Is free forum software dying?

[Shawn Gossman]

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 phpBB is updated but is still very much outdated looking as it has been when v3 first hit the scene.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?

 

[Tracy]

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.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

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!

 

[Nomad]

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.