long post about forum software (rambling)
looking through forum (and adjascent) software (awesome-selfhosted on github) and like.. (mind you i don't know shit about prog languages)simple machines forum - this was the most sympathetic when i first looked through the list (cause of docs and features), last updated few months back
phpbb - has spambot issues from what i know, might not be exclusive to it, it is very popular, so probably has the most extensions? does not necessarily mean quality ones
mybb - idk if i had any specific issues with it? jellyfin forum uses it iirc.
flarum - written in php like above 3, yet still uses js load more instead of pagination, which can easily fuck your position while browsing - no thanks lol
discourse - i'm not sure i like the design, for some purposes it can work imo (although it feels like the SUV of news aggregation/forum hybrids). but what i definitely hate once again is the js-based page loading, forums should not be endless timelines imo
asmbb - seems like a cool project, but the project's forum itself seems unmoderated (transphobia from 2 months ago, dev was online 4 months ago) and dev also shared bad political takes, which is... not very promising.
kbin - i know this is not a forum, but it kind of is adjascent imo? honestly, it's a decent option for what it is, it has fedi connectivity (which... might not work that well? idk), tho the UI is still a bit overwhelming, imo the microblogging feature being there is weird
lemmy - seems decent, tho default frontend is also js overkill, which is not great, even if it has pagination
misago - same js stuff
nodebb - somehow seems worse than discourse?
orange forum - woah this was written in go, i have had good exper- oh last update in 2021 and demo site is down?
thredded - website dead lmao
idk, i'd love to set up something, but idk what exactly, and most of these being a mess in my eyes does not help! i guess what i'd want is:
- a community to which i can invite friends easily
- software that's well documented and easy to setup (i guess this is where php shines tbf)
- 2FA would be nice, but probably not happening on most
- responsive and accessible design
- text-focused frontend
- ability to use rss bots
- maybe roles for accessing specific sections (basically, a semi-decent permission system)
- some form of fedi oauth for linking accounts would be nice, but probably happening even less than 2FA
i know this is kind of a mix of news aggregation and forums lol, but still. and i still don't know which direction i'd rather head in. news aggregators are probably easier to create and as such there are probably more out there that don't suck (e. g. lobsters software, postmill). but they also lack many features of full forums so..
am i asking for suggestions? not really, am just rambling, tho if anyone has experiences, i'd love to hear about those, these are just my "skimmed through project pages" takes and i am also far from a hosting expert lmao.