You’ll have to talk to @tcn33 for setup/backend stuff, but one of the things I’m really proud of (and thought was really warranted) was our custom-written introduction to Discourse.
One of Discourse’s greatest weaknesses is how different it is to a lot of forums. People might already be used to bbcode if they’ve used other forum software (VB/phpBB) in the past, and while Discourse has limited support for bbcode in its editor, for many people it’ll probably be the first time they’ve even heard of Markdown, let alone used it.
That, and because there’s so many other new things about Discourse means I felt an intro to Discourse post was necessary when starting out. There’s buttons people can click on to make things happen, of course, but it really helps with the first ten minutes when people are starting out with your forum.
Also, not going to tell you how to use Discourse, but collaboration might be an outside niche case.