A new open source forum software

[Cedric]

Do you think a new open source forum software would take off? What features should it have? Do you know any innovative stuff that could be done to fight the war between social media and forums?

 

[Aaron]

It would have to seriously outdo MyBB & phpBB to get anywhere on the market free or otherwise.

 

[capnsquarepants]

I feel like there might be a market for a clean, easy to use forum with a responsive design out of the box. Correct me if I am wrong, but MyBB still doesn’t have a responsive design, and phpBB just has a lot of options that might be intimidating for users. I don’t look at flarum cause it’s not as easy to install for the layperson.

 

[Dilip]

I do not understand why the existing ones are not living up to people's expectations. MyBB needs to be responsive, phpBB just needs better looks and so on.

These are minor tasks and can bring a great difference in the forum scene. Not sure how much new software can do.

 

[Arantor]

MyBB needs to be responsive, phpBB just needs better looks and so on.

These are not minor tasks.

The thing is, the best case is that you end up with something with the approximate feature set of XenForo. Which is not a bad place - but it's also not a good place either because the forum world is still shrinking.

I have some ideas on the subject but I'm just not convinced it's currently worth the effort in building it out.

 

[capnsquarepants]

These are not minor tasks.

The thing is, the best case is that you end up with something with the approximate feature set of XenForo. Which is not a bad place - but it's also not a good place either because the forum world is still shrinking.

I have some ideas on the subject but I'm just not convinced it's currently worth the effort in building it out.

Yeah, responsiveness needs to be built from the ground up, and needing to account for the vast mojority of mobile browsers.

Better looks is subjective, what is nice to the majority of people might annoy some other users.

Hows StoryBB btw? (Not a dig, I've read about it and it does seem interesting)

 

[Arantor]

So StoryBB is getting a lot of a do-over, trying to refactor SMF with modern architecture (full on dependency injection, rewriting routing to have Symfony components etc.) wasn't getting me anywhere so I backed off, went back to SMF as a baseline and started reimplementing my changes with less crazy nonsense.

But StoryBB - or its rebranded version, which I'll talk about some other time - was never going to be a popular product, because it was always for-its-niche first.

I'd talked about that concept at length on TAZ back in the day: the notion of having flavours of forum platforms where you don't try to build 'a forum software that can do it all' but you build out a base with specific modules and features to suit - but there was never much interest in the philosophy because why do that when you can just take a generic forum and jam all the plugins in?

Never mind that the concept is proven elsewhere and there's no reason other than 'because it's apparently hard' that no-one's doing it. I just didn't feel like investing the time when, frankly, I'll just implement what I care about and do what makes me happy because I'm kinda done trying to build an audience around things.

 

[Dilip]

Both MyBB and phpBB had more than 4 years to build a decent theme.

The fact that phpBB looks horrible is no rocket science.

There are numerous theme makers who are selling themes with these features for years now.

 

[Niko]

Honestly, it would have to be super different from the regular ones..
because sadly forums are getting lower and lower important on the net, maybe because of Social Media i don't know, but that's a fact sadly

 

[Arantor]

Both MyBB and phpBB had more than 4 years to build a decent theme.

Longer, they haven't appreciably changed in longer than that. And even SMF 2.1's theme is mostly the same as it was when I was last on the dev team in 2014...

 

[ten thousand]

Personally I'm not convinced that a responsive theme is as important as it's commonly made out to be. Forums are by their nature meant for long(er)-form discussion, an idea directly at odds with a mobile interface. Typing on small touchscreens is not a pleasant experience, which is a big part of why major social media today is image/video based.

What I would want from a new kid on the block is to acknowledge this fact and focus on making an excellent desktop interface. Desktop users more likely to want to engage with long-form content anyway, you aren't gaining much in your community by having a bunch of people browsing on their phones or posting single-sentence posts on tiny touchscreen keyboards.

 

[Cedric]

Personally I'm not convinced that a responsive theme is as important as it's commonly made out to be. Forums are by their nature meant for long(er)-form discussion, an idea directly at odds with a mobile interface. Typing on small touchscreens is not a pleasant experience, which is a big part of why major social media today is image/video based.

What I would want from a new kid on the block is to acknowledge this fact and focus on making an excellent desktop interface. Desktop users more likely to want to engage with long-form content anyway, you aren't gaining much in your community by having a bunch of people browsing on their phones or posting single-sentence posts on tiny touchscreen keyboards.

True. I tend to write much longer and more often when I’m browsing AJ through my laptop rather than mobile. I also need to edit half of my messages that I post through mobile, because my fingers are too thick for these small iPhone buttons.

 

[Shortie]

I think if there were to be any new open-source forum software it would definitely have to be something that is better and outdoes MyBB. I have always said that MyBB is my preferred open-source forum software because of how much like vBulletin and Xenforo it is. I believe that MyBB would be a difficult forum software to top if I am honest but I believe it is possible for someone who is willing to do it.

 

[Prometheus]

Personally I'm not convinced that a responsive theme is as important as it's commonly made out to be. Forums are by their nature meant for long(er)-form discussion, an idea directly at odds with a mobile interface. Typing on small touchscreens is not a pleasant experience, which is a big part of why major social media today is image/video based.

What I would want from a new kid on the block is to acknowledge this fact and focus on making an excellent desktop interface. Desktop users more likely to want to engage with long-form content anyway, you aren't gaining much in your community by having a bunch of people browsing on their phones or posting single-sentence posts on tiny touchscreen keyboards.

I keep harping on this and the frustration that forums began shifting away from what made vB 3.x.x and IPB 2.x.x so popular. They weren't necessarily great to look at on mobile interfaces but they were suited to have a great desktop experience with an easy to customize interface. I could skin a vBulletin once I understood the basics of what I was changing and had a little coding experience.

Yes, the newer softwares give a DIY theme or styler; but, they aren't the same. You can only do minor edits. You can't go in and change this or that without having to dive into the backend and do a lot of tweaks.

There's just a fondness for 3.x.x and IPB 2.x.x because while they're not as stable or secure for now, they had the ability to suit a community's niche.

 

[Arantor]

They weren't necessarily great to look at on mobile interfaces

Mostly because mobile internet in the early 2000s wasn't on touch devices and certainly wasn't on the style of devices we have now; if you browsed a forum in 2003 on a mobile it would almost certainly have been via WAP or similar.

Not entirely sold on the customisation angle but I'm highly biased in this area as implementing designs is part of my day job...

 

[Prometheus]

Mostly because mobile internet in the early 2000s wasn't on touch devices and certainly wasn't on the style of devices we have now; if you browsed a forum in 2003 on a mobile it would almost certainly have been via WAP or similar.

Not entirely sold on the customisation angle but I'm highly biased in this area as implementing designs is part of my day job...

That's fair. I meant from a consumer and customer who doesn't. I will say I prefer the xenForo and Invision skin upload methods now. Lot less hassle since it handles the file uploads for you with the import.

I do miss the ability to have user permissions and settings like vB 3.x had. You could set different avatar dimensions, max upload sizes, user album permissions, etc.

I'd love to see someone go through and strengthen a 3.x on the backend and run it. I'd join that community and be active like in my older days.

 

[Arantor]

So, here's something from the other side of the fence. Admins don't actually want that complexity; realistically you're already dealing with multiple avatar sizes just to cope with desktop and mobile experiences, and trying to balance that off against user groups... it's actually not viable. I'm not sure it ever was back in the day either - my observations in this field have been over the last decade or so that people mourn the 'loss' of things but don't tend to bother if they do actually have them. (I even say this as someone who built a whole gallery system, and as someone who has had to field the 'why is it so complicated' debates over the last decade plus)

As for strengthening vB 3.x on the backend, good luck with that. It's just about hanging on in life-support from Internet Brands and I'm certain they wouldn't be thrilled with someone trying to make a significant go of bringing it back (given that their takeover of vBulletin prior to vB 4 and subsequent management decisions is literally why XenForo exists), but also it's a colossal mess in the codebase.

The file permission problem is also less of a drama than it used to be, safe mode is no longer a thing in PHP so you're only worrying about whether the webserver can access the files, not about who owns the files. I'd also point to Jcink that, functionally, works the same way as XF and IPS does, so it's definitely doable.

 

[Prometheus]

So, here's something from the other side of the fence. Admins don't actually want that complexity; realistically you're already dealing with multiple avatar sizes just to cope with desktop and mobile experiences, and trying to balance that off against user groups... it's actually not viable. I'm not sure it ever was back in the day either - my observations in this field have been over the last decade or so that people mourn the 'loss' of things but don't tend to bother if they do actually have them. (I even say this as someone who built a whole gallery system, and as someone who has had to field the 'why is it so complicated' debates over the last decade plus)

As for strengthening vB 3.x on the backend, good luck with that. It's just about hanging on in life-support from Internet Brands and I'm certain they wouldn't be thrilled with someone trying to make a significant go of bringing it back (given that their takeover of vBulletin prior to vB 4 and subsequent management decisions is literally why XenForo exists), but also it's a colossal mess in the codebase.

The file permission problem is also less of a drama than it used to be, safe mode is no longer a thing in PHP so you're only worrying about whether the webserver can access the files, not about who owns the files. I'd also point to Jcink that, functionally, works the same way as XF and IPS does, so it's definitely doable.

Oh, I get it, trust me. It's why I know some communities restrict avatar dimensions to 100x100 or 60x60, especially with larger communities. Some even limit the amount of images allowed to be posted to prevent hotlinking and the issues therein. It's easy to be nostalgic and reminisce.

 

[Nomad]

I think an open source forum software which is as easy as wordpress can still outperform the existing open source forum software.

 

[Arantor]

There's only two problems. 1) forums are necessarily more complex than a WordPress out of the box so they can't possibly be as simple as WP out of the box, and 2) someone has to build it. I don't think it's clear to people how much effort that really is.