Free Forum script advice?

Hi

I'm looking for a nice forum script for an upcoming project. I have vacuumed the web for advices, security, etc. I've found several solutions but one stands out, and that is NodeBB. It looks nice and I can run it from a small KVM instance.

Have someone here tried NodeBB? If yes, what distribution did you install it on? Do you have experience with other free forum solutions, which are secure and maintained? I know that there is a new phpBB available, but I hesitate because of the fact, that phpBB does not have the best reputation and that it has been compromised allot during the years, I might be wrong, but that is my impression. At one point I ran a forum on Phorum, but it was too plain and did not live up to my expectations.

Advice please? Thank you in advance.

I have been running a number of phpBB-forums for over 8+ years now without any 'being compromised' issues.
Spammers, yes there have been a few occassionally, but they have them as well on the paid forums.
With some good questions during the registration you can weed out the 99% of the fake members upfront.

Thank you for your reply. Are you now using phpBB 3.1.2? Yes, I made two or three phpBB installs during the years, and I would like to try it again, just not sure if I can keep up with maintenance with all the bots out there, but if you can rule out 99% up-front, then I'm willing to try yet another install. It's nice that it is PHP based, It's familiar. Thank you so very much, appreciate it.

Did you by any chance harden phpBB? Maybe something like this: https://www.hostknox.com/tutorials/phpbb3/security

?

I will take the plunge and use phpBB for the forum. Just trying to prepare and use best-practice.

Thank you for the advice.

I haven't done any hardening on the phpbb-forums. I recently updated one of the forums to the most current one, the others are still a few versions behind.
Since I've been running my own server I've disabled dangerous php-functions, but never had any issues before either.

Just once in a couple of weeks orso I get a succesful fake-user registration on one forum that reposts a copy of an older post on the forum.
I usually spot these fairly quick and delete the user with posts all together. Other than that I have hardly any maintainance on my forums.

The phpBB-forums have become much better since you can have new users fill out a self-made question during registration. This really seems to pretty much take care of the bot-registrations.

Sounds good, I will check it out. I will set confirmation on the registration, so that it will not be open to bots and fools. Thank you again.

If you are looking for free forum script then you may end your search at phpBB. phpBB is one of the most popular free forum script. There are plenty of phpBB lover’s community which can provide you lot of help, resources, mod, templates etc.

Yeah, I hear. I will try phpBB. Thank you

You can also have a look at SMF (Simple Machines Forum), it's also free and at the moment the biggest community. MyBB is also very nice free forum software.

I like SMF for a free platform. All the paid forums support importing it.

I'd like to try http://www.discourse.org/

It appears to have some real capabilities.

Quicksilver Forums - free.
This is a PHP forum script that uses a MySQL database. Features include the ability to format posts using BB code, add attachments to posts, embed images in posts, send private messages (PM), get RSS feeds on posts, insert polls, etc. Administrative facilities include a variety of spam protection mechanisms, such as to require (if you wish) validation by email on registration and adding "nofollow" to links, banning members as well as IP addresses, censor inappropriate words, restrict access to different areas of the forum, restrict who can start new topics (etc), move, split, pin and lock topics, customisation ("customization" in US English) of the forum "skins", install your own emoticons and post icons, award special titles to members, backup and restore the forum, etc.

@r3chn3r: Discourse is not free so is not what FAF asked.

@kaufenpreis: Quicksilver is very unknown. Their last update was in 2013 (on sourceforge with some 1.5 version) and on their own forums on the pages "community" and "support" they will exit with several erros and a "Quicksilver Forums has exited with an error", and the download section still contains a 2008 1.4 version.
So I guess it's not that stable and trustworthy yet or anymore.

Thx for your answers. Just want to give an update:

Tried phpBB and it's fine, good old fine, then I made some more research and stumbled on Vanilla, which looks more "modern" in it's approach, but after reading up on the "vs" etc., I tried Discourse, which I'm now setting up. It's free btw, the selfish OpenSource version that is. Like @r3chn3r suggested, I found it on the net though, after reading allot. I choose to build an Ubuntu 14.04.2 KVM server and install Discourse in a Docker. Looks nice, runs nice and light, easy to configure, and it's very fresh. Don't know if I will continue with it, but right now it is appealing to say at least. I like the integration possibilities and the way it works. Admin is nice and logical. The documentation and the community is also a huge asset. Did I say it's easy to manage? One-line update from Git, etc. I will tingle around with it and see if I can make some good use of it.

Thank you for your suggestions.

I think that phpBB is the best open source. You could try myBB or SMF too.

Yes I've been contemplating on phpBB the last few days now. Discourse is pretty, but it can be a little confusing when it's build on rails and running in a docker on nginx, but nevertheless, it is an interesting project. I will need to think about it for a few days and try to decide in what way to go. For now it stands between phpBB, Vanilla and maybe Discourse. PHP is familiar so that is comfortable. I will checkout myBB too, but phpBB is recognizable for many users, which does not have to change their paradigm to use it. Sometimes an "old" traditional looking forum is the best. Thx for you answer.

Check Out this list

There are many opensource forum scripts now so you will no worry about them. But the problem is that you will also use that same outdated crap UI forum scripts. I will recommend NodeBB, EsoTalk, Etc. Check out this list of some modern forum Software

At first... check the date, I'm sure that since march FAF has already found something.

For others that might stumble upon this thread...

that phpBB does not have the best reputation and that it has been compromised allot during the years, I might be wrong, but that is my impression.

Click to expand...

You're indeed mistaken. I've been running and administering various forums over 15 years now including payed forums and I can safely say that *every* forum software, even payed ones, have had their security breaches.
The important thing is how fast things are fixed.

I'm not familiar with NodeBB and Esotalk, but the best free forums at the moment are both phpBB and SMF.
The argumention is mostly that security issues (if any) are fastly fixed and both have a great community support forum.
Next to that, both phpBB and SMF has fairly good working conversion scripts, which unfortunately MyBB lacks as I experienced when converting from vBulletin. The MyBB convertor did not work correctly and I'm still waiting for an answer to my question about the error on the support forum. So support is crap too.

So I would advise phpBB or SMF. Widely used, good support.
If you want payed software, my advise would be Xenforo, but there are also others.