Forum update (Round 2)

[Orion Pobursky]

It's time again to discuss an update to the forum software.

Development on our current software, Phorum, is effectively dead as there are only 2 primary developers and they really don't do any work on the project. PHP is progressing, and for security reasons I feel we should be on the most current, stable version. We have had some problems (not insurmountable) with newer PHP versions and the Phorum software. Also, the back end admin console is a bit clunky and image handling in posts is terrible.

A while back I found what I thought to be a suitable replacement, myBB, but there were some shortcomings that lead me to abandon the conversion project. The major shortcomings being no native "real name" support, and no hybrid threaded view. I'm willing to live without the latter but the former is nonnegotiable in my opinion. However, "real name" support can be built in.

I'd like to open discussion up to the community on thoughts and suggestions.

[Travis Cobbs]

I'm not really qualified to judge, since I don't know much about any forum software. Having said that, have you looked at this Wikipedia page?

Discourse stands out as not being PHP (or Java). I personally think that may be a good thing, but I could be wrong, and a lot of people could have strong opinions about that both ways. It seems to be "more modern". The Wikipedia page says it supports threading, but I'm not sure what 'native "real name" support' is, so I'm not sure about that.

[Orion Pobursky]

I'm not sure what 'native "real name" support' is

The display of the user's real name (or some other arbitrary user field) for the post author instead of the user's username.

[Orion Pobursky]

Sadly, I can't install Discourse with my host. It looks kinda cool but probably a little too advanced for our needs.

[Orion Pobursky]

Another alternative is bbPress. It's integrated with Wordpress so we could convert the main site to Wordpress and have everything in one place. Downside is that I'd have to start from scratch on a conversion script.

[Orion Pobursky]

bbPress has a converter for phorum. Since my (very neglected) personal site uses Wordpress, I'm going to give it a whirl.

[Merlijn Wissink]

The main site on Wordpress. Hm...

While Wordpress is very good at what is does, in my opininon it's best used for blogs and newssites and such with a lot of dynamic content. Yet, A LOT of (static) websites are made with Wordpress, so I guess it's not that bad. But I once had to a go with Wordpress for someone else (a 'static' website) and it just felt weird, like Wordpress wasn't made for it.

Just my two cents though

[Orion Pobursky]

I thought the same thing but times have changed a lot for Wordpress and it dead simple to run and update. In the end it may be just forums we run on it, if at all. I hate flat posting so we'll never go to a solution that has only that option

[Orion Pobursky]

bbPress is a no-go. The conversion script is wonky and I don't want write another custom script.

[Orion Pobursky]

Revisited myBB. Still no native real name support but a I found a plugin that'll do nicely. Hybrid view is still an issue. This may or may not be able to be added with a plugin.