Forum Software Reviewed

This is the full-length version of the freeware category review, Best Free Website Forum Software

Forum applications are server programs that create discussion-based websites. Many are free or open-source PHP codebase applications that use a MySQL database. They are small but complex webapps that generally come in at under 4MB for the zipped installer file. A 'forum' is the word we commonly use, though bulletin board was more popular at one time; and a forum now is usually a container for several different 'boards', which are the actual main-topic start pages.

Forums, like most PHP - MySQL server applications, are easy to install remotely via FTP and browser. They can be managed by browser, and can usually be expanded and upgraded by the use of plugins. There are many similarities with other server-based website programs, such as the way they are browser-managed, the backend admin, the template-based layout, and the extension process.

The vast majority of server software like this - webapps such as forums, wikis, blogs and many CMS - are designed to run on a LAMP server. Therefore, unless PHP and MySQL have been installed on a Windows server (also called a Microsoft or IIS server), it cannot run these common applications, but will need an ASP alternative.

Forums can be installed in one of three ways:

As a standalone application
The forum itself is the website. Or, it is co-installed with another webapp such as a CMS or blog, so that both coexist separately on the site. The website will then have two (or more) sections.

As a bridged application
If you have another dynamic script on your server, such as a CMS, then it may be possible to bridge the two. This means to utilise a middleware program that sits between the two and links them. The advantages here are that because the same database is used, there will be a single sign-on since the membership list is common; and there may also be some commonality with templates and plugins.

As a CMS plugin
Some forums are plugins for a CMS. They cannot exist outside of the parent application. This works well up to a certain point, as a forum puts a heavier load on a server than most other types of application. There can be some big advantages though: the forum will benefit from the massive superiority in SEO, plugins, templates and on-page assets that all modern CMS have over current forum solutions. A plugin forum is part of the CMS, so it gets all the benefits. However, plugin forums may be somewhat limited compared to the real thing.

The criteria we could use to judge forums might include appearance and style; visitor usability; admin usability; features and functions; ACL; SEO; robustness and reliability; and several other areas, since this type of server application generates a complex dynamic website featuring extended visitor interaction.

In use, a visitor arrives at the forum, which will list the various boards; they can choose a board to explore; they will then see a list of topics posted by other visitors; and they can then click on one to view the chain of messages on that topic, or start their own thread (a new topic). A simple description that perhaps masks some complicated functionality.

It's easy to compare these forum applications with other dynamic website generating software such as CMS (content management systems). That's because they often have a similar foundation - a text-based code and a MySQL database - and are installed and managed in the same way. However, there are massive differences in how CMS and forum software treats commercial requirements, modern web application advances, and admin usability issues. CMS programs, in general, are light years ahead of forum programs in these areas. It's hard to say why this situation exists; but it is a fact that with forums, you will generally find that SEO, on-page assets and even usability for the site owner are way back in the Stone Age compared to the top CMS applications.

SMF
SMF is my top tip in freeware forums. That doesn't mean it's problem-free, but it does its job, all round, better than any other I've tried.

The Simple Machines Forum is the benchmark for these programs because it is widely known and appreciated; it is one of the most frequently installed; and most forum users will be familiar with it. It's easy to install remotely via FTP and browser. The usual MySQL database parameters need to be input - username, password etc - and the install is smooth and quick.

To install the software it is FTP'd up to the server, and from there on the install is run from your browser. This is the normal procedure for modern dynamic website server applications. Here, the installation proceeds smoothly and all is as expected.

Documentation is not a strong point, in common with most open-source projects of course. However, there are so few potential problems with SMF that this isn't really a big negative. If in doubt, use the support forum :-)

All complex software needs a book or two, and/or some PDFs, to help you over the humps. The next stage down would be a comprehensive software manual in wiki form; and this can of course provide the foundation for a major PDF or book. The wiki solution is excellent for software manuals. And the next level down comes with some web page help files, which is what we have here. It's a poor solution in most respects, but better than nothing.

Templates of some kind are the basis for the page layout in all dynamic web applications; in this project they are called Themes. Three default ones are supplied as standard, and you can get up and running with one of these easily. If your requirements are not too onerous, you can modify the CSS and change out some graphics to get a new look. There are some very nice templates indeed out there in commercial template land, the Metalcore ones for example.

Unless you go the commercial route though, you'll find that SMF templates, in common with all other default and free forum templates I've seen, are severely deficient in modern web requirements: specifically, as regards on-page assets. The very least that any user would require now are additional optional menu positions; and of course module positions, Adsense positions, banner positions, and more are needed for your news, announcements, top pages, new content and so forth. A module is the usual word for a block of content displayed separately from the main page subject, and can include anything from an image fader to a news ticker.

Forums as a whole don't comply here for some unfathomable reason, and SMF is no different. Both simpler applications (like WordPress) and more complex applications (like any CMS) all have a wealth of on-page assets available now; and it's the sort of thing that adding in by PHP is both feasible and without major negatives - as everyone else has done it. Forum software authors are way behind the times here.

That situation is all the more strange because the plugin system as a whole, and the installation procedure in particular, is so very good in SMF. There is nothing any webapp developer could teach the SMF people about plugins - the entire system here is excellent. There is even a pre-install test run that tells you if a new plugin is likely to cause problems, and what those might be. The SMF plugin system scores 9 out of 10 - and we haven't given that mark to anyone else anywhere. Currently there are around 500 plugins available; not a vast number, but enough to enable some additional tasks (it takes around 2,000 before an application is notably well-supported in this area).

SEO (aka search engine optimizing) is the process of increasing website earnings by increasing traffic and improving the website. For non-commercial sites, traffic increases may be all that is aimed for. That process hinges on good search results, since 70% or more of site visitors will find the site via a search engine. Search engines, though, have to choose which sites to place at the top of their results - and those sites will get the traffic. You have to please the SEs or you're lost. SEO is a mix of technical and marketing factors, and the technical points include ensuring that search engines like your site code and content. For any modern website this aspect is critical, with very few exceptions - perhaps only websites that don't need or want any traffic, and large fashionable social-based sites that can afford to ignore search factors.

So a dynamic website engine needs to comply with search engine requirements - or be able to have improvements made via plugins, which is the popular route as the core applications are usually non-compliant in some respects. Therefore, when looking at software like this, we have to judge whether the core program is acceptable in this area; and whether shortfalls can be fixed by plugins; and then, if there are in fact plugins available for these jobs. Above all, it is vitally important to realise that search success is a prime requirement for web applications now - not something that can be left till last. Unfortunately it would be true to say that developers, as a whole, are the last group of people to have realised this.

The SEO situation here is not briliant, however. The core application is poor in this respect, and it's not much better with plugins installed. In any case there are only about 5 or 6 SEO-related plugins. This situation is common to all free forum programs so it's a universal problem. The authors don't seem to have caught on to the fact that it doesn't matter how good your website is, if there are no visitors it's not much use. Visitor traffic depends on success in the search engines; search success depends on SEO. And good SEO in a website application - assuming you chose one with good code - starts with short, flat, relevant URLs and unique per-page metadata.

In both these areas SMF is limited, though the URLs are at least acceptable. In fact the URLs created by the plugin we used are good - especially as they are created entirely within the application itself, and without using htaccess; though URL management is essentially nonexistent. This is the next stage up and involves the creation and allocation of per-page URLs.

The metadata is a different story. You can only have boilerplate meta and that's that. Unique per-page metadata is a cornerstone of search success, so the authors either don't know this or discount website traffic as unimportant.

The existence of session IDs is a nasty thing that arises in connection with forums. For some reason many forum programs use them, whereas most ecommerce software stopped using this awful device years ago. It is necessary to be able to identify a visitor moving from page to page around the site, for many reasons including login status, ecommerce checkouts, security, and so on. This is normally done now by a combination of a cookie and the user's IP. In the past, before anyone knew any better, ecommerce applications often used URL-based SIDs (session IDs), where the ID of the visitor is appended as a long string of figures at the end of the URL. Unfortunately, search engines hate these more than just about anything else, the reason being that SIDs can be used in cloaking, and are a good way to track and trap the spiders (or searchbots - the search engines' indexing bots). Using a SID, the spider can be tracked and lured into a 'spider trap', a maze of thousands of spam generated keyword-stuffed pages that visitors do not see, but that look genuine and important to a spider. Spiders can (and do) refuse to accept cookies, which perform the same identification function - but they can't refuse a SID as it's part of the page structure.

And of course there is also the fact that the URL may be different every time, which can make the site hard to index (ie hard for it to be included in search results).

The lesson is of course that if you want search success, lose the SIDs. SMF has a SID-based identity system for some visitors but does not apply it to spiders, which it attempts to identify by IP. This approach cannot succeed and is bound to fail; the only solution is to get rid of SIDs. If even the most complex ecommerce apps don't need them now, why on earth would a forum need SIDs? Unfortunately this visitor identification method is common to many OSS forums; and it is a symptom of the larger problem, that forum software authors are many years behind everyone else when it comes to SEO and accessibility issues. Websites need traffic for success, but this fact doesn't seem to enter into the equation for forum authors.

The admin usability rating is OK for SMF. It is limited by the use of the commonly-seen text-based (as against panel-based) backend management apparatus. This method is a limiting factor, and the admin system needs to be more streamlined and task-oriented.

There is only one glitch in the install and admin procedures worth mentioning; the common situation which all forums seem to suffer from, that there is no working board after installation. Trying to set up the first board, on a new forum program, by a new forum owner, will be the most difficult task faced in connection with forums. This seems common to all forums, and of course should be fixed. Usability is a dirty word unfortunately, so an issue like this isn't really a surprise.

For example, if you sit a couple of new users down and ask them to install SMF (or any forum) and get a board up and working, you'll find the install goes OK - with a bit of help and advice - but the working forum (board) question is a total impasse. On one forum we tried, they gave up after an hour with no result. Here, it's not quite so bad, but again the authors don't seem to realise that usability testing, even at the simplest and most basic level, has to be done or you will have no idea what the problems are. Of course, experienced forum sysadmins will be well aware of the first working board issue and how to fix it - but new users are a different matter.

ACL - Access Control Levels (or Lists) - refers to who can do what and where. This aspect is good on SMF, and is all that the vast majority of owners will need. It's not too difficult to set up boards with different access levels; moderators with varying privileges; user access controls; and so on. ACL isn't fully granular, but it doesn't need to be for 99% of owners. In any case, going further down this road can turn a nice application into a pig to use, and it really isn't worth it. Granular ACL always makes an application very much harder to use.

Visitors are well served on SMF. It's an attractive, logical and easily-used forum. Templates of course have a big role here, and there is a very large range to choose from. The first thing to strike a visitor who is used to modern CMS software is how simple and basic the forum is, at least when using default and other free templates - as most probably will. There is nothing on the page whatsoever apart from the stripped-down basic core application display: the boards and messages. No add-on menus, content displays, lists, adverts, links - no anything. This is in direct contrast to all other modern webapps. It makes for a clean but very basic and limited page view. We couldn't find any menu or module plugins in early '08, but they may be there now.

Usability is fine for experienced forum visitors, but not so good for newbies. This is of course a universal problem in any case. As an example, if you take an office worker who uses a PC and the Internet everyday in their work (and is therefore hardly a complete noob), but has never used a forum before; then ask them to post their first message - you will find they can't. They don't realise that you first need to register and login before the buttons to post a message are visible. This is something I see in usability testing all the time: software is written and maintained by experienced people, and they just cannot see the problems new users have. Very easy indeed to fix of course - simply  have a large menu link to a new user's help page. Only trouble is, forums are still a hundred years out of date and don't have additional menus you can add to the page...

In conclusion, the negatives are common to all forums, in my experience. It just seems as if the authors look at each other's work for tips, and they never take any cues from the rest of the web. All in all, though, this is a very smooth forum solution that deserves its tag as the benchmark in freeware forums. It looks simple, but does many complex things so smoothly it is deceptive. The good points are SMF's mature status and smoothness; its superb plugin system; the vast range of templates; its easy LAMP install; the attractive page
layout; the good ACL; and the good visitor experience.

The bad points are the Stone Age SEO and on-page assets; the tricky first board set-up; the occasional session IDs; and the all-too-common lack of proper documentation.

SMF is the top tip in freeware forums because it's an all-round good choice. There are other forums that do one or two jobs better, but this great all-rounder does the trick.

FireBoard for Joomla
Fireboard is an example of a CMS plugin forum. We include it because it is a genuine contender for the best free forum choice, even though it cannot exist outside of Joomla CMS. It would be entirely feasible to install the CMS just for this purpose, and not generate any other content pages. In this way, the forum would be the only content; and since the advantages over other forums in the areas of on-page assets, SEO, usability and a dozen others would be substantial, this is not such a strange idea. In any case, with the CMS potential, it is unlikely that the forum would remain as the sole website content for long. One thing forum owners desperately need is a way to include something - anything - that is additional to the barebones forum display; and Fireboard in Joomla might just be the answer to a prayer for them.

Installing it is simple and quick, since it is a plugin. The main application has already taken care of the database configuration and so on.

I have never found any documentation in any form. Luckily, it isn't really necessary apart from at one stage near the end of the installation.

Because Fireboard is part of Joomla, templates are a strong point - any Joomla one can be used; and that means the widest choice on the planet. You can even have a different template on each page, which points out the capability.

Since Fireboard is a plugin, the plugin question is a little more involved. Many of the CMS plugins will be working on the forum in some way - which is a very good thing. In fact, there is even a plugin with a plugin for Fireboard: the popular SEF URL component, sh404SEF, handles some specific tasks to do with URL management and metadata for Fireboard.

On the SEO question there is only one answer: the finest SEO of any forum solution by a long mile. There are many reasons for this, but it devolves to being a part of a CMS that - when properly managed of course - is superb in this area. If (and only if) Joomla is run by an expert, then the SEO potential is in the top class. It only falls down on full W3CAG support, but since only 0.1% of users are likely to know what that means, it's hardly an issue.

Admin usability isn't bad. It is similar in most ways to other forums with a text-based admin backend, and very familiar in all respects. There are even some useful configurations here that are missing from standalone forums.

There is only one big negative: the usual 'missing board' problem that afflicts all forums. In a perfect world, or even a sensible one, there would be a working Board (ie forum) after installation; and you would simply modify the parameters to suit your usage profile. Then, you could perhaps clone that, to create the next board. And the next.

Here, though, we have the perennial problem of no 'forums' in existence after the installation. Of course, you can load sample data - which naturally includes a working board - but that puts in tons and tons of useless junk that is always hard to remove. All we need is one, simple, working board. And here, in Fireboard, we have the hardest forum of all (barring phpBB3 perhaps) to actually get a board up and running in. Experienced forum admins will know the score here - you have to create a 'forum' first to act as a container for the 'boards' - but new admins will be flummoxed. This isn't helped by the total lack of documentation, and the poorly-translated help hints scattered around in lieu of docs, which have an interesting feel about them as if they are encrypted in some way. or perhaps an attempt at a new language - a cross between Esperanto and BB code.

ACL in Fireboard is basic but sufficiently capable. All the usual functions are available.

The visitor experience is good, and improved of course due to the availability of all the CMS on-page assets. In this respect Fireboard kicks all other forums into touch.

The conclusion is that Fireboard for Joomla is a remarkably good solution. At first, the idea of installing a CMS just to have a forum is a bit crazy, I guess. But when you look at all the individual issues, the initial worry fades away. You're left with a forum that has superb SEO and on-page assets such as menus and modules (content block displays), a choice of around 3,000 templates, a choice of additional content pages if you need them, and a dozen other pluses.

The negatives? Well, it may not be the best choice if you have very heavy traffic, as a forum loads a server up more than just about anything else. But this can be solved by load-balancing of course, and in theory, if you have good traffic, you have a good income, so multiple servers are possible. Although if the forum is the main site content anyway, this won't be an issue.

There is a possible security negative, in that sites that are attacked heavily will find an advantage in keeping the various website sections separate. Then a problem with any one part will be contained and firewalled: limited to just the database it was on. Forums are inherently more vulnerable to attack because they allow users to register; to write to the DB; to possibly include some code; and so forth. With the current webspam battles added to this, forums are a massive target for bots, so you cannot argue against security policy in keeping them separate. To be completely honest, this has always swayed my decison in the past, and where I thought it safer I installed the forum separately.

The missing board after installation is really annoying, as ever, and for new users it will be harder to fix than in some other forums. It's soon over and done with of course. It's hard to think of anything else much, though, in the way of negatives. The CSS could do with a touch up here and there - Fireboard has a slightly compact feel about it, as if designed for a narrow page - but that is easily done.

In the case of a blog, I would never use a plugin solution, only WordPress or an alternative; there are a bunch of reasons why this is a better solution. But in this case, a plugin forum doesn't seem to have much in the way of negatives at all. It only gets second place to SMF because it would be too far out to suggest it for the #1 spot...

phpBB3
The phpBB series is a very popular forum solution, perhaps even more so than SMF. The phpBB2 version has a big following and is well-supported. The new version, the 3.0 series, has the best ACL in forums, which is fully granular; but this results in major admin usability issues.

This new version of the software is not fully supported by the community yet, so as at March '08, it is not a good choice; there are few templates or plugins (but see more on the plugin situation later).

The install is very slick and professional, and is one of the best we have seen. Perhaps there may not be too much to go wrong of course, and every other server webapp does the same thing; but this example is particularly smooth.

The documentation, as is common, consists of web pages. At first it looks very well-presented; then you will find it is very light on detail, so that other sources of info will be required.

Templates are called 'Styles' in this application. The basic ones are fine - as per usual - but you'll want a pro one if you want to run anything other than a plain vanilla website. There are some excellent pro templates, like the Morpheus series. Unless you use something like this, you're stuck (as usual in forums) with an extremely basic site. There were some anomalies with phpBB3 templates we tried, in one version of Internet Explorer, so it would be advisable to check the view from different browsers after your forum is installed.  The templates are changed via FTP, which is an old-fashioned and clunky way to do this now.

There are no plugins in phpBB3 - just code hacks that you paste into the core files. If you want to move forward you'll need to get used to hacking the files. These code hacks are called 'Mods' in phpBB3. I can't think of any other modern webapp where this applies; and it is so unbelievable, I don't really know how to write anything in this area politely. It's like a trip back to 1995.

In the SEO area, we find the usual problems with SIDs, poor URLs, and boilerplate metadata; but the situation is worse than for SMF. And, of course, since there are no plugins, the future doesn't look too bright, as plugins are the quick way to fix any issue in a dynamic web application. It's probably fair to say that phpBB3 has among the worst SEO of any server software I've seen within the last few years, at the test date in early '08.

The admin backend looks OK on first inspection, though of course it has the usual text-based layout. Unfortunately, it has major usability issues that mean it is hard to use, although that is understating the case a little. The problems mostly occur because of the way everything seems to derive from some kind of complex ACL setting.

ACL factors: access control in phpBB3 is the best in any forum we tested. The ACL is fully granular and will be all that is ever needed, even if you wanted the finest detail of control. But this comes at a very high price: all admin settings sem to be related to the ACL in some way, and you can't adjust anything without jumping through a lot of hoops. Administration on this forum is strictly for experienced sysadmins of a very patient disposition.

For visitors, this is a fine and well-developed forum; phpBB3 is sophisticated and mature. There is a question about some templates in some browsers.

Verdict: I had hoped this forum would present a strong challenge to SMF, so that there would be some sort of choice. It showed every sign of being a credible challenger, from the outside at any rate. It turned out, though, that phpBB3 had so many negatives there was no way it could present any sort of challenge.

This forum is not well supported by the community at present; for example, the template page at the central site was completely empty when we looked, compared to hundreds for the phpBB2 series and more being added all the time. In fact it looks as if the community effort is still centred around phpBB2.

The excellent ACL has led, here, to very difficult backend admin. Combine this with very poor SEO, and having to hack the files to add functionality, and this forum doesn't look like a good choice. Whoever set up the installation routine certainly knew what they were doing; ditto for whoever laid out the web page help files (although there's little enough in there as yet); but the rest of the team let the side down. I'd like to be able to be kinder, but they just didn't give me any room to do that. The big question has to be why they started a new program series that is incompatible with the old one in every way, but seems to be 90s-level in many important respects.

 
Website forum software specifications:

SMF - Simple Machines Forum
website: www.simplemachines.org
download: http://download.simplemachines.org
author: SMF project
version reviewed: SMF v1.1.4
zip installer size: 2.13MB
license: free, customised open-source version
type: PHP - MySQL
server type: LAMP; servers with PHP and MySQL
choice of templates: 100's
number of plugins (estimate): 500
SEF URL solution tested: PrettyURLs

Fireboard for Joomla
website: www.bestofjoomla.com
download: http://www.bestofjoomla.com/content/blogsection/3/9/
author: Best ofJoomla team
version reviewed: Fireboard 1.0.4
zip installer size: 0.8MB
license: free
type: plugin for CMS; PHP - MySQL
additional software required: Joomla CMS - www.joomla.org
 

phpBB3
website: www.phpbb.com
download link: http://www.phpbb.com/downloads/
author: phpBB project
version reviewed: phpBB3
zip installer size: 2.14MB
license: free, GNU
type: PHP - MySQL
servers supported: LAMP; servers with PHP and MySQL
choice of templates: few
number of plugins (estimate): none 
     ('mods' consist of raw code hacks, there is no plugin system)