The best free platform?

[Shawn Gossman1]

Out of all the online community, blogging, forum, or even social media community features - what is the best free way of creating a community online in your opinion?

Why do you feel your choice is the best choice?

 

[Tracy]

Depends on what you want... for a base "old style" forum.. SMF is decent.
Want something more "modern" but once more, limited in extensions that go much beyond conversations.. Discourse is decent.

Honestly.. currently for an "all around" site.. you need more than a forum and more than a "blog".. and almost all of the major paid solutions offer this.. WoltLab and IPS exceed what XF offers.. and that falls back to the very dependence on XF of third party developers to push their core offering.. whereas the other scripts offer more "in core/1st party add-on.

 

[joelr]

Out of all the online community, blogging, forum, or even social media community features - what is the best free way of creating a community online in your opinion?

Why do you feel your choice is the best choice?

What your audience / strategy / community needs.

Trying to answer this question without understanding the needs of what your trying to do is totally backwards (and it's one of the primary reasons why new forums fail). Just because you want to start a forum because you like a forum and you enjoy playing with a forum doesn't mean that a forum is where your audience is located it or the tools that you need for your strategy)