQL Database (e.g. Umbraco 5)? If you could clarify the question, I think you can get more refined answers. – David Makogon Jun 26 '12 at 22:07
  • @DavidMakogon I edited my question, but basically it's about a software that supports web role. Therefore yeah, that can also do upload via blob storage (if it supports upload). – Erick Jun 27 '12 at 12:30

2 Answers2

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If you decide to choose Windows Azure Virtual Machine for Windows, you can run any of the above descried ASP.NET Forum Application without any issue. With Windows Azure VM for Windows, you can deploy to your ASP.NET application directly to your VM as any other IIS server and configure it the way you want to use it.

Yes, there could be some limitation to use some application if you decide to choose Cloud Services (or may be some with Windows Azure Websites) however to run any application on Windows Azure Virtual Machine there is no Windows Azure compatibility needed.

AvkashChauhan
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Have a look at the marketplace: https://datamarket.azure.com/browse/Applications?Query=forum

Several of the wider CMS offerings, such as Kentico and DNN, offer forum components that you could use. You might be able to deploy some to the new Web Sites offering, as well as the VM already mentioned.

Jude Fisher
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