This is just a little topic going over the various forum software and their pros and cons as this is likely a very common thought when picking out a software. I'll leave out Gosora here for now lol
- MyBB. - A fairly flexible software which you can install just about anywhere. It has a number of plugins and themes and is said to be one of the more secure ones, although it is behind on certain modern standards which would make it more so, as-well as lacking a few modern niceties like likes and alerts by default (you can get them with a plugin).
- phpBB - An ancient beast. Once the pinnacle of insecurity with sites getting hacked left and right. It could be somewhat considered... passable now, however it does have a much weaker security culture than other players and security improvements frequently questioned. It has a vast library of plugins and themes.
- SMF - It was once fairly popular, but they seem to have fallen into the trap of perpetual development.
- IPB - An ancient beast. It is the most advanced of the paid proprietary forum software, however it has a hefty price-tag to match. As-well as a forum, it also has a suite (IPS / Invision Community) containing several features like blogs, custom pages, ecommerce, etc. to cater to many business needs. It is also much more mature than it's other paid cousins like XenForo and often has features long before they do.
- vBulletin - The #1 forum software. Although, this is largely due to legacy sites which never upgrade or migrate. It was once the most advanced forum software and like IPS, it has a suite of it's own, although it's aged fairly badly.
- Discuz - China's vBulletin. The other #1 forum software. Like vBulletin, it has aged fairly badly, but it's said to command a similar market-share in China. It is proprietary and doesn't support use outside of China.
- XenForo - It is said to have a market-share near to that of bbPress. It is a paid proprietary software which tries to balance price with functionality and has a vibrant community of plugins and themes, for the right price.
- bbPress - The real #1 forum software. A plugin for Wordpress which allows you to setup a simple site. It lacks many of the features available in more dedicated software and is very inflexible.
- Discourse - A next generation forum software which contains many modern technologies like true live topics, true live alerts and true live topic lists. It's greatest weakness would have to be how difficult it is to customise with with many Discourse sites looking extremely similar. It is also written in Rails, so one will have to use slightly less conventional hosting for it.
- NodeBB - Discourse's biggest competitor. It is also live and has a chat-like interface instead of private topics for private messaging. Unlike Discourse which only has infinite scrolling for pages, it also allows administrators to pick and choose between that and more classical pagination. It is far easier to theme than Discourse, however the plugin and theme ecosystem is fairly small.
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