Phorum Review

lastnico's picture
Go to
Install: Positive (Normal) — Admin: Positive (Normal)
Use: PositivePositive (Easy) — Themes: Yes Yes
Our Opinion : FullFullFullFullNone — Users : FullFullFullHalfNone (Rate it)
— Fri, 2006-05-19 14:49 — lastnico

Quick Guide Help

Installation : Positive (Normal)
Administration : Positive (Normal)
Forum Use : PositivePositive (Easy)
Themes : Yes Yes
Our Opinion : FullFullFullFullNone
Users : FullFullFullHalfNone (Rate it)
Released under : BSD License
Current version : 5.1.13 (06/01/2006).
Demonstration : Phorum Demo
From Phorum web site : Phorum is a little different from the other web based message boards out there. It was designed to meet different needs of different web sites while not sacrificing performance or features.

High Performance

In an upcoming interview, Jay Pipes of MySQL.com says "The forums (http://forums.mysql.com) have grown substantially over the last year, and Phorum, the PHP software running the MySQL Forums, has kept pace with this growth admirably."

Flexibility

To satisfy the web master that needs every bell and whistle, or those that want to make their web site unique, the Phorum team created a very flexible hook & module system. These hooks allow a webmaster to create modules for using external authentication, altering message data before its stored, adding custom information about users or messages. Phorum gives the web designers the power to rearrange the data in any shape, form or fashion. The templates are in pure HTML with simple to understand text commands embedded in them. You can use the provided templates as a starting point or start from scratch. The power is in your hands.

Community

Phorum has some of the most passionate users and developers. First time users are often surprised at how quickly they get a quality response in our chat room or support forums. Many of the most common modules like avatars, spam prevention and more have already been written by Phorum's developers or its knowledgble community of users.
Official web site : http://www.phorum.org
Download Link : Download this forum software here : Phorum.

Server Architecture

Features Details
Operating Systems Details
Systems supporting this software.
  • Linux
  • Windows Server 2003
  • Windows XP
  • FreeBSD
  • OpenBSD
  • NetBSD
Web Server Details
Web Servers control the communication between the forum and the users.
  • Apache 1.3
  • Apache 2.0/2.2
  • Microsoft IIS
Languages Details
Main development language.
  • PHP 4
  • PHP 5
Databases Details
Applications which store forum datas.
  • MySQL
Phorum is a typically LAMP software, which needs the Linux / MySQL / Apache / PHP technologies to work easily and without any problem.

Technical Features

Technical Features Details
CMS / Blog softwares integration Details
Web publishing tools which can be integrated with this software.
Joomla / Mambo
User base integration Details
This feature is useful when you would like to integrate your forum with an existing solution.
To existing databases
Template Engine Details
With known template engines, it is generally easier to customize forum and create new themes.
Custom
Webservices / XML-RPC management Details
Generally allow remote control from other softwares than browsers (program, etc...)
No
The Phorum integration has a dedicated forum discussion in the Community Forum of Phorum. Unfortunately, we was not able to test integration with other softwares, so do not hesitate to report any success story about integration of Phorum with another web tool.

Comments

brianlmoon's picture

Phorum 5.2 has been

Thu, 2008-01-03 05:42 — brianlmoon

Phorum 5.2 has been released. This is a major feature upgrade.

Brian Moon
Phorum Dev Team

Brian Moon
Phorum Dev Team

yxlnjrca

Fri, 2007-05-18 11:48 — AndrewNelson

[URL=http://qqkiyplv.com]berbihdo[/URL] syjxuwqt gswsgtbb http://drbtfeym.com iyxyknbb gptvxjmk

kwskryum

Tue, 2007-04-17 06:32 — Nicholas6

zwhmtheb http://kdmqyplj.com wjvvjill bskxiplp [URL=http://defnicme.com]lebqgqzv[/URL] figxrzww

newbie question

Sat, 2006-11-04 03:35 — robelicit

well, we want to know if a blog can be functioning simultaneously on the left hand side of the page while the board/forum is functioning on the right half of the page?
sorry if this seems odd, I'm asking for a friend & I don't know much at all about forums as an admin would.
rob
=][=

rob
=][=

lastnico's picture

Yes, I didn't know that

Sat, 2006-08-12 10:19 — lastnico

Yes, I didn't know that MySQL.com uses Phorum, and this has changed the score of Phorum on Forum-Software.org. And please also note that 7 or 8 on 10 is a really good score.

Please however note that Forum-Software.org is a really young website, and that it is going to evolve a lot in the next months, evolve because tests will be done more seriously (because we will have more time for this, instead of developing FSO modules and components), and evolve because users like you will give their important opinion to us. If you look better, Forum-Software.org cannot be for the moment easily found in search engines, and that it has only be found because one of the Phorum user points it from phorum.org web site.

And, no, I will not remove your post.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.

brianlmoon's picture

Instant Messaging

Wed, 2006-08-09 16:22 — brianlmoon

You still have us as No for that feature. However, we have it. And its quite nice IMO.

Brian Moon
Phorum Dev Team

Brian Moon
Phorum Dev Team

lastnico's picture

Done. Thanks. Forum-Software.

Thu, 2006-08-10 14:05 — lastnico

Done.

Thanks.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.

ok, so for the mistakes:

Mon, 2006-08-07 09:19 — ts77

anonymous posting is possible in the default-installation.
just needs to be enabled for the forum with allowing permissions to public users.

smiley-module is distributed with the default install. might just need to be activated in the admin-area.

javascript is not required for the core functionality.

lastnico's picture

Thank you, these mistakes

Mon, 2006-08-07 09:50 — lastnico

Thank you, these mistakes are fixed. Sorry for those errors and thanks again to report them.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.

Couple more corrections

Mon, 2006-08-07 10:36 — Arpa

Thank you for addressing the inaccuracies in your review.

I have some more for you to fix.

1. operating system and webservers:

- known to work in Windows & IIS (there are some small differencees because of PHP's missing functionality in that platform, nothing major though).
- known to work in BSD
- in general it's platform independent, if PHP and Mysql runs on it then Phorum does too

2. database
- recommended MySQL 4.x (this is common FAQ, v. 3.x is no longer supported but a patch exists to use it with that)
- Beta/alpha postgre support available (not in distributed package though)

3. template engine
- there's a template engine but it's not "known". IMO you should mention it anyway because Phorum doesn't mix code & html but is fully template based. (I would put "custom/smartylike cached template engine)

4. Functionality to get with plugins (I would put a mention on that place on the tables)
- Poll creation (plugin)
- post form has "rich text editing" (even default in the current version, a plugin is cutting edge version)
- post format includes html too
- custom BB codes? I'm not sure what you mean here, but defining custom smilies is possible (for administrator that is)
- user list (an addon)
- Captcha Protection (plugins, graphical & text based available)
- user ranks (plugin)
- user avatars (plugins)

But thank you anyway for correcting the obvious mistakes. I can only hope you make small corrections to the text too. For example the fact that the final score is the same even if the functionality of Phorum is much better than your initial report has in it.

lastnico's picture

Thanks again for those

Tue, 2006-08-08 07:53 — lastnico

Thanks again for those comments, I've updated the review to fix these errors.
However, I will not change the final score, firstly because 7/10 is one of the best score in Forum-Software.org (same that PhpBB, and only under SMF), and secondly because I will not change the forum scores each times someone ask me to do it. The opinion and this good score will be sufficent to convince webmasters that Phorum is a good forum software.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.

lastnico's picture

The goal of Forum-Software

Mon, 2006-08-07 08:46 — lastnico

The goal of Forum-Software reviews is to describe how a forum looks like in a default installation, because most webmasters will simply test a software, look at its features briefly, and directly uninstall it if it does not support *by default* what it looked for.

You're right when you say that this review is incomplete because this review do not test the plugins of Phorum, just the default installation. So, I will add ASAP some additional information about those plugins, to inform people that if they want to use Phorum +extensions, then they will have a really complete and powerful tool for their community.

Of course, if there are real mistakes on default features that Phorum provides, please let me know to fix them.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.

lastnico's picture

I've just added a little

Mon, 2006-08-07 10:11 — lastnico

I've just added a little paragraph about the difference between a default and simple installation and its extension capabilities, to really match what Phorum is exactly.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.

Forum-Software.org Administrator.