For the most advanced forums

[Blazing Teens]

Hi,
Linux Mint Forums one of my favourite websites, and it is one of the most interactive forums, everyday new topics and replys added and good support for linux mint.
I suggest converting Linux Mint Forums from phpbb to another open source forums.
There are four good forums, easy to moderate and support multiple languages.

1.PunBB


PunBB is a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board. It is released under the GNU General Public License. Its primary goals are to be faster, smaller and less graphically intensive as compared to other discussion boards. PunBB has fewer features than many other discussion boards, but is generally faster and outputs smaller, semantically correct XHTML-compliant pages.

2.[url=www.http://fluxbb.org]FluxBB[/url]


FluxBB is an open source forum application released under the GNU General Public Licence. It is free to download and use and will remain so. FluxBB was conceived and designed to be fast and light with less of the "not so essential" features that some of the other forums have whilst not sacrificing essential functionality or usability.
FluxBB is a fork of PunBB, which was created by Rickard Andersson. In 2007 PunBB was sold to a commercial company. Development continued under the direction of Rickard Andersson until April 2008. At that time Rickard Andersson announced he would be ceasing his active involvement with the project.
In light of the changed circumstances the remaining members of the development team decided they needed to exert more control over the direction of the project which meant the only option was to fork the project; hence FluxBB.

3.MyBB


Not XMB, not DevBB, but MyBB
MyBB's roots lie in the discussion boards XMB and DevBB
Years ago, Chris Boulton, web34rk and b0ndman started developing XMB. After some time, web34rk and b0ndman left the team and Chris became lead developer of a team with two other developers. Over time, staff shifted again and several developers didn't like the way things were heading. Together, they forked XMB and created DevBB. DevBB was the predecessor to MyBB, a temporary solution for people to use whilst MyBB was being developed. Development teams changed frequently, but MyBB is still here with Chris Boulton as product manager since 2002.

4.SMF


This release marks the transition of SMF 2.0 into the current stable release of SMF, as well as the rebirth of the SMF project as open source software, as it was meant from the start.
As of now, SMF is licensed under the BSD License.

[DrHu]

I think that has to be mostly up-to the developers and forum moderators, as they are likely to have the most requirements for ease of use (for their purposes)
--as long as the forums work for posting messages and are reasonably fast in operation, I have no complaints, except for the quorum search engine: however, I usually find a general Internet search is just as good as a forum (internal) search..

[Blazing Teens]

I think that has to be mostly up-to the developers and forum moderators, as they are likely to have the most requirements for ease of use (for their purposes)
--as long as the forums work for posting messages and are reasonably fast in operation, I have no complaints, except for the quorum search engine: however, I usually find a general Internet search is just as good as a forum (internal) search..

My suggestion is for making Linux Mint Forums better. I don't prefer phpbb because it doesn't use modern technology features.
In VB forums you can post topics and replys like any word proccessing application.

[zacklyke]

I'm curious as to what necessary features this forum is lacking.

[ThistleWeb]

It is on MySQL4 right now, so at some point Clem & co are going to have to upgrade it. I guess they'd discuss the pros and cons of staying with PHPBB or converting to something else at that time. For now, the forum works fine for what it's supposed to do, but I too would like to hear what's missing.

My thinking is that it seems similar to the argument that "everyone needs Microsoft Office", where maybe 95% of those users only use a handful of basic features found in every word processor. The MS Office advocates never list the features they think everyone needs and uses, and are only found in Microsoft Office. The comparison isn't meant to derail, just making a point that for most users, any of the forum software would work just fine. By starting this thread, you presumably know what's missing that we need.

[AlbertP]

I think we should keep using phpBB as long as we don't have any problem with it. Maybe we could re-style it but as long as there's nothing missing or broken, there's no need to migrate all stuff to another forum (and migrating, if possible at all, is not quite easy).

[Roken]

I'm curious as to what necessary features this forum is lacking.

The inability to view new posts without going back via the board index is the most annoying missing feature to me.

[rich_roast]

Granted; I've noticed that. Tabbed browsing means my hair stays in my head, thankfully.

[R0BW]

I'm curious as to what necessary features this forum is lacking.

The inability to view new posts without going back via the board index is the most annoying missing feature to me.

It would be relatively straightforward to add the 'view new posts' and 'view active topics links' to the forum header and footer. This could be done without any upgrade or change of forum software.

I'm also curious as to what the OP considers is missing from phpBB?