Spirit: Open Source Community Platforms

Spirit is a free, open source community platforms project written in Python and released under MIT. It has 1,187 GitHub stars, 329 forks and 40 open issues, and was last pushed 8 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #10 of 15 tracked projects in Community Platforms, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

Spirit

Spirit is a Python based forum built using the Django framework.

Documentation

Docs can be found at spirit.readthedocs.io

Compatibility

Python 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13
Django 4.2 LTS, 5.2 LTS
PostgreSQL (recommended), MySQL, Oracle Database and SQLite

Constrained by "What Python version can I use with Django?"

Usage

pip install django-spirit
spirit startproject mysite
cd mysite
python manage.py spiritinstall
python manage.py createsuperuser
python manage.py runserver

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000

For detailed setup docs, see spirit.readthedocs.io

Dev

Use uv tooling.

Testing

uv sync --all-extras
uv run spirit startproject test_project
uv run runtests.py

Lint & Format

uvx ruff check --select I --fix
uvx ruff format

License

MIT

Frequently asked questions

Is Spirit free to use?

Spirit is open source under the MIT licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does Spirit do?

Spirit is a modern Python/Django forum

What is Spirit written in?

Spirit is primarily written in Python. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/nitely/Spirit, and it has 1,187 GitHub stars.