COMPARISON OF INTERNET FORUM SOFTWARE

This is a comparison of the features of various Internet forum packages.

Contents

Subarticles

Feature explanation

Flat vs. threaded

User-selectable themes

Calendar

Image attachments

Unread message tracking

External links

Subarticles

★ Comparison of forums written in ASP and ASP.NET

★ Comparison of forums written in PHP

★ Comparison of forums written in other languages
Note: These comparisons do not include remotely hosted services (such as Conforums, Hyperboards, Proboards, and Suddenlaunch) which use their own proprietary software, rather than offering a package for download which webmasters can host by themselves.

Feature explanation

Below is a brief explanation for each of the features compared in the subarticles. For a forum to qualify for a feature, the functionality must be available out of the box, not as an add-on, plugin, etc.

Flat vs. threaded

★ A 'flat' forum is one where each message is added onto the end of the discussion, with no set relation to any prior messages (other than being on the same discussion topic — except in case of Off-Topic posting).

★ A 'threaded' forum is one where each message must be specified when replying to a previous message, allowing multiple discussion threads to evolve from a single initial discussion item.
Forums can either support one or the other of these methods, or both.

User-selectable themes

Most forums provide an option for the forum owner to customise the look and feel. Some forums also allow the administrator to create multiple styles or themes, and allow the user to choose which one they wish to view.
Themes may simply be a different set of colours and graphics, or they may involve a different layout to the forum, such as one optimised for small-screen devices.

Calendar

Some forums provide calendar functionality for storing events and appointments, either per-user or as a forum-wide shared calendar.

Image attachments

Most forums provide the option for a user to upload an image along with a message posting. This is usually accompanied by a space limit (eg: 1MB per user) to prevent users from filling up the forum host's webspace. Some forums also allow other types of file to be uploaded.
One major usability issue is whether images can be uploaded to a forum and displayed inline in message postings easily (or at all). The presence of "image attachment uploading" does not imply that in-message display of images within the flow of message text is possible (or if possible, easy to achieve).

Unread message tracking

Unread message tracking refers to the way that is used by forum software to track and display messages that have not yet been read by the current user. This can be one of the following:

★ 'Session' — when a user's session starts, this method relies on user "last visit time" to display all messages created since that date as unread. Everything that was posted before "last visit time" is considered "read" regardless of whether user has actually seen it or not. Until user session expires this method properly tracks read/unread in the scope of messages that were selected as "unread" when user session started. This method is broadly used, due to the simplicity and speed benefits of only storing and checking against a single database value.

★ 'Full' — forum software which properly tracks what messages that have been read or unread by each user, regardless of user session expiration. Some forum software also allows the user to 'mark as unread', so that they can come back to a message later.

External links

★ Wikibooks article

★ AdminFusion

★ ForumMatrix

★ Forum-Software.org

★ OpenSourceCMS