Prologue should run on most modern web hosting accounts or web servers. It's designed to use the LAMP stack - that's Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. PHP 8.4 is the minimum requirement, but PHP 8.5 is recommended. If your hosting provider uses cPanel, which many do, Prologue will almost certainly work. If you're using a VPS or dedicated server, the resource requirements will depend on the traffic your instance receives and what other services you have running on your server. You can also run Prologue in Docker, in which case a suitable environment is created for you when you build the container. Keep in mind you'll need a working SMTP server for some features that rely on email, like two-factor authentication, account verification, and password resets.

This depends on your server resources. Basic shared hosting handles a reasonable number of concurrent users well, and is sufficient for most use cases. For larger or very active communities, you should consider a VPS or dedicated server to ensure consistent performance and sufficient storage space for attachments that your users may upload. At this time, Prologue supports up to 99 participants for group calls and up to 999 participants in a group chat. As Prologue evolves and we get more feedback about how larger communities are performing, we may increase this. Of course, since Prologue is open source, you can customize it to meet your needs.

At this time, Prologue only works in your web browser. We chose this approach because every computer already has a browser installed - so once Prologue is set up on your server, you and your friends can skip the download and get right to your chats, games, or projects. That said, Prologue was designed to be extensible and has a complete API, so a desktop client or mobile app could be in the future. Feel free to help us build it!

Discord is great, but it's a closed source, cloud hosted service - you're a tenant on their platform and subject to their business decisions. On the other hand, Prologue is an open source web app you host yourself on the platform of your choice. Discord offers more convenience, while Prologue offers more privacy.

Hi, I'm Michael - the founder and lead developer of the Prologue project. I'm a web developer with over a decade of experience building and hosting websites and web apps. As for why, that should be clear by now - I wanted a privacy focused alternative to Discord that my friends would like - and I hope your friends like it too.

As a free, open source project, Prologue is provided as is with no warranty or expectation of customer service. However, the lead developer and the community are happy to help! We host the resources you need on GitHub. Releases is where you'll find the latest version, Issues is where you can make bug reports or feature requests, Discussions is our forum, and Wiki is our knowledge base.