Cedric, founder of ForumSpark
Some parts of ForumSpark get rebuilt every few months. Others quietly do their job for years without anyone touching them. The shoutbox and polls belong firmly to the second group. Neither has seen a decent improvement since ForumSpark was originally built, and to be honest, we kind of forgot about polls entirely when we designed the 2.0 boards. The poll panel was still the same two column table from the very first version, sitting on top of an otherwise modern topic page. Both have now been rebuilt properly.
What changed
The shoutbox is now Live chat: realtime, with channels, voice notes, chat polls and a Discord bridge. And topic polls got their first real upgrade ever: a new design, one tap voting, voter lists, closing dates, multiple choice and editing.
The old shoutbox checked for new messages every ten seconds. The new one does not check at all, because messages simply arrive. Everything is pushed in realtime: new messages, edits, reactions and pins appear the moment they happen, you can see who is in the room and who is typing.
It picked up a lot along the way:
Channels. Split the chat into rooms, including staff only channels your members never see. Useful for a quick chat between staff. Tabs show a dot when something happened in another room.
A real composer. Paste or drop images, search GIFs, pick emoji, mention people (and receive notifications), record a voice note of up to a minute, or start a poll from a proper little modal.
Conversations. Reactions, replies, editing your own messages, pinned announcements and a full archive page for when you want to scroll back further than the room shows.
A Discord bridge. Paste a webhook in the admin panel and the chat mirrors to your Discord server. Staff only channels are never mirrored.
Continue in topic. When a chat exchange deserves a proper thread, one click turns it into a topic, posted under the original author's name. Especially useful for support related stuff.
Moderation grew up too: slow mode, timed mutes, purge, automatic retention pruning and a dedicated moderation permission. And because Aegis watches over the platform now, known spam actors are automatically slowed down in chat before they can flood anyone.
Polls finally look like they belong on a 2.0 board: a slim panel above the first post with a thin result line under each option, the same design the new chat polls use.
One tap voting. Tap an option to vote, tap it again to retract, tap another one to switch. You are no longer locked into your first click forever.
See who voted. A per poll setting shows voter avatars on each option and a full voter list. Leave it off for anonymous polls; staff can always check.
Closing dates. Give a poll an end date, or close and reopen it manually whenever you like.
Multiple choice. Let voters pick up to as many options as you allow.
Editing. Polls can now be edited after creation. Renaming an option keeps its votes, and you can add options without starting over.
Chat polls and topic polls also talk to each other now. Continue a chat poll into a topic and it becomes a real topic poll with the votes carried over, while the chat poll freezes and points members at the topic where voting continues.
Live chat has a proper page in the admin panel now: rename it, manage channels, set slow mode, edit windows and message retention, connect Discord and control exactly who can read, write and moderate. If you left the shoutbox disabled because it was too basic, this is a good week to give it another look.
Quote attributions like "On Aug 21, 2026, Joe said:" are now links that jump to the quoted post.
Assorted polish: cleaner forum list statistics and several dark mode fixes.
Everything above is live on every board today. Enjoy!
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