Favorite free forum software.

[Shawn Gossman]

Do you have a favorite free forum software?

Why do you like that software over other free forum software?

 

[Dilip]

MyBB. It was one solid software.

A pity they chose not to add a default theme that meets the current day requirements.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

MyBB. It was one solid software.

A pity they chose not to add a default theme that meets the current day requirements.

MyBB doesn't seem to want to do a lot of modern-day features.
That is what turned me off from using them.

 

[ZandraJoi]

I'm on Proboards & I used to like it. My forum over 15 years ago was on Proboards & that's why I went that route this time around. However, their Support has gone downhill. Plus they don't allow for migrating over. My first forum, I never considered migrating as I got all that I needed. There was no censorship at that time.
I have not been on other platforms so cannot answer which free one one would be a favorite.

 

[Dilip]

MyBB doesn't seem to want to do a lot of modern-day features.
That is what turned me off from using them.

They blame it on the lack of manpower.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

They blame it on the lack of manpower.

I feel like they could get more if they tried to.
I feel like there are people within that community who'd be willing to help.
At least that was the sense I got back when I was a part of the community.

 

[Dilip]

I wonder why nobody tried to fork it yet. For a long time, I thought v1.9 is really going to happen.

 

[Elseb]

I'm on Proboards & I used to like it. My forum over 15 years ago was on Proboards & that's why I went that route this time around. However, their Support has gone downhill. Plus they don't allow for migrating over. My first forum, I never considered migrating as I got all that I needed. There was no censorship at that time.
I have not been on other platforms so cannot answer which free one one would be a favorite.

It's funny, I always thought proboards was weak going back to like 2005 and they've done incredibly well to still be around. I remember back in the day you had forum providers such as Cutecast, Suddenlaunch, Boardnations and Invisionfree/Zetaboards and they've all gone!

 

[Shawn Gossman]

It's funny, I always thought proboards was weak going back to like 2005 and they've done incredibly well to still be around.

You're right about that.

I went there a few days ago and searched through their directory. They have quite a few active forums in there and are still used daily by a lot of people.

There are a lot of inactive forums on there too, though.

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

I’m still in the dark ages and use Forumotion. I long ago worked out that nothing we mortals do will land us on page one of google, although there’s a huge marketing business that’s arisen to try to convince us we can.

I’m looking for longevity with minimal input from myself. Aside from the free hosting, the last forum (blog) I had with them lasted about six years, with the last two completely ignored. I came back and it was still there. I deleted it and have recently started again upgrading to BB3. I initially used Forumotion and a few educational sites to promote my brand name for work and although I’m now retired, old habits die hard.

Of course, being free it has drawbacks and those are the amount of ads coming in from the server end which obviously you don’t have access to and the badly written coding, some of which it’s possible to alter as you have access to the HTML and CSS, unlike other free forums.

It’s definitely not software to use if you’re serious about marketing, but as I only use it to display articles with external links holding it together, it serves its purpose.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I long ago worked out that nothing we mortals do will land us on page one of google, although there’s a huge marketing business that’s arisen to try to convince us we can.

For a forum, it's difficult.

But you can get to page one. For my hiking brand, I'm page one for a lot of targeted keywords and I maintain page one.

BUT

I worked super hard to get there. I wrote the best content based on exactly what my audience demanded and I wrote multiple time a week. Now I write daily for it. I created an extensive community on social and was able to generate thousands and thousands of backlinks.

So, page one is very possible, if you put in the effort.

It took me 5 years to do it alone.

 

[Kris P. Bacon]

For a forum, it's difficult.

But you can get to page one. For my hiking brand, I'm page one for a lot of targeted keywords and I maintain page one.

BUT

I worked super hard to get there. I wrote the best content based on exactly what my audience demanded and I wrote multiple time a week. Now I write daily for it. I created an extensive community on social and was able to generate thousands and thousands of backlinks.

So, page one is very possible, if you put in the effort.

It took me 5 years to do it alone.

Would you mind if we have a look?

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Hiking with Shawn is the brand name

I'm on everything!

 

[Dilip]

It is actually not a hard task to build a forum. A basic one is easy to build. But it might not be safe enough for regular use.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

It is actually not a hard task to build a forum. A basic one is easy to build. But it might not be safe enough for regular use.

I've made a very generic one.
But like you said, safe enough to use.
My coding skills don't go into security so I don't make any kind of public use software.
Besides, my coding knowledge is limited and I barely mess with it so I forget a lot of it.