Has anyone used Discourse to power their community before? It's a modern platform that was written in Javascript as well as Ruby, and it uses quite a bit of resources so you can't run it on shared hosting. It is a pain to get set up if you're not familiar with using linux, but there's paid hosting if you don't want to go down the self hosting route. You'll be paying $50 a month for paid hosting for the smallest package. If you want to learn more about the platform, here's the link to their website:
Websites such as the official Unreal Engine community uses this platform btw.
Discourse is the place to build civilized communities
Discourse is modern forum software for your community. Use it as a mailing list, discussion forum, long-form chat room, and more!
www.discourse.org