Is Traditional Forum Software Dying?

[Shawn Gossman]

Are traditional forum platforms (vBulletin, XenForo, phpBB) outdated compared to modern community tools like Discord, Slack, and Reddit?

What do forums offer that these newer platforms can’t? Are they still better for long-term communities?

Are younger users avoiding traditional forums because they’re “too old-school” or hard to navigate?

Could forum software developers innovate more to compete, or is it already too late?

Has the rise of real-time communication killed the need for slower, threaded discussions?

What’s your prediction? Can forums adapt and thrive in the next 5-10 years, or will they become a niche tool?

 

[AWS]

Yes the platforum is old and dated. LIke anything else if you don't change you are left behind. The loyal users for those scripts are a small group of people and getting smaller all the time. They want to you to beleive that forums are fine like they are. In reality the opposite is true.

Forums have always allowed for easy to follow conversations. Social media does. Not as easy to follow as a forum thread.

Yes they are. Like you said too hard to navigate. If search worked better it might keep the younger crowd interested. Unfortunately, this goes back to UBB days too, search has been an afterthought. Not important to most devs.

I don't think so. Sure text messaging is great for one on one or small group. A forum has a community feel to it.

Forums scripts have already evolved and will continue to do so. Sites like Reddit and Stack thrive. Discourse has a huge following. Check the support forums to see how popular it is. People don't see many Discourse forums because they hang out at xenforo and go to xenforo sites. Same for vbulletin and phpbb. Invision is doing something unique. They are switching focus to the enterprise. They understand that small mom and pop forums are in fact dying.

Anyway. Forums will always be around. The ones that adapt will survive. What we won't see for much longer is xenforo or scripts like it.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I like how VB and Invision are going. That suite option.

But they're still not that modern.

Most new community platforms are built on the principal of mobile first, forums are not.

The day they change to a mobile-first status is the day they start to make a bigger comeback. That's because it will be like having your own mobile app which is big.

 

[JoelR]

Are traditional forum platforms (vBulletin, XenForo, phpBB) outdated compared to modern community tools like Discord, Slack, and Reddit?

What do forums offer that these newer platforms can’t? Are they still better for long-term communities?

Are younger users avoiding traditional forums because they’re “too old-school” or hard to navigate?

Could forum software developers innovate more to compete, or is it already too late?

Has the rise of real-time communication killed the need for slower, threaded discussions?

What’s your prediction? Can forums adapt and thrive in the next 5-10 years, or will they become a niche tool?

I would argue that the traditional forum developers have too much legacy; they can make incremental changes, but they won't make transformational changes. They have clients from 20 years ago.

Where you see the biggest leaps are in the newer platforms like Circle, Kajabi, Mighty making membership communities, e-learning communities, advocate marketing communities, audience or ideation communities, etc.

 

[AWS]

I would argue that the traditional forum developers have too much legacy; they can make incremental changes, but they won't make transformational changes. They have clients from 20 years ago.

That's a problem. If they don't change they will die. The group they target is getting smaller. At some point they will be gone. Some of that old group have already moved on knowing the software they use will never change. Sad really.

 

[Tracy]

If search worked better it might keep the younger crowd interested. Unfortunately, this goes back to UBB days too, search has been an afterthought. Not important to most devs.

Not so much "search" as easy content discovery.
I can give a very simple example for XF and the powerful custom fields it has.



These are all custom fields related to images from astrophotography that I have configured on my site. Many of them would be great to be able to do a filter/discovery based upon for comparisons. Something like filter based upon ASI533MC Pro in the Camera field and display all content using that.
But can you? Nope. Never mind that it's been suggested several years ago. And it's something that I have gigged XF developers about and Chris apparently had a tender spot about because on a certain site he mentioned that they did improve the search. Sadly... it really only applies to mySQL searches and gives pretty much what I've already had with ES and the ES essentials add-on for about 2 years now. I decided to not bring that small fact to his attention.