
Wekan: Open-source, trello-like kanban - jonifico
https://wekan.github.io/
======
nickjj
If anyone is looking for another open source solution, there's
[https://github.com/greggigon/my-personal-
kanban](https://github.com/greggigon/my-personal-kanban).

What's neat about the above one is it's a single offline html file that you
open in your browser and everything is saved to local storage (but it has a
JSON export / import feature for more robust backups).

Of course that means it's really only usable for 1 person, but if you're a
solo developer, it's a breath of fresh air to just open a simple html file
without needing to run a service to use it.

It's not the prettiest tool but it's very usable. I've been using it to manage
a large personal side project. I made a video on that here:
[https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/an-open-source-and-fully-
offl...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/an-open-source-and-fully-offline-
browser-based-kanban-board)

~~~
huhtenberg
In the same vein -

[https://nullboard.io/preview](https://nullboard.io/preview) or
[https://github.com/apankrat/nullboard](https://github.com/apankrat/nullboard)

~~~
AstroJetson
I like that a lot. It would be super nice if I could change the background of
the items. That way I could color code things that really need to get taken
care of NOW.

~~~
hermitcrab
If you are looking for a personal Kanban application where you can colour the
cards, please see: [https://www.hyperplan.com](https://www.hyperplan.com)

(I am the author)

~~~
AstroJetson
Thanks! I liked nullboard pretty minimal design and that the tasks can be one
line or multiline. Most of the kanaban tools look like post it notes, and I
liked that the tasks were mininimal size.

All I was missing is to be able to stick one of 4-8 colors on the background
of the box.

I'll have some time to look at hyperplan, thanks for the pointer

~~~
hermitcrab
-You can colour the background of the card according to any property of the card (e.g. its priority or the date due) -Cards can have any number of properties -You can store various 'views' (e.g. view 1 is x=status,y=person,colour=priority, view 2 is x=person,y=department,colour=due date)

------
carlos22
Wekan uses meteor.js which is really one of the worst frameworks out there. It
breaks on so many ocasions and has really bad OS support. Event he current
maintainer kind of dislikes the framework... The worst part about metor is
that it forces you to use MongoDB!

~~~
nebulon
While I tend to agree from a personal perspective, however the Wekan project
especially seems to be able to pump out lots of very nice features at a high
rate, thanks to meteor. Additionally to this, we at Cloudron update the app
package about twice a week due to that and so far had very little breakage or
regressions, compared to other apps. We do not update meteor often though,
which is maybe contributing to the stability.

~~~
carlos22
Yes that helps but brings in other problems. For example many many security
problems in the thousands of used npm packages of meteor and its dependencies.

~~~
enitihas
Unfortunately thousands of dependencies is not unique to meteor, it is the
hallmark of any popular npm package. So even react and vue would have too many
dependencies.

------
vincvinc
I do most of my thinking and planning on Trello boards. It almost feels like a
part of my brain.

Ever since Trello was acquired by Atlassian, I've been planning to replace it
- in the long term - waiting for signals that Atlassian is degrading my
experience. It hasn't happened yet but I am assume that it's a matter of time.

I've been wanting an open source Trello clone with a native desktop client for
a while now. Going to give this a try.

First impression: promising but seems a bit clunky/ugly compared to Trello.
Hope I can contribute to the development in some way.

~~~
ochrist
I have been using Kanboard for some time now, and can recommend it. There is -
as far as I know it - not yet a native desktop client, but the web-interface
works quite well: [https://kanboard.org/](https://kanboard.org/) (not
affiliated in any way - just a safisfied user)

~~~
bachmeier
It's a php app. All you have to do to run it locally is use the php server:

php -S localhost:8001

Open in your browser:

localhost:8001/index.php

You can also directly access the sqlite database if you want.

------
jg23
Shameless plug for Mac users:

[https://apps.apple.com/app/tidycards/id1285199566](https://apps.apple.com/app/tidycards/id1285199566)

I've been developing this app for the last 3 years.

------
Debonnys
I really like kanban boards for organizing my work but one feature I really
miss in nearly all solutions is a way to schedule my day using existing tasks
in a board. And preferably in a stand-alone way rather than adding it to my
google calender.

I'm currently using paymo [1], which does a great job at this. Example of what
I mean: [https://imgur.com/a/3Re9sXn](https://imgur.com/a/3Re9sXn) But I'm
open for switching to any alternatives.

[1]: [https://www.paymoapp.com/](https://www.paymoapp.com/)

~~~
bryanrasmussen
this is not a feature I have ever missed, and I wonder why you would miss it?
I move the task I am working on into in progress and when I am done with it I
move it into review or done. If I scheduled my day based on tasks, then when
task A was not moved from in progress and task B is scheduled to start what
happens? It sounds to me like it would be more problematic - sorry to go on
about it but I really am wondering because I've never considered I would want
to schedule tasks on a kanban board - how do you see it working?

~~~
deb_yesprocrast
I follow some practices from Cal Newport Deep Work [1]. In this case it is
about scheduling your day (see also this blogpost [2]).

I really like the feature in paymo to schedule your working day with tasks
that do exist in a kanban board. It ensures that you can quickly see what
you're working on when picking things to do during the day and it also ensures
that everything you do is in a kanban board.

I understand that most people probably don't miss this feature but I have a
hard time going back to a system that does not have this.

[1]: [https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-
work/](https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/)

[2]: [https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2015/09/29/deep-habits-
three...](https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2015/09/29/deep-habits-three-recent-
daily-plans/)

------
stereolambda
To add to the other alternatives: remember that there's Excel, i.e.
spreadsheet software. It's my current method for organizing and monitoring my
solo work. Some of the useful features:

\- Handling dates, intervals, boolean values.

\- Formatting, and conditional formatting. Colors, fonts etc. without the non-
utilitarian, "sleek" burden of modern web design.

\- Collecting reporting information with SUM(), IF(), COUNTIFS() and friends.

The main benefit is that it's very flexible with only very minimal
programming. I can reserve my coding time and stamina for the tasks that
absolutely need it.

------
unicornporn
I chose Kanboard[1] for personal user because it's PHP and supports SQLite. I
hate becoming an admin for these kind of apps. Also chose FreshRSS over Tiny
Tiny RSS for the same reasons. Works by just uploading a directory to my
shared hosting.

[1] [https://kanboard.org/](https://kanboard.org/)

------
ernsheong
Not open source, but I built KanRails, a Kanban tool that hopes to become a
workflow solution. Part Trello, part Pipefy, and making more Power-Ups part of
the core (automation, custom fields, etc.).

Check it out at [https://www.kanrails.com/](https://www.kanrails.com/). Would
love to get feedback from HN!

------
kalium-xyz
Anyone using/used this in a team and know if its actually a good replacement
for trello?

~~~
thomasDE
We have been using it for 3 years now at a small company. There were some
minor bugs in the past (mainly UI related), but in general it is a very good
replacement for Trello.

We run it in a Docker container with LDAP integration so that people can log
in with their Windows accounts. The operating of it has been very
straightforward.

------
leke
I don't really like the name. I think it's meant to be pronounced We-Can,
which pretty much sums up Kanban, but I automatically think of Weaken, which
then makes the product sound like it's going to hinder your workflow in some
way.

~~~
tomcooks
Doesn't it sound more like "We can"?

~~~
Yen
Single data point: before reading these comments, my first reading of the word
was pronouncing it "weh-can".

Perhaps "WeKan" or "Weekan" would get the other pronunciation across better,
if that's the goal?

------
paweladamczuk
I used Wekan a while ago when I wanted to try a kanban board for organizing my
personal tasks at work. Trello was out of question since it stores the data
externally.

I found the UX on Wekan and Trello were hard to compare, Trello being polished
and hassle free while Wekan still felt like work in progress and many things
were straight out broken.

This was like a year ago, though, so maybe it has improved since.

~~~
dukeofharen
On PC, it worked perfectly. On smartphone (Android), it works really bad.
That's the reason why I (sadly) had to leave Wekan behind, it just didn't fit
my use case because of this.

------
cow9
We use this daily in our company. Projects are organized as boards. To solve
visibility issues across multiple boards we develop a standalone program to
consolidate cards from multiple boards to a user view. There has been issues
like CPU usage, UI bugs and build issues but on the whole it is still quite
useful.

Development and releases seems haphazard and there are no unit tests. Only
eslint.

~~~
thomasDE
Can you share the program to consolidate cards? We are also using Wekan in our
company and would be very interested in that.

------
rcdexta
Would like to leave this here: [https://github.com/rcdexta/react-
trello](https://github.com/rcdexta/react-trello)

Again, this is a pluggable trello-like kanban board built using React and
Redux. It's highly customizable, uses event-bus to publish triggers/actions
and supports touch devices.

------
jyriand
There is also Restyaboard [0] (you have to install it on your server)

It's open source Trello like kanban board. I think there was even 1-click
droplet install in DigitalOcean. Haven't used it much, so I can't really
comment how good/bad it is.

0 - [https://restya.com/board](https://restya.com/board)

------
indentit
the disclaimer about backups is a bit scary... makes me want to use something
a bit more reliable/recoverable/version controllable...

> Backups of Wekan database with mongodump once a day miminum required. Bugs,
> updates, users deleting list or card, harddrive full, harddrive crash etc
> can eat your data. There is no undo yet.

------
ngmc
Taiga is another option that you can host yourself.

[https://taiga.io](https://taiga.io)

~~~
recrudesce
Have used a self hosted version of Taiga for years at work hooked into
Keycloak for SSO. Works perfectly well for us :)

------
tuxxy
It would be really nice to have something like this that can run locally but
meant for a single user. I don't want to have to log in to my own instance or
host a bunch of backend services (or even run it in a docker container).

Might be a fun weekend project to learn Rust, actually. :)

~~~
bachmeier
Kanboard is very easy to run locally as I explained in my other comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22888108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22888108)

I don't think replacing Trello is a weekend project, but if you want to learn
Rust, you can use Kanboard to track your progress.

------
calmchaos
Kanbanly integrates with GMail and Google Tasks.
[https://nodetics.com/kanbanly/](https://nodetics.com/kanbanly/)

------
rhabarba
Assumption: Most teams which use a kanban system would work just as
efficiently with a couple of org-mode files.

~~~
biddlesby
What are org-mode files?

~~~
rhabarba
Basically, structured text files. See orgmode.org.

------
29athrowaway
The font sizes and weights look inconsistent and random.

~~~
ergo14
Send a PR to fix that, the devs will probably appreciate the help.

~~~
eps
That's an empty advice.

Vast majority of people will have no desire or time to "send a PR" after
seeing it for the first time. And those who will be inclined to do that don't
need a public reminder to that effect. But their feedback is still valuable
and the "do better and send a PR" remarks achieve nothing but alienating
people by looking dismissive of their comments.

~~~
welly
How is their feedback useful if no one involved sees it? They may as well have
said nothing.

