Phorum Review - Users, Security & Customization

Users Rating:	Rate it » 7/10 (54 votes)

Installation:	Good
Administration:	Good
Ergonomy:	Good

Administrator	admin / demo
Moderator	moderator / demo
User	user / demo

	Phorum	No Selection.
Plugins	Yes	-
Themes	Yes	-
Captcha	Plugin	-
Syndication		-
Avatars	Plugin	-
Attachments	Yes	-
Emoticons	Yes	-
Quoting	Yes	-
Rating	Plugin	-
Calendar	Plugin	-
Polls	Plugin	-
PM	Yes	-
IM	No	-

Fri March 20, 2009 10:24 |

User Profiles & Options

Some details about what users can do and are able to use in Phorum.

User Profiles & Options
	User Profile The user profile allows the user to modify its personal information and even sometimes customize the forum for his account. For example, administrators can activate several themes that users can select to change the look of the forum. Click for more information... User Information and Configuration.	Yes
	Avatars Pictures of users, useful to easier identify their posts.	Plugin
	Signature Signatures added in the bottom of each message.	Yes
	Ranks Tags and labels identifying users, depending on different criteria (posts count, credits, moderation levels...)	Plugin
	Unread Topics Once connected, a user could know which are the topics he has never read.	Yes
	Bookmark Threads List of interesting topics and posts in user profiles.	Yes
	Email Notifications Email notifications option helps forum users to stay informed about new posts or new threads. When a modification occurs, the forum automatically send mails to people who request for. Click for more information... Receive an email when messages are posted in followed threads.	Yes
	Export private messages All private messages could be downloaded by users.	No
	Payment Subscriptions Paying Membership Subscription.	-

Various Phorum features are quite poor, but this matches the speed requirement of this software. Live chatting and smileys for example are typically features than can slow down a lot a forum, by loading multiple contents (for images), and eventually need some reloading (with or without AJAX) (for chatting).

Security & Spam Protection

Security & Spam Protection
CAPTCHA Captcha protections aims to avoid spam bots by asking to the user a Turing test to be sure he is a real user, and not a bot. Click for more information... Captcha protects your forum against spam bots. e.g.,	Plugin
Abnormal Behavior Detection Detect users or request strange behaviors, and try to process proactive actions.	-
Words Filtering These kind of filters can protect young user against coarseness from some users by replacing these words by stars (i.e.: *****) or by simply removing them. Click for more information... Offensing Words are automatically replaced.	Plugin
User Blacklist Prevent specific user accounts to register (based on email address, name,...) and disable potentially harmful members.	Yes
IP Blocking Prevent access to spam robots and other scripts that could attempt DDOS or Brute Force attacks on your forum.	Yes

Latest Vulnerabilities Reports

Vulnerabilities Advisories Criticality

Secunia Advisories severity affecting Phorum.

Vulnerabilities Impact

Secunia Advisories impact affecting Phorum.

More Details on Vulnerabilities »

Customization

Customization
Plugins Plugins are additional files that webmaster can add to its default forum installation. These plugins (or modifications / mods) adds features that are not supported by default by the forum. For example, it can add image upload to user messages, add administration options,... Some forum software greatly uses the mods architecture by providing a poor featured forum, which can be easily improved by tons of plugins. Plugins can be really interested if a webmaster would like to improve forum interactivity or integration with its website. Generally, you can find a list of existing plugins on the official website of the forum software. Click for more information... Add new features to your forum installation.	Yes.
Themes Themes are packages, or even simple files that the forum administrator can add to its default forum installation. These themes can then be selected to totally change the layout and the look and feel of the forum. Click for more information... Modify the style of your forum easily.	Yes.
Custom BBCodes New custom BBCode keywords	No	Custom Emoticons Additional Custom Emoticons (through packs, web interface,...)	Yes
Custom Thread Icons New custom Thread Icons (through packs, web interface,...)	Plugin	Custom User Profile Fields Add new fields to user profile, to know more about them, and specialize your forum.	Yes

Integration with Third Applications and Websites
Social Networks Users can share information from their social network account...	No.
CMS / Blog Bridges This information lists all blog and CMS softwares that can fully integrate a specified forum. By integration, we mean that there is only one user base, the log in process must be the same (when a user is connected to the forum, it is automatically logged on the blog or CMS, and respectively) Examples: Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, Plone, Dotclear, WordPress, eGroupWare, e107, XOOPs, iGaming CMS. Click for more information... Integration with existing Web publishing tools.	Drupal WordPress
User Accounts Integration What are the softwares that could integrate their existing accounts into your forum. Examples: LDAP, Active Directory, Facebook Connect, Google Accounts, OpenId, Windows Live ID, Other Databases, Google Apps, Yahoo, Twitter, MySpace, AOL, WordPress, Linkedin, Blogger, myOpenID. Click for more information... Do users be able to log in with their corporate, Google, Facebook,... accounts?	Other Databases

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.

The Phorum software has an huge additional modules list.

PHP Free Forums				PHP (Commercial)		Forum Hosting		Java / JEE	Microsoft .Net
bbPress Beehive Forum Drupal Forum esoTalk Extreme Message Board FluxBB Fruit Show FUDForum	IceBB Joomla Forum MiniBB MyBB MyProBB Phorum PhpBB 2 PhpBB 3	PunBB Quicksilver Forums SEO-Board Simple Machines 1.1 Simple Machines 2 Unclassified NewsBoard UseBB Vanilla	Viscacha XennoBB	Advanced Electron Forum IP.Board MesDiscussions UBB.threads UltraBB vBulletin 3.8 vBulletin 4 Woltlab Burning Board	WowBB	BulletinBoards Forumotion FreeForums Google Groups Lefora Nabble Tal.ki Website Toolbox	ZetaBoards Zoho Discussions	JavaBB JForum jGossip JsForum MVN Forum Nemesis Forum SKForum Yazd	NearForums Yet Another Forum
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