The Jason
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6 months ago
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15 replies
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232
How long have you been into it? When did you discover it? What are reasons backing up whatever question given in this thread?
For paid software I'm a fan of Woltlab Suite. It comes with a free CMS right out of the box too, which other platforms charge extra for. The only downfall is I don't speak German, so getting support can be difficult at times. For free software I've been a fan of SMF. The ACP is easy to use and the default theme looks very professional. As for my favorite free forum host, Forum Spark is my favorite now. Cedric is continuously improving the service and it's amazing already!
Ravenfreak:
For paid software I'm a fan of Woltlab Suite. It comes with a free CMS right out of the box too, which other platforms charge extra for. The only downfall is I don't speak German, so getting support can be difficult at times. For free software I've been a fan of SMF. The ACP is easy to use and the default theme looks very professional. As for my favorite free forum host, Forum Spark is my favorite now. Cedric is continuously improving the service and it's amazing already!
I've wanted to try Wolt Lab really badly but haven't gotten around to it.
Myself, I can't think of any forum software I don't like, aside from Invision, MyBB and TapaTalk. Well, Invision and MyBB aren't horrible, but they got bad problems. The problem with Invision is the navigation and MyBB's problem is that the alerts system, the only one I know works with it, does not work.
And concerning TapaTalk, the free version is cluttered with ads, but I don't know, maybe the paid version is good.
The first forum software I tried was SMF. I build a mental health forum with SMF. I still have that forum but I migrated to Xenforo about a year ago.
I like nearly all popular paid and free and forum software. However, as far as Invision is concerned, I find the navigation and one other thing difficult, and as for MyBB, the alerts system is off (Alerts are very vital.), but I have hope with MyBB 1.9 that will be changed.
Note: I am only using phpBB at the moment. The reason is because I love this premium theme I bought for my forums.
Seems like I'm the only one using FluxBB (specifically the Visman's fork as the original FluxBB development went stagnant around 2019 and the official website ended up closing in 2021). I started using it since 2020 when I first discovered PunBB (which is actually what's FluxBB is based on) and I really love how simple and minimalist it is.
I still use it today for my own forum as I no longer like to use stuff like SMF (I miss using 2.0.19, nowadays it's so buggy on PHP 8.x, doesn't have support for IPv6 addresses & the newer versions deleted those classic themes like that one from SMF 1.x) and phpBB3, but yeah don't expect to make so much stuff with it and it's nowadays impossible to find some mods and plugins for this since the official website closed (glad I managed to archive some of them).
On May 23, 2026, Alien Hominid said:
Seems like I'm the only one using FluxBB (specifically the Visman's fork as the original FluxBB development went stagnant around 2019 and the official website ended up closing in 2021). I started using it since 2020 when I first discovered PunBB (which is actually what's FluxBB is based on) and I really love how simple and minimalist it is.
I still use it today for my own forum as I no longer like to use stuff like SMF (I miss using 2.0.19, nowadays it's so buggy on newer PHP version and doesn't have support for IPv6 addresses & the newer versions deleted those classic themes) and phpBB3, but yeah don't expect to make so much stuff with it and it's nowadays impossible to find some mods and plugins for this since the official website closed (glad I managed to archive some of them).
I've used FluxBB in the past, as well as PunBB. It's a shame that FluxBB stopped being worked on though I prefer PunBB. Visman has his own forum software too called ForkBB.
On May 25, 2026, Ravenfreak said:
Visman has his own forum software too called ForkBB.
Yeah I was aware of that since a while, I was thinking about using it but I don't like the design it has and seems like isn't retro-compatible with old FluxBB themes.
BTW, for those who miss phpBB2 (like me), some people from the IntegraMOD team have created a fork of it with some improvements and compatibility for newer versions of PHP 8.x but isn't entirely stable yet and the last time I tried it there was some errors like getting a white page when trying to edit a post and slow load times when trying to load a post.
https://github.com/IntegraMOD/phpBB2x
And there's also this other forum software entirely made in Assembly
On May 25, 2026, Alien Hominid said:
Yeah I was aware of that since a while, I was thinking about using it but I don't like the design it has and seems like isn't retro-compatible with old FluxBB themes.
BTW, for those who miss phpBB2 (like me), some people from the IntegraMOD team have created a fork of it with some improvements and compatibility for newer versions of PHP 8.x but isn't entirely stable yet and the last time I tried it there was some errors like getting a white page when trying to edit a post and slow load times when trying to load a post.
https://github.com/IntegraMOD/phpBB2x
And there's also this other forum software entirely made in Assembly
I've seen the board written in Assembly in the past I should join it sometime since I'm familiar with 68k and z80 assembly. Forumotion has the option for you to have a phpBB2 forum. I know there was the phpBB2 refugee forum but I think it recently went offline about a year or two ago. Pretty cool to see people are still keeping phpBB2 alive.
I began my forum adventures back in 2003 with YABB (Yet Another Bulletin Board), and quickly upgraded to YABBse (which either means "Splinter Edition" or "SQL Edition" depending on who you ask). That forum was a fan site dedicated to Tenchi Muyo! and Princess Ayeka. In 2005, I upgraded to SMF (which was written by the same people who worked on YABBse). And I expanded my discussions to include role playing games as well.
SMF was simple and fast. It was highly customizable, and was wonderful while there was a large community of users and an active development cycle. Best part, it was free. (Don't get me wrong, it's still out there, still being developed, but the time scale is ... lacking.)
Last year, I moved to XenForo, my first paid/premium forum software. I actually went out shopping for a forum that had the features that I needed-- one that focused on writing, and XenForo was my chosen winner. It was customizable, and extremely user friendly. It also had the extended features that I needed, focusing on role playing. Probably one of the greatest assets XenForo has is the SPAM elimination that's built right into the software. When I was using SMF, I was being barraged by SPAM, and I had to seek out third party extensions to combat it. XenForo, I just turned the feature on, and it catches 99.8% of the SPAM that registers.
There's other small things about XenForo that makes it the hands down winner for my community's needs.
On May 31, 2026, Senkusha said:
I began my forum adventures back in 2003 with YABB (Yet Another Bulletin Board), and quickly upgraded to YABBse (which either means "Splinter Edition" or "SQL Edition" depending on who you ask). That forum was a fan site dedicated to Tenchi Muyo! and Princess Ayeka. In 2005, I upgraded to SMF (which was written by the same people who worked on YABBse). And I expanded my discussions to include role playing games as well.
SMF was simple and fast. It was highly customizable, and was wonderful while there was a large community of users and an active development cycle. Best part, it was free. (Don't get me wrong, it's still out there, still being developed, but the time scale is ... lacking.)
Last year, I moved to XenForo, my first paid/premium forum software. I actually went out shopping for a forum that had the features that I needed-- one that focused on writing, and XenForo was my chosen winner. It was customizable, and extremely user friendly. It also had the extended features that I needed, focusing on role playing. Probably one of the greatest assets XenForo has is the SPAM elimination that's built right into the software. When I was using SMF, I was being barraged by SPAM, and I had to seek out third party extensions to combat it. XenForo, I just turned the feature on, and it catches 99.8% of the SPAM that registers.
There's other small things about XenForo that makes it the hands down winner for my community's needs.
YABB seems to be still in development but it's certainly not as popular as SMF. It's also written in Perl which is probably another reason it's not as popular as SMF, a php based software. Still that's really cool you've been using forums for 23 years now! Xenforo is my second favorite paid software, I prefer Woltlab Suite.
I forgot that YABB was written in Perl, and it's quite interesting that there's still development being written for it. One of the reasons I moved from YABB to YABBse was because YABB was a flat-file database, whereas YABBse was a MySQL database. Then again, that was 23 years ago.
I absolutely love posting on several different forums each using different forum software. Some are better than others.
I've used phpbb, xenforo. I still post on some SMF and Vbulletin boards daily, albeit heavily customised ones
I haven't seen any spam , but I have seen some sites with lots of guests. presumably bots.
On Jul 20, 2026, ishta said:
I absolutely love posting on several different forums each using different forum software. Some are better than others.
I've used phpbb, xenforo. I still post on some SMF and Vbulletin boards daily, albeit heavily customised ones
I haven't seen any spam , but I have seen some sites with lots of guests. presumably bots.
I feel like MyBB was the worst for spam bots, I moved a forum from MyBB to UBB threads because of bots. There's quite a few different vBulletin forums out there that use older versions but are modified to work on today's servers.
Have you had any issues here?
On Jul 23, 2026, ishta said:
Have you had any issues here?
Nope I haven't had any issues with spam bots here. Forum Spark is definitely the best forum host IMO. I think it's perfect for those who don't want to deal with self hosting.
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