Future of forum software

[Resolute]

What do you think the future of forum software will be like in, say, 10 years?

I like to think XenForo will STILL be the go-to option!

What are your thoughts?

 

[Cory]

I think as long as the internet is around, forums will be around. Granted, due to the loss of activity that social networks take away a lot of forum software’s may close their doors. Then again, some may open new doors. The internet is always evolving and forums will probably evolve along with it. Who knows, maybe something new will come along and social media may no longer be as popular as it once was. Only time will tell.

 

[eenya00]

forums are here to stay and i believe the future would be very exciting for forum owners as more features that would be beneficial to forum owners would definitely come up and will be rewarding for the forum owners as well.

 

[eenya00]

forums are here to stay and i believe the future would be very exciting for forum owners as more features that would be beneficial to forum owners would definitely come up and will be rewarding for the forum owners as well.

 

[Resolute]

I agree! I think they are here to stay!

 

[Kyng]

Just to bring this back on-topic a bit... I do hope XenForo, in its current state, isn't still the go-to in 10 years' time. The world is a constantly-evolving place: the internet is radically different today from when I first started out, and I expect it'll be radically different in the future, in ways we can't yet imagine. In that climate, standing still is just a death sentence - and even if you do survive, you lose all relevance.

I do wonder whether the Flarum- or Discourse- style of forums will ever take off. So far, they haven't - which I believe is because they just haven't found a market. They're trying to win over the social media crowd - but those people won't use something that's like social media, when they can instead use something that is social media. On the other hand, the people who still use traditional forums stay away from Discourse too, because they just don't want to re-learn how use basic features. (And also, I don't think it helps that 'Discourse' sounds similar to 'Discord', and therefore often gets confused with it, even though they're completely different services...)

It's a shame, because I like the Flarum/Discourse concept - but if nobody else is going to use it, there's no point...

 

[Cedric]

Just to bring this back on-topic a bit... I do hope XenForo, in its current state, isn't still the go-to in 10 years' time. The world is a constantly-evolving place: the internet is radically different today from when I first started out, and I expect it'll be radically different in the future, in ways we can't yet imagine. In that climate, standing still is just a death sentence - and even if you do survive, you lose all relevance.

I do wonder whether the Flarum- or Discourse- style of forums will ever take off. So far, they haven't - which I believe is because they just haven't found a market. They're trying to win over the social media crowd - but those people won't use something that's like social media, when they can instead use something that is social media. On the other hand, the people who still use traditional forums stay away from Discourse too, because they just don't want to re-learn how use basic features. (And also, I don't think it helps that 'Discourse' sounds similar to 'Discord', and therefore often gets confused with it, even though they're completely different services...)

It's a shame, because I like the Flarum/Discourse concept - but if nobody else is going to use it, there's no point...

Well said Kyng, couldn’t write it down any better.

 

[Smokey]

I think XF will definitely still be around, but whether they'll still be the 'go-to' solution is yet to be seen. I think in the next 10 years, vBulletin will be all but gone completely and possibly IPS as well, but it's hard to tell.

I'd like to see a new competitor pop up and shake things up, that'd be interesting to see.

 

[Cory]

I do wonder whether the Flarum- or Discourse- style of forums will ever take off.

Never even heard of these until now, so they are pretty much in-between message boards and social media where you mostly keep scrolling to load new topics instead of organizing by a forum. Sounds a little disorganized to me.

 

[Cedric]

Never even heard of these until now, so they are pretty much in-between message boards and social media where you mostly keep scrolling to load new topics instead of organizing by a forum. Sounds a little disorganized to me.

I never understood this kind of trend. I hate seeing it this way. Some forums also have the What's New as their default page instead of the forum page.

 

[Cory]

I never understood this kind of trend. I hate seeing it this way. Some forums also have the What's New as their default page instead of the forum page.

I kind of understand what they're trying to do. Have the topics delivered right to you when accessing the site so you can dive right into them. It could work if there were proper organization methods in use, I think.

 

[Nomad]

SMF was launched in 2003, MyBB was launched in 2002, PhpBB was launched in 2000. I think these software will last few more decades, or until forums will vanish from the face of the world wide web.

 

[Kyng]

I kind of understand what they're trying to do. Have the topics delivered right to you when accessing the site so you can dive right into them. It could work if there were proper organization methods in use, I think.

Yeah, I understand why they have "What's New" as the main page. The idea is that it delivers actual content immediately to the user (compared to a traditional forum, which has the board index as the main page - but the board index isn't content: it's just the means of organising the content).

With that being said, I don't really use "What's New" pages myself. I think there's a happy medium: have the main page be a traditional board index, but with an "Active Topics" box somewhere containing the latest posts.

 

[Cory]

With that being said, I don't really use "What's New" pages myself.

I always use it to find a mass load of recent topics posted around the board, but to have it as your main page may deter the organization of the overall board.

 

[Ronald]

What do you think the future of forum software will be like in, say, 10 years?

I like to think XenForo will STILL be the go-to option!

What are your thoughts?

As of now, Xenforo is probably the best software to create forums around, no doubt. With that being said, new software are constantly being developed, so I would be hard-pressed to make that bold claim.

 

[Shortie]

In 10 years' time, I still see Xenforo being a huge forum software that will be many peoples go to for years to come. Xenforo I believe now has been out for 10 years already and seeing how much it's already progressed it's just amazing and I only see it getting better from here on out.

 

[Arantor]

Discourse vs Discord, well that's Discord's fault since Discourse came first. But the reality is that they're in very different market segments with surprisingly little overlap.

Has Discourse found a market? Absolutely it has. It's just not one we tend to see because I posit that most forum admins don't visit corporate forums for help all that often, which is where Discourse has a serious offering. I see them from time to time on search results, but ultimately their market isthe kind of people who would view $300/month all in as the most popular plan to go for.

I'm not quite sure who Flarum was targeting, though. They're clearly going for the Discourse-style market but are even more of an also-ran than even NodeBB is (and NodeBB is very much a secondary competitor to Discourse in that end of the market)

What irks me in particular, though, are the claims that the future of social communication is entirely synchronous; the Discord style is the future. It's not, it never was, it doesn't work for anything remotely complicated, but that doesn't seem to sway its proponents as the future of communications.

I think there's room for something new to come along, but I don't know what it is yet.