Which Forum Software do you like (aside from Vanilla)?
This discussion is based on a merely playful note by @AnthonySmith about changing the forum to phpBB, but since Vanilla is sort of EOL iirc, what other forum software is there that you like?
@AnthonySmith said:
@WSS said:
Another one fell off the wagon. Remember when we used to have a less shitty forum than vanilla?My first action as a mod with no actual access will be to convert this to phpbb
I saw that @bikegremlin uses XenoForo. While it's paid, it's a Forum Engine I, as a forum user, very much liked. I've been a forum member for many years in a community using XenoForo. Woltlab Burning Board was also nice, but I think both are paid. There's also phpBB, Phorum (someone mentioned) and maybe others. What would be the ideal Forum Engine these days?
Comments
Usenet
I am old, so I still appreciate the seperation and logical nature of vBulletin and phpBB, that generic old school mid 2000's era forum style, but it seems these days most people want everything new right in front of them without having to do the dance of going to get the new content.
I get it, it is engagement hacking, vanilla would never have been my first choice, in fact if I remember right, Flarum was my first choice, it was just not mature enough and at the time I lacked the skills to basically reproduce what we have now in Flarum.
It was only ever done like this if I am being brutally honest, to create a familiar environment when LET got forked into here, which, in my opinion, was the reason the other 2 forks failed, not because of the people or the intent; this community was built around a format.
Could it change now? probably.
Should it? possibly.
Would it be fun? No x10000 (to convert to an existing thing)
I think, honestly, given the current situation with Vanilla Open Source not being maintained as of January 2025, I would dump the database and maintain a bespoke solution that looks and acts almost exactly the same, but is going to be more maintainable in the long run and then in the back end actually acts like something written for a hosting community.
Would be a fun project to take it to the next level, and provide multiple front ends for depending on preference, i mean... how often do you use the tag cloud?
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Does anyone know of a way to move an existing bbPress forum to a newer modern forum software?
Say what you will, but I've seen websites running SMF that haven't been touched in 15 years and they haven't been compromised (yet).
Other than their politics, XenForo is fine, and hence, any of the other rebuilds of vB and everything else from that era- except OpenBB. It had holes so big that it died. Shame, because it was better designed graphically and on userlevel basis than phpBB ever was.
My pronouns are like/subscribe.
yep SMF is like debain... so what if I still run version 5 in prod
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Yeah. I've got a Devuan instance that started out as.. Lenny, too. Just incrementally updated and kept through-line. Same deal with my 25 year old blog. I turned my data into an RSS feed, imported into TextPattern, made a handful of shims, and I've had stable URLs for data that has no reason to be on the Internet any longer other than the fact that I can.
Hell, you hosted an archive of it for me a few years ago. Thanks again for that. Funny that you came back to the system before I did.
My pronouns are like/subscribe.
Yup.
Our local motorcycle forum was running PHP 5.4 and old SMF.
Had to update it when support in the usual shared hosting environment was gone.
Still on SMF, newer, and newer PHP. Looks like shit now because I suck at design (and it has been abandoned more-less), but hack free still.
https://www.motomanijaci.com/
No hacks, no problems.
Even looks OK on mobile.
Still, for forum software, my vote goes to XenForo as the least bad.
Why I chose Xenforo after having tested a bunch both as a user, mod, and even admin in many cases:
https://www.bikegremlin.net/threads/why-i-chose-to-build-my-forum-with-xenforo.38/
Yes, I do consider time (and energy) as a precious and limited resource.
And yes, that t-shirt is still for sale! LOL.
Yachts won't pay for themselves.
I am particularly proud for finding a way to put Google Analytics and AdSense enabled only for the not-logged-in users.
That's probably the win-win scenario. Costs get covered, and users don't get bothered (even without any adblockers).
How I added that:
https://www.bikegremlin.net/threads/forum-adverts-google-adsense-poll.397/#post-2857
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That's a pretty cool way to do it.
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I suppose it also shows my first language as a child was BASIC (on Commodore 64, along with some basic machine to try and get those sounds and colours going).
Hmmm - I think that is Pascal though, on second thought. LOL.
Apart from the all-caps form.
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That's fair re:SMF. I actually have a forum still running SMF 2.1.4 myself, and apparently need to update to 2.1.6! Though it's no longer open, only archived, which reduces a lot of the attack surface.
Discourse is really good. Clean UI, nice editor, integrations, it just works. BUT I don't like the infinite scrolling.
Gross.
My pronouns are like/subscribe.
So you don't like Facebook, reddit, Instagram, twitter, tiktok or any of the hundred thousand modern infinite scroll that seems to be all the rage now a days?
If you want information, feign ignorance reply with the wrong answer. Internet people will correct you ASAP!
It’s OK if you disagree with me. I can’t force you to be right!
From a user perspective I have pretty high regard for Xenforo. I just expect the hammer to eventually fall like it does for all other non-FOSS software. So I'd hesitate before choosing it from the sysop side even if I were willing to pay for it in the short run.
I hate Discourse. Too much bloat.
I sometimes think about writing forum software myself, but it always circles back to thinking NNTP works perfectly fine on the back end and I'm personally happy to access it with Usenet client software. I can see some attraction to having a good web front end for it though, as the existing ones that I know of all suck.
I guess Lemmy/Piefed is another thing to consider, even if you don't want to federate the backend with ActivityPub.
No. In fact, I don't have an account on any of those mentioned.
My pronouns are like/subscribe.
Well, LES is more thæn just you. I am sure the majority of the rest of the 10k users have an account in atleast one of those above listed social medias.
If you want information, feign ignorance reply with the wrong answer. Internet people will correct you ASAP!
It’s OK if you disagree with me. I can’t force you to be right!
old.reddit.com and Red Reader don't have infinite scroll. They are way better than www.reddit.com or the reddit app.
I wonder if fossil-scm.org could be adapted into a forum. It's intended as a software source control system but it also has a wiki and bug tracker built in. It's written in C with sqlite as the backing store, and it is small and speedy.
I have to say the below is pretty cool. Dunno if I'd want to actually use it, but that's besides the point
.
https://board.asm32.info/
I dont like clicking every picture to see the post. I prefer if the post is viewable without additional clicks. Saves my mouse
If you want information, feign ignorance reply with the wrong answer. Internet people will correct you ASAP!
It’s OK if you disagree with me. I can’t force you to be right!
Did you follow the FOSS Wordpress drama?
Enshitification is prevalent, so either way you must always be on your toes.
Current XenForo licence is lifetime, and the platform is popular enough to have some migration options if it goes to shit.
Yup. It is like a social network wannabe.
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I also loved vBulletin.. like version 3 or something like that. I used to love paying full price for it and modding the theme for whatever hobby I was interested in at the time when I was a young whipper snapper. I do appreciate Xenforo. And I also appreciate phpBB.
Discourse is really neat but there's just something about it that I can't quite put my finger on.. it feels off. Maybe too modern for my retro brain
Michael from DragonWebHost & OnePoundEmail
vBullying was bought by Internet Brands. It started enshitification, and the top devs moved out to start XenForo (and Internet Brats took them to court for doing that!).
Now, vBulletin is still being developped, but it would not be my first choice.
bikeforums.net is owned by Internet Brands too (that's the largest of cycling forums if you like, with some legendary members like Sheldon Brown and Relja Novovic
), and it runs vBulletin. A mobile-friendly forum version was pushed relatively recently, but I am not sure if that was a vBulletin limitation or forum's legacy customizations were not easy to update.
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