We’ve prototyped the core groups functionality; next we’ll build the tools communities need, co‑designing the UX with partner communities, learning from pilots and iterating in the open, to ensure groups federate across Bonfire instances and compatible fediverse apps.

Our north star is maximum compatibility: we’ll align with standards and collaborate across the ecosystem, while keeping usability and real workflows front and centre so people and groups can safely interconnect across servers and platforms. For details on portability and interop, see the FAQ).

We need your help **#

If this resonates, please back the groups stretch goal so we can deliver federated groups, bring your community into the co‑design process or join as a pilot group, and share the campaign with your networks.

Together we can give communities durable homes that cross server boundaries while staying open and portable, without trading away autonomy for convenience, so communities can organise, document, and coordinate in spaces they control. Let’s build the tools communities deserve, and let's make them community‑owned from the start.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) #

Will this work with Mastodon? **#

To begin with, Mastodon users should be able to interact with federated groups at a basic level. Group posts and replies will appear as standard activities to Mastodon users, and they'll be able to follow and @‑mention groups. Some specific features may not be supported in Mastodon and will appear as links back to the group’s home server.

What about old‑fashioned forums? **#

Forums are excellent for structured, long‑form discussion. Threads nest neatly, topics stay organised, and communities build rich archives over time. They’re also often self‑hosted, governed and moderated by their community rather than at the whims of a Big Tech platform. But classic forums are typically isolated on a single site. You need to create a new account for each one and remember check for updates regularly (or endure noisy email notifications). If you move on, you lose the network, content, and reputation you built there, as forums rarely interconnect with each other or the wider social web.

Groups in Bonfire are inspired by the best of forums (community-run with clear topics and findable archives) while being portable and interconnected across the fediverse from the start. A group is not only a set of threads; it also has rules (who can find it and join, who can post or participate, who can see what's posted, and codes of conduct and moderation processes), a list of members and moderators, and content such as events, shared resources, and other lightweight workflows living in one context, so organising feels natural. You have a single identity on your home server from which you can join and participate in groups on any server, rather than being stuck on a single site.

We should note that Discourse modernised the forum experience with cleaner UX and solid organisational tools and has an experimental federation plugin to enable forums to exchange some activity. NodeBB is a similarly modern forum app that has implemented federation and integrates with the fediverse. These are important steps we support and want to interconnect with.