Whats the performance of discourse compared to the mybbs or smfs of yesteryear. I heard it's very bloated? I've been meaning to self host some sort of forum software on a $5 vps fro some of my hobbies.
While I can't speak for Discourse (a sibling comment mentioned it working fine via docker image on 1GB), our standard for NodeBB is it has to install and run on DO's $5 droplet.
I could run phpBB just fine on my $5-10/mo shared hosting.
It's one thing I don't like about many new tools (Slack alternatives, a lot of ActivityPub stuff, etc) - they require a lot more resources than shared hosting can provide, so you need a VPS, and all the headaches that go along with it.