Forum Software Reviews

From IceBB website : IceBB is a powerful, fast, free, and open-source forum solution powered by the free PHP and MySQL. IceBB scales well, no matter how many users or posts, due to its clean and efficient code. It is also fully customizable, with full skin and language support, plus a powerful admin control center. IceBB also comes with a great community, willing to help you with any problems you encounter, in English, Spanish,or French. Some of IceBB's features include: ul>

RSS feeds

Favorite topics and forums

Optional calendar

Optional portal

Private messages

Search

Unlimited subforums

Redirect forums

Powerful admin control center

Inline moderation

Multi-quote

Full localization support (language system, full Unicode support)

Full feature list

IceBB is another classical LAMP alternative to PhpBB. The goal of the IceBB, according to its authors, was to create a free alternative to expensive Invision Power Board and vBulletin forum software.

IceBB has not a lot of integration features currently. Authors seems to focus their time to fix bugs and release the 1.0 version.

From WowBB website : What is WowBB? It's an easy to use forum software that helps you create a community around the things you care about. How to run WowBB?

• Remotely host on our servers
• - or -
• Host on your server if your web host supports PHP & MySQL.

Here are some key features of WowBB :

• unlimited forums and posts,
• unlimited users and user groups,
• unlimited polls and file uploads,
• powerful moderation tools,
• multiple languages and time zones,
• rich text editing and spell checking,
• easy customizations and themes,

You will find all WowBB features on this page : http://www.wowbb.com/features.php

Another LAMP based forum software, like many others. A default Ubuntu server installation and some clicks and your WowBB forum software will be ready in 5 minutes or less.

Even if WowBB has many features, most of integration (to a blog, a CMS, or inter-application APIs, like XML-RPC or Web-Services...) features are not present, due to its proprietary license.

From XMB Documentation : XMB 1.9.1 provides forum administrators with one of the highest performing, most secure forums available.

Since the 1.6 release of Extreme Message Board, this software had the reputation of a resource hog. This is no longer the case today, and the trend seems to be the opposite now, because XMB can easily support an high traffic. You will find more information about XMB in :

• XMB Forums : for free support for your XMB forums
• XMB Member's Forum : for Premier Members
• XMBHacks : for hack or modification support

MesDiscussions.net is a french software used in major web sites of the french Internet. You will find MesDiscussions.net forum on the following websites :

• Hardware.fr
• France 2 (a french television)
• Doctissimo
• Presence-PC
• Judgehype

MesDiscussions.net respects W3c norms, can support a really heavy loading and is really powerful. The only problem is its license, but you will find on the official web site dedicated hosting solution. This is particularly useful for communities or companies that looks for a powerful and a easy-to-manage forum software. MesDiscussions.net also provides a module helping your website be known by search engines and increasing its pagerank and its referencing.

We do not have many details about MesDiscussions.net technologies, but we know that it uses the famous LAMP solution (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).

The maximum score on Installation has been given because this part is done by the company working on MesDiscussions.net forum. So, this is something that you should not take care anymore. About userbase integration, No One Development provides modules to their clients to plug MesDiscussions.net to their existing databases. This is for example the case for France Television company (FTVi).

From XennoBB website : Welcome to the webpage of the world's most revolutionary and easy to use bulletin board. Revolutionary because it redefines the boundaries of usability and power; from the first version it's a real alternative to the commercial forums out there. How can XennoBB be described in few words? Lightning-speed, stable, secured and modern. Who's the team behind this project? A young but experimented team who wanted to create a forum that will be different from the ones available today.

About CMS integration, XennoBB provides a special version of its forum. This version, called XennoBB SE (Special Edition) integrates by default a simple CMS system. This is a particularly useful solution for webmasters that do not want to search for a CMS and a forum software that interoperate easily. For more information, consult the XennoBB homepage.

From FUDForum web site : FUDforum is a highly customizable forum package, with a large feature set. The easy to use administration control panel allows the administrator to easily configure and control the many features available. The forum also includes an interactive help package, which helps to familiarize users with the full potential of FUDforum.

FUDForum is a classical forum software, and can be installed on LAMP server or Microsoft IIS, with a MySQL backend and a PHP extension.

From JavaBB website :

What is JavaBB ?

JavaBB is a software based on Java, developed specifically with intention to join communities. Based in phpbb, we are working pledged by the success of phpBB, to become javaBB so efficient as it.

Supported features

• Flood Control
• Watch Topic
• Config file for custom changes
• Complete layout changes thru css-theme files
• Languages files and buttons file, based on phpBB
• Forum category
• Links to other urls
• Sticky posts and announcements
• BBcode
• Locked threads
• IP logging system
• Paginsystem
• Memberregistration and editing
• MemberList
• Private message system
• Adminsystem
• Badwordfilter

JavaBB uses the famous Hibernate framework to create an object mapping of database entities. This will probably help JavaBB developers to improve easily the current model and add new features.

What is JForum ?

JForum is a powerful and robust discussion board system implemented in Javatm. It provides an attractive interface, an efficient forum engine, an easy to use administrative panel, an advanced permission control system and much more. Built from the ground up around a MVC framework, it can be deployed on any servlet container or Application Server, such as Tomcat, Resin and JBoss. Its clean design and implementation make JForum easy to customize and extend. Best of all, JForum is freely available under the BSD Open Source license. If you or your company are searching for a serious and robust Forum Software, JForum is the right choice.

Key Features

• Ultra fast
• Fully customizable user interface
• Secure and highly customizable permission control
• Multi-language support
• Multi-database support
• Open Source

JForum uses the benefit of the J2EE platform, with database connection pools, localization, database independent implementation, and even clustering (depending on which Application Server you use). For example, it is really simple to increase max numbers of connections and JForum developers did not have to implement this, because this is supported by default by the J2EE application servers. The demonstration has been installed on a Tomcat 5.5.17, proxied under a Apache 2.2 (using mod_jk), which is a really secure and classical solution.