Lefora Review - General Features & Requirements

Sat October 31, 2009 00:02 |
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Web Site: http://www.lefora.com
Download here: Download Lefora
Community Forum: Support
Released under: Proprietary License.
Current version: Hosted (October 21, 2009).
Sponsored By: Lefora.
Price: Free.

From Lefora website:

Why Lefora Hosted Forums?

The Lefora Team got fed up with the lack of features available in message boards, such as vbulletin and phpbb forums. We use them everyday, from art forums, to game forums, to tech forums - we couldn't get over just how old school they were. Something needed to be done! So we created a free forum hosting service.

We've taken our development experiences and put them together to create what we believe is how discussions should happen on the web. Our forums are social, engaging, easy to use, free, and most importantly - fun. We dread things like clicking through multiple pages, not being able to filter out annoying posters, dealing with spam, the necessity to create an account just to make a quick comment, staring at butt-ugly templates, never getting notified of responses to our questions, not being able to embed YouTube videos... The list just keeps going on, we're sure you're familiar with our complaints.

We also know how hard it has been up until now to find a simple forum hosting provider. It takes just a few clicks to get a blog going; why can't a forum hosting be that way?

We provide free forum hosting, the forum software, forum installation, and promotion of your forum.

Server & Clients Requirements

Server Requirements
Operating Systems Details
Systems supporting this software.
  • Linux
Web Server Details
Web servers host the forum software.
  • Apache 2.0/2.2
Languages Details
Development language.
No.
Databases Details
Systems that store forum datas.
No.
Browsers & Clients Requirements
Compatible Browsers Details
List of compatible browsers.
  • Mozilla Firefox 3
  • Mozilla Firefox 2
  • Mozilla Firefox 1
  • Opera
  • Safari
  • Konqueror
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Internet Explorer 6
  • Chrome
  • Mozilla SeaMonkey
Required Plugins/Technologies Details
What the user needs exactly to use this forum correctly.
  • HTML and Javascript
  • HTML and AJAX
Localization Details
Languages supported by Lefora.
Yes Yes.
  • British English
  • American English
  • Portugese
  • Deutsch
  • Chinese
  • German
  • Spanish
  • Italian
  • Russian
  • Finnish
  • French
  • Polish
  • Japanese

The hosted architecture does not force us to know and consider the technologies used behind the scene. This is an advantage for beginners.

Forum Threads & Posts

Forum Threads
Forum Style
General appearance of the topics.
Flat
Social Networks
Users can share information from their social network account...
Thread Icons
An icon that identifies the type of a topic.
No No
Forum Organization
Organize your forum with categories, sections,...
  • Forum Categories
  • Sub Sections
Sticky Threads
Sticky threads stay at top of a section or a forum.
Yes Yes
Detect Duplicate Threads
Duplicate Threads are detected before creation.
No No
Shadow Topics
Some topics are only accessible to a limited list of users.
No No
Posts
Emoticons Details Yes Yes
Attachments Details
Attach files (screenshot, archive,...) with a post.
Yes Yes
Post Editing Form Details
Details about the manner to post messages.
  • WYSIWYG Editor
  • Format Buttons
Post Editing Format Details
Markup Language (HTML, Wiki, BBCode,...).
  • HTML
  • BBCode
Post Quoting
Quoting a post helps readers understand who answers who.
Yes Yes
Post Rating
Users can rate the quality of other users posts.
Yes Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Posted Source Code is formatted using colors.
Unknown Unknown

Key Features & Additional Tools

Key Features
Bundled Softwares
Softwares that are also available with the forum.
No.
Private Messages Details
Users can communicate using an internal messaging system.
Yes Yes
Instant Messaging Details
Users can communicate in the forum like in other IM softwares (Yahoo Messenger, Live Messenger, Google Talk, AIM,...)
Yes Yes
Calendar Details Plugin Plugin
Poll Creation Details Yes Yes
Users List Details
List of all user accounts, to helps users searching their friends.
Yes Yes
Online Users List
List of actually connected users, in the forum home page, a dedicated topic,...
Yes Yes
RSS/Atom Syndication Details
New posts and threads available using aggregators (represented by the Syndicate icon)
RSS 2.0
Quick Reply Box
Write a post directly from the topic page.
Yes Yes
Remote Control Details
Remote control from external softwares or websites.
No.
Friendly URLs
URLs are as short and simple as possible (for better copy/paste and share).
Yes Yes

Please note that all posts could also be displayed on the same page, to follow on a global page the general activity of the forum.

 
 
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