Heya!
Misago seems to be absolutely perfect for a project I'm about to begin! The project however involves writing quite a bit of functionality specifically for it, as well as editing/extending a bit of the base forum functionality as well (should be achievable with just hooks though). I've lurked around these forums and figured that I should wait for 0.6 with something like this; besides, I'm also interested in the 'flattiness' of 0.6 - it will fit my project perfectly, as well as the transition to being a Django app so I have to learn one framework instead of (essentially) two, as this will be my first Python project.
However, I see mentions of 0.6 on this forum dating all the way back to 2013. How far from a working release it actually is? "Working release" as in, all the so-far-announced functionality and paradigm shifts done. Not necessarily polished and bug-free, but just, like, working... so I can start building things around it without having structures changed suddenly or whatever. I don't have a strict deadline or anything, but early June is the target, and I really want to have at least a working frontpage + forum at this point, aka no platform changes or big paradigm shifts after this point in time.
I would help you if I could, but I'm literally going to be learning python/django along the way here (I'm not new to coding) so I'm afraid I can't really offer much right now. I've been out of the webdev loop for a little while, so I'm a bit behind on the newer tech/frameworks/practices. I'm considering to start coding the rest of my site meanwhile, because if I understand it right, integrating the forum later on will basically be problem-free as it will be using users/session/auth/templates/etc via Django. So, the question is, am I understanding it right? and is it possible that 0.6 will be in a usable state within the next ~2 months? I can not launch without a forum, so I'll need to come up with another plan if this is not the case (bonus questions: if I code a ton of things that use 0.5.x users/auth/etc, will it be hard to port it to 0.6? what about templates - if I do my frontend/design now, how much of it will be relevant in 0.6?).
Misago project is dope, by the way. I really like it already and I agree with basically all the design philosophy/views you've posted here, and the direction 0.6 is going is great. Coding a forum is a HUGE task even in this age of agile development and frameworks, there's just too many things needed for one to work, and so much design considerations to do that it's a whole task of its own. Python/Django definitely need a project like this.