ForumSoftware

From PHP London wiki

David Heath was looking for a forum system and asked for suggestions. He gave the following criteria which he was looking for in a forum system(roughly in order of priority):

1. well written code, ideally with automated tests
2. integration points to allow single sign on
3. secure, with a serious approach to security amongst the developers
4. core functionality - moderation, sticky posts, email integration (at least for notifications)
5. simplicity - ie. I'd prefer focussed functionality over feature richness
6. fairly efficient/lightweight
7. skinnable to some extent

The table below summarises the responses of PHP london members.

Package Name	License	Self description	No of recommendations	Other comments
Vanilla (Lussumo) http://getvanilla.com/	GPL	Vanilla is an open-source, standards-compliant, multi-lingual, fully extensible discussion forum for the web. Anyone who has web-space that meets the requirements can download and use Vanilla for free!	2	"it seems to be one of the only sane, well written ones out there." "I quite agree"
VBulletin http://www.vbulletin.com/	Commercial	vBulletin is a professional, affordable community forum solution. Thousands of clients, including many industry leading blue chip companies, have chosen vBulletin - It's the ideal choice for any size of community.	1	"the vbulletin guys are PHPLondon regulars."
FUDForum http://fudforum.org/		FUDforum is a highly customizable forum package, with a large feature set. The easy to use administration control panel allows the administrator to easily configure and control the many features available. The forum also includes an interactive help package, which helps to familiarize users with the full potential of FUDforum.	1	"FUDForum is good. It's written by Ilia Ashenetsky (probably spelt wrong) who works on PHP itself quite a bit. It's also one of the more secure BBS systems available."
phpBB http://www.phpbb.com/		Since its creation in 2000, phpBB™ has become the most widely used Open Source forum solution. Like its predecessors, phpBB™ 3.0 “Olympus” has an easy to use administration panel and a user friendly installation process, which allows you to have a forum set up in minutes.	1	"Still like phpBB myself. I'm probably going to get shot down for saying that, and I don't even know if it meets all of your criteria, but it is mature and one of the best 'front-end' forum experiences I've had."
PunBB http://punbb.org/	GPL	PunBB is a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board. It is released under the GNU General Public License.	4	"i like PunBB because it's clean and simple. not sure how secure and easy to extend it is though." Another member noted that it's used by facebook http://forum.developers.facebook.com/index.php. A third member noted: "I have extended punBB and phpBB in the past. PunBB has a much cleaner codebase and is easier to work with in my opinion. However there are quite a lot of cool phpBB mods available." A fourth member had also previously implemented PunBB "I have also implemented punBB in the past, because it was clean and simple, and found it easy to work with. I think someone recommended it as more secure as it is not the most popular and therefore under the radar."