Worst forum software

[Shawn Gossman1]

What forum software do you dislike the most?

Why do you dislike that forum software?

 

[vortex]

vBulletin from version 4 onwards. It just became a convoluted mess. Didn't help that it failed spectacularly on launch.

 

[Cedric]

I have always hated Proboards. The look and UI is just terrible.

 

[Naiwen]

Has to be Flarum or Vbulletin. Vbulletin in my opion at least anyways, is way outdated. Everyone if paying for their forum software, should use Xenforo.

 

[Elseb1]

I have always hated Proboards. The look and UI is just terrible.

Yeaaaaaaah proboards isn't great. I wouldn't even use it back in the early 00s when it was on a more level playing field with competitors. Not sure why anybody would choose it these days though fair play for them still being around.

 

[Shawn Gossman1]

Yeaaaaaaah proboards isn't great. I wouldn't even use it back in the early 00s when it was on a more level playing field with competitors. Not sure why anybody would choose it these days though fair play for them still being around.

If you have no way of buying webhosting space, I could see why you would use it.

I've seen some decent communities come out of ProBoards.

But I could never make another one with them simply because it's rented space.

I have social channels for my other brand which are also rented space. But I also have a mailing list that is getting close to 1,000 subscribers and that's not rented. I have access to those emails. I have my website too which I have access to the database.

It's okay to have some rented space but everything rented is a potential loss waiting to happen, potential not definite.

 

[Naiwen]

If you have no way of buying webhosting space, I could see why you would use it.

I've seen some decent communities come out of ProBoards.

But I could never make another one with them simply because it's rented space.

I have social channels for my other brand which are also rented space. But I also have a mailing list that is getting close to 1,000 subscribers and that's not rented. I have access to those emails. I have my website too which I have access to the database.

It's okay to have some rented space but everything rented is a potential loss waiting to happen, potential not definite.

I use it and it's perfectly fine for my forum communities.

 

[Aaron]

I've always hated SMF it's just pure ugly.

 

[Elseb1]

Tapatalk is the worst. Ugly, advertisements, not user friendly. It's just terrible.

I feel I complain about Tapatalk every week here haha

 

[Uncrowned]

I never liked Proboards, but Tapatalk is just awful. I do wish IPBFree (I think that was it) stayed around and Proboards turned into that mobile nightmare.

 

[Shawn Gossman1]

I never liked Proboards, but Tapatalk is just awful. I do wish IPBFree (I think that was it) stayed around and Proboards turned into that mobile nightmare.

When I first used ProBoards, it was kind of cool.

That was back when the original owner ran it before they sold it off.

Heck, that was back when it was on the first server!!

 

[Elseb1]

When I first used ProBoards, it was kind of cool.

That was back when the original owner ran it before they sold it off.

Heck, that was back when it was on the first server!!

I didn't realise it had been sold off. Tbf the new owner hasn't changed much!

 

[Shawn Gossman1]

I didn't realise it had been sold off. Tbf the new owner hasn't changed much!

But it seems now the new owner doesn't focus on the service as a core product but more of a way to earn money with ads.

Unless I'm wrong but according to those who use or have used it, they feel this way.

 

[Uncrowned]

But it seems now the new owner doesn't focus on the service as a core product but more of a way to earn money with ads.

Unless I'm wrong but according to those who use or have used it, they feel this way.

From the small sample size of Proboards that I have visited recently, it does not seem like they have progressed the core product at all in decades.

 

[secretprojects]

I've always hated SMF it's just pure ugly.

It was pretty decent in early versions (1.0, 1.1) for its era in 2005-2007, competitive with paid forum software, but once the original developers left it has never really gone anywhere, its core fossilised in a 2007 era state. 2.0 took forever, then 2.1 (a minor update) took even longer. I host an SMF board for some friends and recently upgraded it to 2.1. Its adequate I guess? My forum was migrated to Xenforo some years ago now.

 

[Shawn Gossman1]

It was pretty decent in early versions (1.0, 1.1) for its era in 2005-2007, competitive with paid forum software, but once the original developers left it has never really gone anywhere, its core fossilised in a 2007 era state. 2.0 took forever, then 2.1 (a minor update) took even longer. I host an SMF board for some friends and recently upgraded it to 2.1. Its adequate I guess? My forum was migrated to Xenforo some years ago now.

I've always heard that.

Arantor told me stories about the original developers. I forget the one's name that never really shared his name.

I asked Arantor if he was him and he laughed and said no.

 

[secretprojects]

[Unknown] was the 'code machine'. He created SMF somewhat accidentally while working on YABB SE.

[Unknown] started rewriting parts of YABB SE largely from scratch as a side project, initially with the view of it being a mod. He rewote so much that when the other YABB SE developers saw what he'd done, they scrapped the YABB SE 2.x development codebase and took [Unknown]'s 'Secret Project' as the new codebase.

YABB SE was originally a port of an earlier forum system YABB (started July 2000) from the Perl language to PHP by a couple of the YABB developers, but since diverged off as its own thing. However, YABB had some major security issues around this time which caused YABB SE some reputational harm due to the similarity in name, so the YABB SE developers they decided to change the name for YABB SE 2.0. This is what became SMF 1.0. This history also explains why 1.0 was pretty complete and feature rich for a 1.0 release.

When [Unknown] stopped contributing to SMF after 1.1, things slowed down. Other developers stepped in, and completed 2.0 after some sizable delays, but then many of them left for various reasons. Two of the developers working on 2.1 forked the code to a new forum system called Elkarte and had several releases while SMF 2.1 slowly crawled to a release.

So, like most open source projects, the difficulty is keeping the good developers around when they aren't being paid.

 

[Shawn Gossman1]

So, like most open source projects, the difficulty is keeping the good developers around when they aren't being paid.

Especially if the software category is on the decline, too.

When there were plenty of developers on MyBB and SMF, it's when forums were still fairly popular.

Once social really started taking off, I noticed everything started declining.

 

[Dilip]

One reason forums are dying is the price of good forum software.

 

[Elseb1]

One reason forums are dying is the price of good forum software.

This is definitely problematic. Its very expensive for somebody to get started without an already established community.