Forum Software

[voLdie]

Hey guys,

We are long past the days of only phpBB and vBulletin as the only forum software out there. I preface this with saying I am in no way related to the project or have any stake in it.

We needed a forum to manage our community on our website and wanted something lightweight and extensible. We settled on Flarum which literally took us only 6 hours to get into production.
http://flarum.org/
https://github.com/flarum/flarum

Had a few questions about extending it and one of the lead devs helped me within seconds on their Discord channel.

Again not plugging just throwing out a sweet alternative to you guys that is open source and totally free.

 

[Tao]

I started trying to use Flarum for a new project I was toying with to create a free service where IM types could find or start mastermind groups. Love the way it looks and works.

Lots of hoops to jump through for installing it though - plus I didn't want to put too much effort into it seeing as it was (is) still in Beta and there was no easy upgrade path.

 

[cobblepot]

@voLdie thanks for the suggestion, just in time for me however i have two concerns

1. its still in beta (checked their website)
2. how mobile optimized and simple is it

the membership will most likely be for non tech savvy niche so i prioritize unique & simple

 

[turbin3]

I looked at Flarum awhile ago. I really liked the UI and functionality, which made me want to use it. Main issue I had is the beta status. That plus, vBulletin has forever poisoned me against PHP. I even uninstall the freakin PHP language from any of my servers where possible, if that's any indicator.

The forum software I've had the best experience with recently has been Discourse. I don't care much for the Ruby on Rails backend, but at least it's not PHP. LOL

The thing I love about Discourse is, they've put tons of work into the feedback system. I use that term pretty broadly, to describe all of the various post rating, up/down voting, badge, etc. systems. The idea is, the best stuff gets promoted and low quality stuff gets shunned. The downvotes continue until content quality improves!

Overall, if you do a ton of groundwork in creating your own custom badges, getting a few moderators on board, and setting the "tone" early on, it can make the forum life a whole lot easier. That plus, I've found users really seem to like the "feedback", and it can really inspire them to keep active.

So far, I've been using one self-hosted Discourse instance using the recommended Docker container method. It's actually not bad at all to manage, including software updates, TLS, customization, etc.

 

[voLdie]

@turbin3 you make a lot of very valid points.

I am possibly so partial because of my proficiency in PHP and my partner is a PHP god so anything I need he can crank out in under 30 minutes.

I too looked at discourse and it is also an excellent option.

I guess my overall point is that you don't have to stick with the old ass forum software and there is many new forum CMS's that are much better in terms of UI and accessibility.

While Flarum is in beta it has one of the best development communities I have yet to see. Any of the devs will walk you through personally any issue you have. I have also yet to have any bugs or crashes within the beta.

Idk starting in the early 2000s running forums in phpBB and Vbull. has made me dislike still using the same software in the current climate. I am just pointing out some better options.

Thanks guys

 

[Joe]

I'd much rather use a plain LAMP forum than any fancy stuff.

Any time you try fancy stuff, you end up wasting more than 50% of your time on "why isn't this effing part of this effing thing working?".

And inevitably, you immediately start asking questions like "oh I want it to do this, how do I add that?".

Then you go online and some nerd answers "well obviously you just [page of noise & garbage]", which will absolutely not work without more "oh then just..."s, if at all. Or the developer promises to add it and then never mentions it again.

Sticking to PHP is much wiser. PHP is an excellent language (Django and Rails are OK too, but not as commercially used, not as much extension packages available for them). The problem is bad software designs, not PHP itself. Some of the PHP software I've seen is just so ugly. I'm reading it grimacing, thinking "why? why would you do it like that?". I've seen people type a page of if statements in a row, instead of just using an array and the awesome built in array functions. People using massive amounts of procedural language and globals, when classes or at least more functions would have kept it 10 times cleaner. They're the problem, not PHP.

Just find the best PHP based paid forum software currently available. It will have the best support and best availability of extensions etc.

This is why for a blog, for instance, I'll always use wordpress, unless I want to do something that's borderline "not a blog anymore". Sure, the design of the code is a bit clumsy, but it works, everyone knows how to use it, and there are hordes of developers and designers for it.

 

[Ghost]

Last few months I have really been looking into forum software for a major project.

I didn't want to use PHP at all which limited my choices ideally I wanted to use Node. But the only real contender was NodeBB and NodeBB has fucking terrible documentation aswell as a GPL licence. It basically made me decide to start writing my own forum software in node (not a small undertaking) but I needed software that 1. I knew like the back of my hand and 2. I could keep the source code out of the public eye (yes I know security by obscurity is no defence - but at the same time a hacker would be better off spending his time finding bugs in forum software being run on thousands of sites or a few, each with different fingerprints)

 

[Joe]

Last few months I have really been looking into forum software for a major project.

I didn't want to use PHP at all which limited my choices ideally I wanted to use Node. But the only real contender was NodeBB and NodeBB has fucking terrible documentation aswell as a GPL licence. It basically made me decide to start writing my own forum software in node (not a small undertaking) but I needed software that 1. I knew like the back of my hand and 2. I could keep the source code out of the public eye (yes I know security by obscurity is no defence - but at the same time a hacker would be better off spending his time finding bugs in forum software being run on thousands of sites or a few, each with different fingerprints)

Are you more concerned with having the project up and running, or investing a man year of effort into reproducing a fraction of the functionality of multiple-man-years-in-development-and-support commercial forum software because Node is faster and it would be clever to use it?

 

[Ghost]

I'm building my own forum software because im not interested in building a community or even placing ads on the forum. I'm interested in harvesting data as much data as i possibly can. I could use a number of different forums but I dont know if they are going to last 10years+ and I'll be frank with you. PHP seems to be on a downwards spiral and being async Node suits forum software particuarly well.

Things have rapidly changed in the last 3 years. Forums dont need to be hard work, forums dont even need human moderators anymore. There are a lot of niches where there is just one major forum on the subject and then just facebook groups. Forums communities can be built in under a day with bots seeding the forum and chatting to each other to look like an active community. The thing which takes the time is seeding the devision in competitiors forums so the users jump ship. But thats a bit too underhand to discuss here.

I'm not building forum software to sell. Half of forum features are to attract owners and admins not users.

Facebook and Google don't make their money from ads they make it from data. I'm not saying I will be anywhere near the size of ethier of these companys hell with any luck and if it all works out you could be on 3 of my forums and not even realise they were connected. Facebook and Google have taken a rather big slice of the pie but there's still a lot of data out there to sweep up

 

[Ste Fishkin]

I would personally stop messing around with silly solutions and go for XenForo

 

[Joe]

I'm building my own forum software because im not interested in building a community or even placing ads on the forum. I'm interested in harvesting data as much data as i possibly can. I could use a number of different forums but I dont know if they are going to last 10years+ and I'll be frank with you. PHP seems to be on a downwards spiral and being async Node suits forum software particuarly well.

I see no signs of PHP being in a downward spiral. And the time I wasted back when I was doing some open source trying to get npm to just install all the shit and not fuck me around; wading through pages of nerd vomit to try and fix it but it made no difference. PHP just works. When I hear "wordpress is switching to node", I'll buy into your PHP spiral idea. Frankly, I dislike writing javascript too. It's ugly. When you have statements ending in crap like })]; , that's filthy code. Contrast that with Python, which is just clean.

Things have rapidly changed in the last 3 years. Forums dont need to be hard work, forums dont even need human moderators anymore. There are a lot of niches where there is just one major forum on the subject and then just facebook groups. Forums communities can be built in under a day with bots seeding the forum and chatting to each other to look like an active community. The thing which takes the time is seeding the devision in competitiors forums so the users jump ship. But thats a bit too underhand to discuss here.

I've never seen a quality community started with bots. They all need someone labouring to make it "good", or real reputable people delivering real value (e.g. CCarter, who I believe is the number one incoming search term for this site). And how can you say forums don't need moderators any more when at the same time you're saying there are "division seeding bots" trying to attack communities. Use an "anti division seeding bot bot"? This is decoupled from reality.

I'm not building forum software to sell. Half of forum features are to attract owners and admins not users.

Facebook and Google don't make their money from ads they make it from data. I'm not saying I will be anywhere near the size of ethier of these companys hell with any luck and if it all works out you could be on 3 of my forums and not even realise they were connected. Facebook and Google have taken a rather big slice of the pie but there's still a lot of data out there to sweep up

You're making a forum, the purpose of which is to gather user data, but you're focusing (50% on <1% of the forum membership) on owners and admins? Did Facebook and Google get big because of focusing on owners/admins?

It just sounds like your ideas are really decoupled from reality, and therefore, likelihood of money. Unless you've got some truly groundbreaking idea, and financing to pursue it in a startup format with a team for 2 years, you might want to drop the pie-in-the-sky ideas if you don't want your time wasted.

 

[CCarter]

I'm building my own forum software because im not interested in building a community or even placing ads on the forum. I'm interested in harvesting data as much data as i possibly can.

If you are interested in harvesting data then you should probably start harvesting data instead of reinventing a wheel that's not broken.

If you succeed after spending months/years on this custom forum software you'll be back where you started - you'll have made $0. What you are doing is the equivalent of procrastination - you aren't getting to the money (or in your case user data = money eventually).

100% of your time will be focused on programming the forum software instead of growing the community.

You'll be spending it on coding instead of marketing.

You can only make money when you market your product/service.

You are re-inventing the wheel of something that's not broken. If you want to do it as a side project, no problem - but it's just a hobby, not serious. If you were serious about making money (mining user data in your case), then you'd simply get software that works up as fast as humanly possible and start working on getting the users in.

I know what you are thinking... "My software will be more secure, I'll know everything about it, bla bla bla". I'm a programmer first, I know all the traps - this trap is procrastination since in the end you made zero steps to advance to your real goal of making money, all you are doing is putting a big obstacle in front of you - that you may know in the back of your mind that you will not succeed at. It can be a relief to say "I never got to the making money point so I'll really didn't fail."

Listen - It's scary going after an idea that you want, the user data part, and seeing whether you will fail or succeed. I've failed thousands of times, I'll keep trying cause that's in my blood. Failure is only the end if you don't move on to the next project. Maybe your user data idea is shit and you think it (I'm not saying it is or isn't) - and now subconsciously you are giving yourself an obstacle in order to not find out that your original idea was not a good idea.

Selling user data is already hard - you have to find reputable people, make sure you get paid on time, and manage relationships and demands versus your supply. It's already tough enough without having to worry about custom software breaking.

And if the software does break - you have no help and only YOU are the only one that can get you out of your situation. With software off the shelf there are groups of people actively working on the project that have combined minds to overcome obstacles since they are many to your one.

What you are doing is essentially giving yourself 2 projects - #1 create custom software and #2 build a business that sells user data.

#1 is a no money project.

#2 is a project that can succeed or fail.

You are putting #1 in front of #2 because deep down you don't want to find out whether you can even achieve #2's success. You see the problem?

"Focus on the few not the many" - Dan Peña​

Just let go, get Xenforo, and start working on #2 - because that's already an uphill battle in itself - it's a real business that has real demands.

What you are doing is the equivalent of all those failed SEOs or programmers that keep working on a project but never market it to make money. The SEO will keep writing content and looking at analytics waiting for Google to come send them thousands of people in traffic and THEN they'll "think about marketing or other traffic avenues" - which in reality is a cop-out. They are scared to make the leap into the unknown as well - for the same reason they might fail and it will crush their spirit.

If one failure crushes your spirit you are on the wrong path - running an online business or any business is a road full of failing to your goals.

The failed programmer has a different mentality - they waste time on things that make zero money as well, constantly improving software in forever beta test and never launching or marketing because they might find out their idea was shit as well. Once again it's due to fear.

ALL procrastination happens because of fear. If you weren't afraid to fail you would leap out of bed and rush to your task. But people want a guarantee in life that they won't spend X amount of years (months, weeks, days, hours) on a project and fail. That's not how life works. The only thing guaranteed in this life is death - you might as well go for your goals you are going to die anyways - at least find out how far you could have gone if you put 100% effort in. Every failure I've ever had has led me to better opportunities - that's the real secret to failing.

Don't waste time trying to re-invent the wheel, if you want to play with nodes do it as a hobby, but when it's time to sit down and do business get to the money as fast as possible. The only way to do that in your scenario is to get a "good enough" software up and running and start making money!

"Perfection equals paralysis, if you left it to the engineers no car would ever come off the assembly line - it wouldn't be good enough" - Dan Peña​