02-09-2021, 04:58 AM
There are many reasons why building your own community with a PHP forum is a good idea.
There are also good reasons why you should not. Building a community requires you to invest a lot of your time into making a comfortable,
safe and fun environment where people are willing to share, build friendships, and will want to return to visit again.
Running your own forum instead of using a forum hosted and managed by someone else means you have full control over everything, and with great power comes great responsibility.
Yes, you are responsible for everything. Every little thing.
Your first choice is to decide on using a commercial forum or a free forum.
Then you need to decide if your community forum wil be self hosted or use managed hosting.
There have never been so many community software options to choose from.
In this topic I'll explore various options and look into which forum software I've chosen and why.
read_more
Here's a list of commercial and free php based forums you can use to build your own community :
---------------
Commercial PHP Forums :
---------------
Invision :
Most expensive self hosted forum on the market, for good reason.
Invision is the leading community forums for a price.
Previous major versions are abandoned and unsupported. Full upgrade is required.
XenForo
A very popular community forum placed somewhere in between Invision and VBulletin.
Moderately priced self hosted forum.
Has some weird default settings like auto submitting sitemaps before you even have any content,
even if it's only installed on your localhost server for testing.
VBulletin
An older and well established forum software that has not progressed much since it was bought out.
Woltlab Burning Board
Alternative to the major commercial forums.
https://www.woltlab.com/
https://community.woltlab.com/
-------
Free PHP forums :
-------
MyBB
https://mybb.com
Flarum
https://github.com/flarum/flarum
Vanilla
https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla
Codo Forum
https://codoforum.com/
https://codoforum.com/documentation/introduction
PhpBB
https://github.com/phpbb/
PunBB
https://github.com/punbb/punbb
FluxBB
https://github.com/fluxbb/fluxbb
https://github.com/MioVisman/FluxBB_by_Visman
ForkBB
https://github.com/forkbb/forkbb
GetLuna
https://github.com/GetLuna/Luna
FeatherBB ( Slim Framework )
https://github.com/featherbb/featherbb
Phosphorum [ Phalcon ]
https://github.com/phalcon/forum
-------------------------
Laravel based forums :
-------------------------
Council [ Laracasts]
Chatter [ DevDojo ]
Laraboard
-----------------------
CMS Based Forums :
-----------------------
[ Joomla ]
Kunena
[ wordpress ]
bbPress
BuddyPress
--
Chrono Forums
https://www.chronoengine.com/chronoforums
https://www.chronoengine.com/forums
--
Simple Machines Forum software :
SMF
ElKarte
Wedge
At one time SMF looked very promising. Progress is slow.
ElKarte and Wedge are based on SMF,
and provide many of the basic features missing or totally ignored in SMF.
--
Searching for forum projects on Github :
https://github.com/search?p=2&q=php+foru...positories
https://github.com/topics/community-forums
https://github.com/topics/discussion-forum
--
Building your own php powered community forum from scratch :
https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-...-net-10188
--
What I'm looking for when choosing a forum are things like the url structure, theming options and of course the security features.
Is the forum easy to use, with enough basic functionality to manage a community, or will it be an extended nightmare that will ultimately drive you crazy with frustration and send you broke.
How likely is it that the software will be abandoned, or replaced with something else next year that forces you into a new payment cycle all over again.
Are bugs fixed or ignored.
Security is the most important factor when running a forum. It should be easy to keep your forum secure.
Preventing malicious intrusions, spammers and bots from disrupting the forum is a daily never ending battle.
The bigger the community the more of a target it will become.
The url structure is also important. A modern community forum must have semantic urls, commonly known as search engine friendly or clean urls.
I chose MyBB for the Ninja Admins community because of all these factors, including the ability to customise the url structure.
Instead of being forced to use the same url style as every other forum, MyBB has a 3rd party plugin that can rewrite the urls to our own design.
Here on Ninja Admins we're using simple clean url segments like 'forum' for the forum sections, and 'topic' for the forum topics.
There are no numeric id's required, unless we have duplicate forum topic titles.
Many forum software still cannot provide clean urls, and don't consider the url structure as an important factor, despite people in their own community asking for it.
Most of the time the topic itself is dismissed, and the brave people who ask for the ability to have clean urls are ridiculed for even asking. ( Thinking of you PhpBB.. )
When people are dismissed on a forum for asking questions about something that's important to them, it's a sign that the 'community' is already dead.
It's a good sign that the forum is run by zombies and mods with an 'overlord' personality disorder, who are in it for their own interests and not for making a better community for other people.
Dismissiveness is how you destroy a community, it's not how you build one.
My reasons for choosing MyBB as the base for our community is covered in more details here :
https://ninjadmins.com/topic/mybb-develo...port-forum
--
What's your favourite community forum ?
What have you tried ?
What would you recommend ?
---
Check back later for more updates.
--
There are also good reasons why you should not. Building a community requires you to invest a lot of your time into making a comfortable,
safe and fun environment where people are willing to share, build friendships, and will want to return to visit again.
Running your own forum instead of using a forum hosted and managed by someone else means you have full control over everything, and with great power comes great responsibility.
Yes, you are responsible for everything. Every little thing.
Your first choice is to decide on using a commercial forum or a free forum.
Then you need to decide if your community forum wil be self hosted or use managed hosting.
There have never been so many community software options to choose from.
In this topic I'll explore various options and look into which forum software I've chosen and why.
read_more
Here's a list of commercial and free php based forums you can use to build your own community :
---------------
Commercial PHP Forums :
---------------
Invision :
Most expensive self hosted forum on the market, for good reason.
Invision is the leading community forums for a price.
Previous major versions are abandoned and unsupported. Full upgrade is required.
XenForo
A very popular community forum placed somewhere in between Invision and VBulletin.
Moderately priced self hosted forum.
Has some weird default settings like auto submitting sitemaps before you even have any content,
even if it's only installed on your localhost server for testing.
VBulletin
An older and well established forum software that has not progressed much since it was bought out.
Woltlab Burning Board
Alternative to the major commercial forums.
https://www.woltlab.com/
https://community.woltlab.com/
-------
Free PHP forums :
-------
MyBB
https://mybb.com
Flarum
https://github.com/flarum/flarum
Vanilla
https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla
Codo Forum
https://codoforum.com/
https://codoforum.com/documentation/introduction
PhpBB
https://github.com/phpbb/
PunBB
https://github.com/punbb/punbb
FluxBB
https://github.com/fluxbb/fluxbb
https://github.com/MioVisman/FluxBB_by_Visman
ForkBB
https://github.com/forkbb/forkbb
GetLuna
https://github.com/GetLuna/Luna
FeatherBB ( Slim Framework )
https://github.com/featherbb/featherbb
Phosphorum [ Phalcon ]
https://github.com/phalcon/forum
-------------------------
Laravel based forums :
-------------------------
Council [ Laracasts]
Chatter [ DevDojo ]
Laraboard
-----------------------
CMS Based Forums :
-----------------------
[ Joomla ]
Kunena
[ wordpress ]
bbPress
BuddyPress
--
Chrono Forums
https://www.chronoengine.com/chronoforums
https://www.chronoengine.com/forums
--
Simple Machines Forum software :
SMF
ElKarte
Wedge
At one time SMF looked very promising. Progress is slow.
ElKarte and Wedge are based on SMF,
and provide many of the basic features missing or totally ignored in SMF.
--
Searching for forum projects on Github :
https://github.com/search?p=2&q=php+foru...positories
https://github.com/topics/community-forums
https://github.com/topics/discussion-forum
--
Building your own php powered community forum from scratch :
https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-...-net-10188
--
What I'm looking for when choosing a forum are things like the url structure, theming options and of course the security features.
Is the forum easy to use, with enough basic functionality to manage a community, or will it be an extended nightmare that will ultimately drive you crazy with frustration and send you broke.
How likely is it that the software will be abandoned, or replaced with something else next year that forces you into a new payment cycle all over again.
Are bugs fixed or ignored.
Security is the most important factor when running a forum. It should be easy to keep your forum secure.
Preventing malicious intrusions, spammers and bots from disrupting the forum is a daily never ending battle.
The bigger the community the more of a target it will become.
The url structure is also important. A modern community forum must have semantic urls, commonly known as search engine friendly or clean urls.
I chose MyBB for the Ninja Admins community because of all these factors, including the ability to customise the url structure.
Instead of being forced to use the same url style as every other forum, MyBB has a 3rd party plugin that can rewrite the urls to our own design.
Here on Ninja Admins we're using simple clean url segments like 'forum' for the forum sections, and 'topic' for the forum topics.
There are no numeric id's required, unless we have duplicate forum topic titles.
Many forum software still cannot provide clean urls, and don't consider the url structure as an important factor, despite people in their own community asking for it.
Most of the time the topic itself is dismissed, and the brave people who ask for the ability to have clean urls are ridiculed for even asking. ( Thinking of you PhpBB.. )
When people are dismissed on a forum for asking questions about something that's important to them, it's a sign that the 'community' is already dead.
It's a good sign that the forum is run by zombies and mods with an 'overlord' personality disorder, who are in it for their own interests and not for making a better community for other people.
Dismissiveness is how you destroy a community, it's not how you build one.
My reasons for choosing MyBB as the base for our community is covered in more details here :
https://ninjadmins.com/topic/mybb-develo...port-forum
--
What's your favourite community forum ?
What have you tried ?
What would you recommend ?
---
Check back later for more updates.
--
[ Ninja Admins Community Manager ] 