Is free forum software dying?

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Shawn Gossman

Shawn Gossman

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Aside from some of the more modern interface ones that some of you have been playing with, how do you feel about the current free forum software environment?

MyBB hasn't really been updated in ages. phpBB is updated but is still very much outdated looking as it has been when v3 first hit the scene. SMF gets an update here and there, but it doesn't look that promising, either.

Free forum software seems to be on the decline.

Do you agree with that?
 
MyBB has development progression (1.8.38 was released 04/24). Now, as to improvements, I honestly have not investigated them as I understand that they still do not support mobile natively. And in todays age of the internet that is a killer.

We have complained about the 2+ years that it took Xenforo to go from 2.2 to 2.3. But think 6 years for the 1.8 release to still be the "current" one.

SMF is almost in the same boat, but at least they are still fairly active and have made some strides to move the script forward.

After playing with NodeBB, Flarum and Discourse (on a localhost install at the house) I really see no big draw to any of the three of the PHP based scripts I referenced above. For those wanting to provide their users a more modern feel/flair, the three packages (NodeBB/Discourse/Flarum) do exceedingly well. In fact, in some ways I would even say better than the paid scripts for a simple forum only based site.
 
I think the top free platforms (MyBB and SMF, at least) are on the decline.

SMF did do an update that made their software mobile responsive, but it still seems like a ghost town in terms of development.

phpBB will probably keep doing what they're doing, but I feel like they're getting very niche with who uses their software. Either it's the phpBB fanboys or those who can only use free software and like it because of all the add-ons and themes.

I think soon, the more modern free platforms will be the only ones available.

Maybe I'm wrong! I hope I am!
 
I don't know whether free forum software are dying or not but based on my recent experience, I can say if you want to grow your community, you will have to somehow use a premium software. The one I had on open source grow tremendously after being migrated to paid software.
 
Nomad said:
I don't know whether free forum software are dying or not but based on my recent experience, I can say if you want to grow your community, you will have to somehow use a premium software. The one I had on open source grow tremendously after being migrated to paid software.
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Right.

But who joined it? Was it everyone who we all know who are paid platform fans? I can see a lot of the members of all the admin forums being the type to favor joining premium platform powered forums. No offense to anyone, of course.

Or what is a random population of new members that we all aren't seeing?
 
Now that I have Discourse set up I see why forums as they are now are less popular. The tech of Discourse is so far ahead of the paid products. It will take them years to catch up. If they ever do that is.

Best of all Discourse is free. There are other new forum software like nodeBB and Flarum that are also light years ahead.

My thinking is free forum software will never go away. The paid products have a better chance of becoming extinct.
 
AWS said:
Now that I have Discourse set up I see why forums as they are now are less popular. The tech of Discourse is so far ahead of the paid products. It will take them years to catch up. If they ever do that is.
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How does Discourse measure with resource consumption verses traditional forum software?

What requires more resources? Discourse/XenForo/Invision/VB/SMF/Etc?
 
Shawn Gossman said:
How does Discourse measure with resource consumption verses traditional forum software?

What requires more resources? Discourse/XenForo/Invision/VB/SMF/Etc?
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Discourse is very lightweight. I doubt it uses more resources than xenforo or Invision. Haven't really looked to see what kind of resources it uses. It seems more responsive than the others.

This what it looks like in shell with top command. Load very low. I grabbed this on initial pageload.

Code: 
top - 15:13:52 up 2 days,  6:26,  3 users,  load average: 0.07, 0.04, 0.00

Compared to the server with xenforo and Invision running on it.

Code: 
top - 15:16:20 up 2 days,  6:29,  1 user,  load average: 2.27, 3.41, 3.36

Granted there are more users hitting the server with xenforo and Invision.
 
Contabo VPS-1 4vCPU/8GB RAM
running 2 WP blogs (not busy) and 1 XF site (not busy)
15:33:27 up 14 days, 11:33, 1 user, load average: 0.21, 0.13, 0.08

Contabo VPS_1 4vCPU/8GB
running 2 nodes of NodeBB with low traffic on both
22:35:27 up 1 day, 17:59, 1 user, load average: 4.17, 4.90, 5.27

4/8 32GB RAM
running XF site that gets has around 20 robots/guests online at one time
21:36:52 up 19 days, 3:15, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

As you can see, the NodeBB sites are rather resource intensive. But I think that may be due to Node.JS being active at all times and the socket connections for immediate updates/refreshes for visitors.
 
There is no decline in usage. Check MyBB and phpBB. People request every day for the next version. Forum scene is still a solid business model.
 
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meetdilip said:
There is no decline in usage. Check MyBB and phpBB. People request every day for the next version. Forum scene is still a solid business model.
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Yeah but is MyBB saying anything back?

I'm sure phpBB is but they have decades of fans built up that will always be Team-phpBB
 
Shawn Gossman said:
Yeah but is MyBB saying anything back?

I'm sure phpBB is but they have decades of fans built up that will always be Team-phpBB
Click to expand...

Irrespective of what they are saying back, there is no progress that people can install :)
 
Cedric said:
There is definitely a decline lol. What is now maybe 20 people, used to be easily 200 a day.
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I've noticed a significant decline as well and it really only worsens as time goes on.
 
Shawn Gossman said:
I've noticed a significant decline as well and it really only worsens as time goes on.
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It’s the act of different generations tbh.

We grew up with forums. This new generation is growing up with social media all in their face.

So, the decline isn’t necessarily on us and it isn’t going to get worse. It’ll get better as long as we continue to do our best.
 
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