30 replies to this topic

[ABAR]

Is VBulletin the best Forum software on the market? This software is PHP, is there a CGI Forum that is also pretty good?

Thanks,

Matt -

[Jill]

I'm a fan of InvisionBoard (which is what this forum uses).

[chovy]

SMF (php), IPB (perl) are both good.
PHPBB (historically has been a spam trap, not sure about 3.x).

I have yet to find a package that does a blog AND a forum well. Bridges tend to not work well, and support usually ends up the way of the doodoo bird.

Tinyportal looks promising for SMF.

I use the Joomla+SMF bridge over at IAP ...but I don't like it...will switch it to Tinyportal+SMF eventually.

[ABAR]

I like the layouts on the Tinyportal page. what exactly is SMF? ...I am kinda a novice to these things.

[chrishirst]

SimpleMachines Forum

[ABAR]

SimpleMachines Forum

is this a PHP Forum... is it also CGI compatible?

[don h]

There's a page at Wikipedia that has a pretty good comprehensive list of forums along with some information about each one. It is not hard to find if you search for it.

[chovy]

I liked SMF over phpBB because it had one-click update, and enable/disabling of 3rd party modules.

phpBB required you to actually patch the code directly and was a bit difficult to rollback stuff that broke. I don't know if 3.0 is any better.

[ABAR]

I liked SMF over phpBB because it had one-click update, and enable/disabling of 3rd party modules.

phpBB required you to actually patch the code directly and was a bit difficult to rollback stuff that broke. I don't know if 3.0 is any better.

What is threading? is that important? does SMF allow this?

[nethy]

SMF (php), IPB (perl) are both good.
PHPBB (historically has been a spam trap, not sure about 3.x).
I have yet to find a package that does a blog AND a forum well. Bridges tend to not work well, and support usually ends up the way of the doodoo bird.
Tinyportal looks promising for SMF.

I use the Joomla+SMF bridge over at IAP ...but I don't like it...will switch it to Tinyportal+SMF eventually.

There are a few CMSs that include both. If you are very particular about which blog forum you want then obviously, it's an issue getting it all in a package.

[harpsound]

I am looking at creating a closed community on the web and aggregating a number of groups from Yahoo! Groups.

I have been searching through a lot of forums and CMS situations.
I am looking for something that takes the Yahoo!Groups experience and allows the users to migrate to more of a social media/community setting.
These members will be mostly women 40 to 70, conservative and technophobes

The IPB at first blush gives me what I want, downloads, galleries, blogs, profiles and a relatively simple start-up for me.
I can create all sorts of bait to get the posters active.
Unfortunately I do not particularly like the look.

I like the SMF look a lot.
TinyPortal intrigues me.
But these programs are very much a work in progress.

BUT I find the web littered with open source projects that die overnight.
I am fast approaching 60 years and this old dog learns new tricks much more slowly now.
I will have a decade's investment in this fora and I do not relish migrating from one platform to another very often.

I do not mind buying commercial software but am I any better off in the longevity stakes?
Any advise would be appreciated.
Ultimately I am looking for a more automated homepage that draws members to various threads.

[Randy]

What is threading? is that important? does SMF allow this?

Forum threading relates to how a forums posts are displayed.

With no threading you'd have a page that links to each post, usually in cronological order of when each post was made. Treading simply displays those posts in what most consider to be a more coherent manner, where posts to the same thread are displayed together as a group.

FTR, you can also thread within a thread with some forum software. Meaning if a thread is started and someone makes a post that leads the thread off on a bit of a tangent, if someone replied directly to that post the tangential thread would be a thread within a thread. This can get quite confusing, though it does work well for some forums.

While I'm not personally familiar with SMF, pretty much all forum software developed over the last few years includes the ability to display threads.

[Jill]

Unfortunately I do not particularly like the look.

The look is totally customizable. The cre8asite forum used to have a completely different look as compared to the standard. (Looks like they've gone a bit more standard now, however). But IBF (and I think most forum software) you can completely customize the skins to look and feel however you want.

[harpsound]

I have just found TikiWiki.
There is a useable demo Here that refreshes the code back to default every 2 hours.

You can customise as you please. (Login: admin / Pass: demo)

This looks very close to what I want.
I have no idea on performance etc

S

[chovy]

I am looking at creating a closed community on the web and aggregating a number of groups from Yahoo! Groups.

I have been searching through a lot of forums and CMS situations.
I am looking for something that takes the Yahoo!Groups experience and allows the users to migrate to more of a social media/community setting.
These members will be mostly women 40 to 70, conservative and technophobes

The IPB at first blush gives me what I want, downloads, galleries, blogs, profiles and a relatively simple start-up for me.
I can create all sorts of bait to get the posters active.
Unfortunately I do not particularly like the look.

I like the SMF look a lot.
TinyPortal intrigues me.
But these programs are very much a work in progress.

BUT I find the web littered with open source projects that die overnight.
I am fast approaching 60 years and this old dog learns new tricks much more slowly now.
I will have a decade's investment in this fora and I do not relish migrating from one platform to another very often.

I do not mind buying commercial software but am I any better off in the longevity stakes?
Any advise would be appreciated.
Ultimately I am looking for a more automated homepage that draws members to various threads.

VBulletin may be the easiest thing for you then. It costs money, and you get a limited number of upgrades before you have to pay again.

I think SMF and phpBB will not die off anytime soon however, they have an active community behind both of them. One thing that may happen though is that a project may turn commercial and no longer be available as open source. SMF does not provide a public repository in the true open source spirit...I've seen a number of projects take this route, and the licensing allows it as long as all contributions are made inhouse or all contributors agree to change the licensing.

Yesterday I tried installing SMF with two 3rd party plugins, neither of which worked. Saw the same thing happen on a wordpress blog with a 3rd party plugin. It really just depends on whether you want to wait indefinitely for bugs to be fixed when stuff ends up breaking (or fix them yourself).