These aren't particularly official monikers, but it's useful to have a name to discuss things with.
There are basically two types of forums, these days. Maybe more.
The traditional ones tend to be deeply rooted in the classic traditional stack. MySQL, PHP, Linux (well, everyone uses Linux), etc.
They also tend to have fairly customisable themes, have a large array of themes, etc. but they tend to lag behind technologically by a decade or more. This means that while they're great for branding and what-not to distinguish yourself from other sites, they tend to be a bit behind in various modern necessities.
They also tend to have a far more mature ecosystem, for instance, they tend to have full converter suites for you to jump between any major traditional software without too much pain, but systems like Discourse and NodeBB are still struggling with importing sites for anything but vB, XenForo and phpBB which means that conversions may involve data loss or unnecessary complexity.
Quite a number of big boards with many, many millions of posts in-fact have opted just to archive their old forums and start afresh with Discourse. It's usually best to start with a new site than to try to switch to it later.
Examples: XenForo, MyBB, phpBB.
The new age ones try to be on the boundaries, always trying to push the limits of what is possible and try to go where no forums have gone before. And ultimately, they want to make forums great again. However, they can be so "brilliant" that their interfaces wind up being so alien that it drives people away, although it's usually with good intentions to make them far more usable.
One thing they do is they cut down the times for many interactions to essentially nothing by bypassing the server in a lot of situations and they simplify the workflow by avoiding a load of extra clicks to do the simplest tasks and remove a lot of superfluous information which people feel comfortable wish as they've always been there, but which overload users with useless information.
This makes it nearly impossible for traditional software to compete with them in usability and it's futile to try. The new age software will always win out over a traditional one, assuming that users can get over the alien form factors.
Examples: NodeBB, Discourse.
NodeBB is probably actually the most advanced one as far as theming is concerned.
As for Discourse, I don't think I have ever, ever seen a properly customised installation, only Frankenstein hack-jobs, it seems to focus a lot more on technology instead.
New age ones also focus more on the current generation more by prioritising shorter posts more than longer ones, although they can do both perfectly fine. They also live functionality, so when someone makes a post, edits a post, etc. then it will pop-up instantly on the screens of whoever is currently viewing the topics, one of the technological aspects.
They originally focussed on infinite scrolling more than classical pagination as-well, but due to popular demand, NodeBB opted to give admins the option of what they want. Discourse has remained stubborn about it's choice however only allowing infinite scrolling.
Discourse also uses Ember which has historically proven to be particularly slow on mobile, although they seem to have made recent strides towards improving that.
Many large businesses like the Bank of New Zealand, as-well as the open source industry which basically props up the programming industry use Discourse as their default choice and would likely never use anything else as they see competitors like XenForo to be archaic and obsolete.
In fact, due to historical constraints on VPS pricing, a good portion of Discourse's sites are probably large ones rather than small ones making it far less popular than it actually is and despite that, it seems to be making inroads in overall market-share.
When I hanged around MyBB a lot more, every now you would see someone saying that that they were switching NodeBB and never came back.
New age software also tend to use modern technology stacks like Django (Python), Node.js (JavaScript), Rails (Ruby), etc. which are infinitely more secure than PHP where there is a major security incident every month and developers live in constant paranoia about whether "they're next" and whether they've missed yet another in an endless stream of security bulletin.
In contrast, the biggest security fuss with Discourse was an administrator (not the Discourse Team) who linked their account to a third party which inadvertently got compromised. And even then, the intruder couldn't steal the database until they created a phishing email to an administrator via the control panel who fell for it.
Unfortunately, due to Discourse's weak theming, it faces issues winning over the traditionalists. I won't hold my breath about them really improving this any-time soon when they haven't done much in six years other than slapping down a night mode.
For Gosora, I try to go for a hybrid approach by trying to make something that is technologically advanced, but also tries not to go too far into the sky into something too arcane and strange. I'm also trying to make a somewhat flexible system, but we'll see how it goes.
There is probably more to cover, but this is just off the top of my head!
There are basically two types of forums, these days. Maybe more.
The traditional ones tend to be deeply rooted in the classic traditional stack. MySQL, PHP, Linux (well, everyone uses Linux), etc.
They also tend to have fairly customisable themes, have a large array of themes, etc. but they tend to lag behind technologically by a decade or more. This means that while they're great for branding and what-not to distinguish yourself from other sites, they tend to be a bit behind in various modern necessities.
They also tend to have a far more mature ecosystem, for instance, they tend to have full converter suites for you to jump between any major traditional software without too much pain, but systems like Discourse and NodeBB are still struggling with importing sites for anything but vB, XenForo and phpBB which means that conversions may involve data loss or unnecessary complexity.
Quite a number of big boards with many, many millions of posts in-fact have opted just to archive their old forums and start afresh with Discourse. It's usually best to start with a new site than to try to switch to it later.
Examples: XenForo, MyBB, phpBB.
The new age ones try to be on the boundaries, always trying to push the limits of what is possible and try to go where no forums have gone before. And ultimately, they want to make forums great again. However, they can be so "brilliant" that their interfaces wind up being so alien that it drives people away, although it's usually with good intentions to make them far more usable.
One thing they do is they cut down the times for many interactions to essentially nothing by bypassing the server in a lot of situations and they simplify the workflow by avoiding a load of extra clicks to do the simplest tasks and remove a lot of superfluous information which people feel comfortable wish as they've always been there, but which overload users with useless information.
This makes it nearly impossible for traditional software to compete with them in usability and it's futile to try. The new age software will always win out over a traditional one, assuming that users can get over the alien form factors.
Examples: NodeBB, Discourse.
NodeBB is probably actually the most advanced one as far as theming is concerned.
As for Discourse, I don't think I have ever, ever seen a properly customised installation, only Frankenstein hack-jobs, it seems to focus a lot more on technology instead.
New age ones also focus more on the current generation more by prioritising shorter posts more than longer ones, although they can do both perfectly fine. They also live functionality, so when someone makes a post, edits a post, etc. then it will pop-up instantly on the screens of whoever is currently viewing the topics, one of the technological aspects.
They originally focussed on infinite scrolling more than classical pagination as-well, but due to popular demand, NodeBB opted to give admins the option of what they want. Discourse has remained stubborn about it's choice however only allowing infinite scrolling.
Discourse also uses Ember which has historically proven to be particularly slow on mobile, although they seem to have made recent strides towards improving that.
Many large businesses like the Bank of New Zealand, as-well as the open source industry which basically props up the programming industry use Discourse as their default choice and would likely never use anything else as they see competitors like XenForo to be archaic and obsolete.
In fact, due to historical constraints on VPS pricing, a good portion of Discourse's sites are probably large ones rather than small ones making it far less popular than it actually is and despite that, it seems to be making inroads in overall market-share.
When I hanged around MyBB a lot more, every now you would see someone saying that that they were switching NodeBB and never came back.
New age software also tend to use modern technology stacks like Django (Python), Node.js (JavaScript), Rails (Ruby), etc. which are infinitely more secure than PHP where there is a major security incident every month and developers live in constant paranoia about whether "they're next" and whether they've missed yet another in an endless stream of security bulletin.
In contrast, the biggest security fuss with Discourse was an administrator (not the Discourse Team) who linked their account to a third party which inadvertently got compromised. And even then, the intruder couldn't steal the database until they created a phishing email to an administrator via the control panel who fell for it.
Unfortunately, due to Discourse's weak theming, it faces issues winning over the traditionalists. I won't hold my breath about them really improving this any-time soon when they haven't done much in six years other than slapping down a night mode.
For Gosora, I try to go for a hybrid approach by trying to make something that is technologically advanced, but also tries not to go too far into the sky into something too arcane and strange. I'm also trying to make a somewhat flexible system, but we'll see how it goes.
There is probably more to cover, but this is just off the top of my head!
