@malcircuit you've hit the nail right on the head— going with a proprietary solution like Discord robs you of data ownership by default, and far too many communities (and all of their built up knowledge) have been lost forever because #Discord is the "it" app du jour.

Lots of modern forum solutions (like @nodebb!) have real-time chat built in already, although you can't really argue against the network effect of centralized solutions.