Talk:Comparison of Internet forum software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] ExBB

Exclusive Bulletin Board, a Russian flat file forum

[http://www.exbb.net/ official site] (Russian)
[http://community.exbb.net/ mods, skin and other] (Russian )
[http://www.exbb-int.siteburg.com/ intenational page] (English)
[http://exbb.clans.it/forum/ Italian site] (Italian)
[http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exbb Italian Wikipedia page] (Italian)

[edit] Precedent for articles like this?

I think this is interesting information, but do comparisons of this nature fit into an encyclopedia? Is there a precedent for articles like this? Just wondering. --Stevietheman 21:43, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes there is - see Comparison of web browsers, Comparison of instant messengers, Comparison of operating systems, Comparison of media players and Comparison of file systems (to name a few software-related comparisons). Talrias 23:09, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK, thanks! --Stevietheman 23:19, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] James Atkinson

The link to James Atkinson, creator of phpBB, links to a page about an other person named James Atkinson (created the combustion engine in the 19th century). --PC_Freak 15:14, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is a wiki, be bold in updating pages! I've made a disambiguation page. Talrias 16:31, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lots of Blank Ones

I moved quite a few ones over from List of Forum Software. All the ones without any information came with a link to the supposed home page. To keep the page from being overgrown with `?'s I only did the first section. If no one knows anything about the software feel free to delete it after a while, most of them don't even have wiki articles. :\. So I hvae no problem with deletion of most of them, though with the links someone should be able to find the information, I just don't have much more time to put into this today. I tried not to repeat, but I may have. I I knew more information about them I put them in the lower sections as well(none went into the middle, but about 3 went into the lowest block). On the lower values they may support more databases, but I only had information I took from List of forum software. --Capi crimm 21:00, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Can I suggest that if a forum software still has all ?'s by the 4th October 2005 (one month after your comment) that they be pruned from the table? NeoThermic 22:46, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Please keep them as it is (even if it has all ?s). Since if someone passes by and know the information about that particular forum, it will update it. If we remove it completely, it reduces a chance for somone to fill in these blanks. Also if you remove them, it will remove their home pages too. Thanks for your appreciation! Someone 17:17, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with NeoThermic on the date. I'm going to delete any forum software from this page that has full ?'s across the board. I actually am for deleting software without a wiki-page as well, since the software doesn't even have a big enough community to make one I don't think it's big enough to be common forum software. On the side, I provided the links so people with knowledge don't have to randomly stumble upon this page, but rather you can actively get the information. I strongly suggest you do that if you want to list to stay as large as it is now.--Capi crimm 22:27, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I cleared out the ones with full question marks. There are still a few that only have a couple of question marks. Some of them could probably be deleted outright; I think it would be better to ask their community to fill in the information by said time or delete them. Thats too much work for me, though.

[edit] Clean up tag

I found that this page looks a bit messy - some boards are there in the first table but not the second, etc, and the first table is not very informative, so I put up a clean up tag.

I agree with all your points, except that the first table is not informative. I think it has the potential to be so if every row had a link to the software's homepage and a few of the useless columns (like current stable version and first public release date) were removed. Does anybody have a problem with me doing this? I have now made it so that each table has all the same rows. - Rob.daemon 19:06, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

First public release date might be fair game, but I would say that current stable is informative. I also think that rather than '?' for unknown items, it should literly have the word 'Unknown' there.

If nobody contests to removing "first public release date" in the next few days, I'll go ahead and remove it. As for the "current stable," see my message below regarding the last updated status. I think that the goal would be to have no ?s in the table at all; and as such, I'm currently going through and reading the websites (downloading the software if necessary) to find out some of the answers. Rob.daemon 21:10, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

As a side note, in the 'Data Storages' section, are we reffering to what storages the software can use, even with modification, or are we reffering to data storages the software can use out of the box, without adding anything? NeoThermic 12:04, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I would say no if it requires modifications, to follow suit with the feature list. However would this exclude IPB? Rob.daemon 21:08, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

That would be why I asked. If you have to pay extra to obtain the data storage, isn't that nearly the same as requiring a modification to use a diffrent DBMS? NeoThermic 15:32, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Any forum could potentially support any data storage, which would make the entire table pointless if we decided that it could be yes with modification. The difference with IPB is that (I presume) it is officially supported by the company. Talrias (t | e | c) 15:42, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Then there should be three values, I'd say: "Yes," "No," and "Yes, with external module and minimal configuration." This would allow things like phpBB and IPB to still retain the "Yes" value but because some are not included by default, it would indicate that. Rob.daemon 04:45, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

What's the S.I. unit for "minimal"? :) Talrias (t | e | c) 08:25, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Not overly sure what minimal means for IBP, but if you want to enable Oracle support in phpBB (or any other DBAL layer that isn't included by default), you only have to drop in a new instal.php, schema file, and dbal layer, then do a normal install. NeoThermic 19:29, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I think we should add a section for "last updated on" as some projects here are outdated and the development is either slow or non-existing. what do you think?

Either that or a "project status" column; where there could be Stable, Beta, No Future Development, and In Development (with like "Updated in the Past X Months"); that way we could also remove the latest stable version (as it's kind of a pain to update for some of these every time a new release comes out) Rob.daemon 21:10, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not too sure. The 'latest stable version' column is handy enough for general information. If it would be a better compromise, how about the project status having the stable, beta, feature locked, and in development, with a latest (stable) version? NeoThermic 15:32, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

That sounds good, but what would "feature locked" entail? Rob.daemon 04:45, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Feature locked is what phpBB 2.0.x is actualy in, where no new features are added unless they relate to secuirty features. NeoThermic 19:29, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

In my progress, I've noticed that there appears to be no way to download CMFBoard, NetHawk, or TuvaiBoard; can I go ahead and remove these from the table? I've tried to find them on Google, but it's just forums running the software (which I can't find any place to download). Rob.daemon 21:10, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I've now found Tuvai, but I can't find NetHawk. I've also found CMFBoard on SF.net: http://sourceforge.net/projects/collective/ ... it's a sub-project of that. Rob.daemon 05:06, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

TuvaiBB has stopped distribution starting 12-30-05, although I'm not sure if 1.5 (the last released version) is still being distributed? 68.104.71.158 09:43, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Flat Forum

Excuse me, but what is a flat forum? Or; maybe add a small definition of the different compared features? --145.99.202.92 16:33, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Flat file means that it does not use a database, but instead stores all the data in files on the file system. Usually, this is a proprietary format that is only used by the software, as opposed to common database engines. As for the explanation of features, the title "Flat File" is a wiki link to the explanation... Rob.daemon 17:49, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Or do you mean flat as opposed to threaded? In a flat forum, each post appears one after the other, in order of time. In a threaded forum, a post is made in reply to an existing one, which means the posts aren't necessarily ordered in time, but in a logical flowing structure. Talrias (t | e | c) 17:52, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Where is this page going?

This page is a great start, but it's getting rather unwieldy. It baffles me that there isn't a site like WikiMatrix or Open Source CMS to help people compare the relative merits, system specs/performance etc of the oldest and most established form of social software on the Net --Case (04 March 06)

There is a site like that; ForumMatrix. Still in the startup phase I think, but looks promising. Anyway, this article really needs a cleanup. It isn't very informative, and few features are listed for comparison. --PaiTrakt 06:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AfD discussion

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software (aeropagitica) 15:52, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DBAL/API notification

I removed the note about the Phorum API when reffering to database storage. I think we need a general concensus. phpBB, for exmaple, has a DBAL, so anyone can write one for any database type PHP can use. (and already have, Oracle and mysqli exsist). I would like to hear other's reasoning about adding notes as to which forums have extendable database API's/DBAL's. NeoThermic 15:07, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I think we should keep the forum features, including database support, as to what it would support if you downloaded it and installed it, i.e. a straight-out-of-the-box version. Obviously it could have any feature you wanted if you added it in - so changing it to "yes (with modification)" is unhelpful. Talrias (t | e | c) 18:38, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The actual edit I reverted had a star next to Phorum, and the following text after the table: Phorum has a completely abstraced storage API. Any storage system can be used that the user wants to write.

I agree though, out-of-the-box should be noted, nothing more, nothing less, although that does leave the question as to where IPB stands since you have to pay on top of the licence to get MSSQL or Oracle support, and thus it isn't out-of-the-box.. NeoThermic 01:09, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another forum to add to the list

SEO-board is the name, you can find it here: www.seo-board.com - check the features there too.

This topic should be useful to add more software to the list.

200.127.76.32 17:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC) Stahn

Another suggested borad, which I was surprised to not find on there: ezBoard. I was under the impression that ezBoard was one of the larger forum types, and expected to find it here. --BBM 21:39, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Ezboard has not released their software to my knowledge. They strictly offer hosting. SubSeven 18:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Latest release date

I've added a column, latest release date, which I think is probably the most useful column to have. One important way to compare is to see which applications have made recent releases. Quite a few of these may have ceased development, and there's no way to tell otherwise. Greenman 23:46, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A few missing entries

I noticed it's missing a few forums, namly ASP.NET ones:

"ASP.NET Forums" (made by Microsoft), "Community Server - Forums" (mutated from the former), and "Yet Another Forum.NET" (modelled on phpBB)

A number of others, including: Slash (the Slashdot forums engine, Perl), Scoop (Kuro5hin.org's engine, Perl), PHPNuke (a popular Slash-like clone, PHP), and Drupal (sort of a wiki / blog / CMS engine, Python IIRC). Then there's the whole mess of Wiki engines, but I don't think those will ever go anywhere ;-)

[edit] Important column for comparison

I've recently learned Vanilla doesn't allow users to delete posts. Admins can hide them but not delete except directly in the db. I'm not sure if other forums have this limitation but it is an important "must have" feature for many so could quickly eliminate forum software options for people using this table for decision making.

Does it allow editing? If so, one can delete that way - leaves a blank post, but aside from being a little messy that shouldn't be a problem. Maybe we could have a post-posting manipulation column that indicates if editing/deleting/etc can happen. --BP 08:35, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Community Server

Does the Enterprise version of Community Server really cost $9999?

[edit] MyBB and "Full" unread tracking

Someone (anonymous) marked MyBB as supporting "full" unread message tracking. I did a quick test on the official forum (http://community.mybboard.net/index.php). It doesn't seem to be the case. What I did was:

Register.
Login.
Wait until some unread messages appeared (forums marked as having unread messages).
Logout.
Login.

At this point no unread messages were indicated anywhere (I didn't actually read any of them).

This looks like "Session" unread tracking. Unless someone can elaborate, I will be marking MyBB as "Session" instead of "Full". Solf 13:44, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I've modified MyBB information to specify "Session" unread tracking since no comments were made. Solf 07:47, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] XennoBB and "Full" unread tracking

FLCLFan marked XennoBB as supporting "full" unread message tracking. I did a quick test on the official forum (http://community.xennobb.com/index.php). It doesn't seem to be the case. What I did was:

Register.
Login.
Wait until some unread messages appeared (forums marked as having unread messages).
Logout.
Login.

At this point no unread messages were indicated anywhere (I didn't actually read any of them).

This looks like "Session" unread tracking. Solf 12:44, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Is there a reason you're waiting before marking it to Session - given the evidence I think it's more accurate to correct it immediately, pending any disputes. Or perhaps mark the entry as 'disputed', so that anyone reading it is aware that there is uncertainty. --BP

I think my test is not 100% accurate. There might be something that I don't know/understand. There might be a configuration option. I'm assumming that FLCLFan has had a good reason to mark it as "Full", so I'm hoping for his reply (I also posted on his talk page). Solf 19:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I just checked and did the login and logout thing with a unread message and it was still there so it must be Full. FLCLFan 01:15, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I just checked it again on what appears to be "official" forum: http://community.xennobb.com/index.php . I was able to "lose" all markers by logging in from one browser (IE), doing logout and then logging in from Opera (with the same user). When I did the same in one browser (IE), it cleared "unread" markers on the boards but I was still able to see unread markers beside the messages inside the board. My guess it is either using some "cheating" or I was simply seeing cached page. Proper "Full" support requires that unread markers survive different browsers and/or different computers -- because all this should be done server-side. I'm marking XennoDB as "discussed" until there's more clarity on this subject. Solf 12:49, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unread tracking colour coding

Does anyone have an opinion on whether the unread tracking field should be colour-coded? And should it be green for Full, red for Session, amber for Unknown/Disputed/etc, or something different? - obviously it's not a clear Yes/No decision, but the only real benefit of Session is the simplicity/speed, which I don't think are enough to say that Full isn't the superior option. Anyone disagree? --BP

Colours are good :) However I'd propose more neutral colors (e.g. light blue and light yellow) because Full is not better than Session in all cases. Problem with Full is that "truly honest" implementation may have to maintain (number of users)*(number of topics) read markers (in the worst case scenario which, admittedly, is pretty unrealistic in real life). Nevertheless the amount of this data can get out of hand quickly on the popular forums (think WoW forums :)). Since all unread/read decisions have to be made against this data, the performance of Full unread tracking may become unacceptably poor. So in the end Full tracking may be best for most forums (since they never reach amount of users/topics sufficient to cause serious performance issues), but there are cases when Session may be preferable. Solf 19:18, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, I would argue that this is a technological problem, not one with the feature itself.

However, for any busy forums with performance issues caused by tracking, it is still a better solution to use Full+cutoff, rather than Session. (ie: So only messages posted in the past X months are tracked.) This gets around the performance problems without any significant effect on the majority of user's tracking experiences. --BP 09:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

That's certainly an option. Well, since nowadays I don't want to use a forum without Full tracking, if we could influence public opinion with red/green colors, it might be for the best :) Solf 17:38, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

OTOH, for WoW-level (World of Warcraft) forums (which admittedly is an exception, not a rule), cutoff may need be so low as to be practically useless. Solf 17:40, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

My experience is that the busier the forums, the less people tend to look back at previous messages anyway. I think the absolute minimum cutoff (for somewhere with WoW-like quantities of posting) to remain useful would be a week, with a month or three for more normal places. But I think the only way to test how well it would work for big boards is to implement it. Anyhow, I agree with you on trying to influence public opinion, so if there are no big objections before tomorrow I'll go through and colour all the cells. :) --BP 18:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've coloured the column. I also started doing a quick check and filling in some of the missing data, but now my connection is playing up, so I'll continue it another time. --BP 01:01, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FuseTalk

I have split FuseTalk into two entries (CF and .NET), since the .NET version does not support all the features of the CF one, and it could be misleading if, for example, someone wanted a .NET forum with a calendar supporting Oracle. However, after looking for latest release dates, I noticed my earlier version changes may not be accurate, but I couldn't find anything conclusive on the website. The Fusebox forums claim to be using FuseTalk 4.0 (see footer), but there's no mention of an FT 4 on the official website (that I could see) even though it has apparently been around since 2003. Is anyone able to provide anything which backs-up or overrides what I changed? BP 10:53, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yazd Forum was missing and I added it

Yazd forum was missing from the list and I added it. Cheers

[edit] Updated some information on YaBB

The info was a little out of date in the features table, so I clarified the info a little bit. Note I'm one of the developers of YaBB, I hope it's OK that I updated this.

LoonyPandora 14:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MesDiscussions

Can someone with better French than me check if MesDiscussions allows for downloadable software, or if it is only a remotely hosted service. If the latter, it should be removed from this article (although if anyone wants to create a Comparison of Internet forum services article, it could go there instead, along with the other services mentioned just above section 2.1) --BP 13:39, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm the creator of MesDiscussions.Net software :

In the professional version, the code of the software is given to the customer so that he could install it on its own server.

However the shared and serenity solution are remotely hosted services.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.234.165.4 (talk • contribs) .

[edit] vBulletin FAQ

In a recent revision a link to a vBulletin FAQ was added to the External Links section. I have removed it since I don't believe it is appropriate for this article which is intended to be a comparison between the features of various forums, not a collection of links to help files for owners of a specific forum software. Please discuss this here before re-adding it or anything similar. Blair - Speak to me 06:52, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The other external links seemed similar. The help files, while skewed toward vBulletin, consist of information that would be helpful to any forum owner. Up to you if you choose to relist www.vBulletin-faq.com - if you think its worth adding. Joeychgo 11:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I still don't think that this link is appropriate. About half of the information is about how to set up a vBulletin forum, and the other half only has sample code for vBulletin. And to be honest, pretty much all of the information presented in it can be found by a decent Google search anyway.

Blair - Speak to me 01:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] additions / deletions

I'm not sure what to think of some of the edits happening in this article. For example, the "14:01, 8 January 2007 89.242.139.18 (Talk) (Changed Jon England to Jonathan West)" edit was misdescribed. He also removed numerous forums from the list; not just a simple name change! --larz 22:25, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I reverted the article to a previous version, it seems like an old revision from October or November was edited. --DietrichM 20:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] W3C XHTML validation

I think there should be a column telling whether the forum software passes these tests. --Indolences 07:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Invisionfree

Would Invisionfree count as a forum software? I know for a fact it's quite a popular service, but since it's modified from Invision Power Board, is it eligible? Sorry I'm unclear on the concept. --Sapphire Flame 19:10, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, this article is only about forum software, not hosted forum services. correct me if I'm wrong. --DietrichM 23:15, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] OpenID

Can the comparison mention which software supports OpenID logins/signups, and which doesn't?--Saoshyant ^{talk / contribs} (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 16:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Remotely Hosted

Shouldn't we add proboards and the others at this point? I mean granted we may not know all the internal coding, but we do know for the most part all of the features and the file system that most are using. thoughts? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.161.236.124 (talk) 00:24, 12 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Search Engine column pointless

Basically every forum application has a search feature, unless the app is just someone's 5-minute hack. If the odd "Search Engine" term was supposed to mean something different or more specific, the original poster never bothered to define it. If there are no serious objections, I mean to remove the column. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.70.49.114 (talk) 16:16, 15 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] SMF testimonial

I used SMF for a fairly major forum a year or two ago, and it got hacked and database corrupted. If you don't keep up with the patches you'll get fucked at some point, and they seemed to come out every two weeks.

vBulletin is far better. Signal15 20:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../c/o/m/Talk%7EComparison_of_Internet_forum_software_5066.html"