ForumCommunity Review
Last Version | Unknown (-). | Released under | Custom License. |
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Resources |
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Company | ForumFree.it. | ||
Price | Free. |
Last Version | Unknown (-). | Released under | Custom License. |
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Resources |
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Company | ForumFree.it. | ||
Price | Free. |
ForumCommunity.net and ForumFree.it are two hosting services managed by the same Italian company, one targeting worldwide users, and the second more targeting Italian websites. According to ForumFree.it author, the project was born the 26.06.2002, which is actually before InvisionFree (2003), and was based on the first beta of Invision Power Board (created in 2002), like ZetaBoards for example. In case you don't know, InvisionFree is the ancestor of IP.Board.
The integration is mostly assured by two developers: the main author and another very skillful programmer. This service is very popular in Italy, and their networks are in Top 10 of most visited sites, even if they do not have the same success in the rest of the world (80% Italian users).
For the purpose of our test, we reviewed the ForumCommunity.net service only, even if it is a bit less known than ForumFree.it. Anyway, both services are multilanguages, even if, by default, ForumCommunity is in English, while ForumFree speaks Italian.
It has a fully customized administration panel, totally separated from the board you are able to create.
Statistics of both websites are quite impressive:
ForumFree.it
ForumCommunity.net
Forum Creation and Hosting is free, and you can however decide to remove advertisements by paying a small contribution, follow this schema:
According to Google Trends chart, ForumFree became more popular than their original competitor, InvisionFree, after 2006:
Browser & Client Requirements | ||||||||
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Compatible Browsers
List of Compatible Browsers.
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Required Plugins/Technologies
Additional or Basic Requirements from Client Side.
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HTML, Javascript, CSS. | |||||||
Localization
Languages supported by ForumCommunity.
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Yes.
Supported Languages:
As ForumFree.it originally targeted European countries, it is translated by default in most used languages of this part of the world. |
Compatibility with Smartphones | |
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Compatible SmartPhones
Compatible Cellphone Brands and Manufacturers.
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No. |
Application Distribution / Type
How it is distributed / App Store Availability
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No. |
Forum Threads / Topics | |||
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Forum Style | Flat | Forum Organization |
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Thread Icons | Yes | Topic Tags | No |
Hot Topics | Yes | Unread Topics | Yes |
Hidden Topics | Yes | Sticky Threads | Yes |
Related Threads | No | Detect Duplicate Threads | No |
Announcements | Yes |
Posting Messages / Answers | |||
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Message Editing Form
How to Post Messages.
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Post Editing Format
Supported Markup Language (HTML, Wiki, BBCode,...).
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Spell Checker
Checks typos on posts and topics.
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No | ||
Image Attachment
How Images can be Attached and Displayed in Message Posts.
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Embedded Videos
Videos and Media Websites Supported in Message Posts.
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No. |
Posting Features | |||
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Quick Reply Box | Yes | Smileys | Yes |
Attachments | Yes | Syntax Highlighting | Yes |
Message Rating
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No | Message Quoting | Yes |
The Image Attachments is using the Tinypic.com service, which integrates nicely with the interface. ImageShack is by the way, also supported.
Additional Forum Features | |
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Poll Creation | Yes |
Private Messages
Users Can Communicate using an Internal Messaging System.
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Yes |
Instant Messaging
Discuss with Visitors and Members in a Chat Window.
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Yes |
Calendar
Topic, Member Birthdays, Events are available from the perspective of a calendar.
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No |
Online Users List
Connected User List (Often Found in the Forum Footer).
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Yes |
Members List
Search and Consult the List of Members.
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Yes |
Technical Features | |
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Bundled Software
Additional Software Available with the Forum.
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RSS/Atom Syndication
Posts and Threads Exported to Feeds Aggregators
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No. |
Friendly URLs
URLs are clear and contain information about the topic (title, message,...).
Highly recommended for SEO purposes.
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No |
Post by Email
Post Directly From your Email Box.
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No |
Remote Control
Remote Control from External Software/Websites.
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No. |
Cache System
Cache pages to optimize bandwidth and load times.
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No |
Template Engine
It is easier to theme a forum using a known template engine (more docs & examples,...).
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No. |
Forum features are quite complete, and this is always nice to have polls and thread icons to improve communication and life of your community.
The Instant Messaging is available as a Tag Board, that you can easily enable through the administration panel, and that you can even configure to appear on specific sections only, or at the homepage. By the way, you can also set the height of this box, as it takes some space on your webpage. For more classical usages, a Chat could also be enabled.
Member Options & Features | |
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Bookmark Threads
User Profiles Keep a List of Followed Posts and Topics.
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Yes |
Email Notifications
Receive Emails When New Messages are Posted in Followed Threads.
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Yes |
Export private messages
Private Messages can be Downloaded by Users.
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Yes |
Payment Subscriptions
Paying Membership Subscription.
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No |
User Profiles | |
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User Profile
User Information and Settings.
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Yes |
Avatars
Pictures of Members, Useful to Easily Identify their Posts.
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Yes |
Signature
Signatures Added at the Bottom of Each Message.
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Yes |
Ranks
Tags and Labels Identifying the Members, based on specific criteria (Total Posts Count, Credits, Moderation Level...)
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Yes |
Members will have a entire and very complete profiles in which they will be able to customize their own account and the way they use the forum: skins and languages selection, subscribed topics, timezone and so on.
Private messaging is a bundled feature as well, and be able to export them to a file is always good if you want to keep an archive of your discussions.
Moderation is, by the way, available, and is particularly easy to configure, as you can define a list of moderators for each section your forum contains.
Moderation & Threads Management | ||
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Moderation |
Pre-Moderation
In pre-moderation, every post needs to be validated by a moderator before being published.
Post-Moderation
The moderation is done afterwards, if an administrator notices a problem or if a member reports something wrong. Each message is therefore directly published.
Reactive Moderation
By reporting any problems, members are reactive against moderation problems.
Moderators' main objective is to regularly check user reports, without having to follow each threads.
Distributed Moderation
By organizing the forum around moderators, who are usually power and experienced users, moderation is self-powered and only depends on the community.
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Moderator per section | Yes | |
Global Moderator | Yes | |
Move Threads
Move Threads from Topics
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Yes | |
Shadow Topics
When a thread is moved, the previous position is kept in order to inform users of this modification.
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Yes | |
Close/Lock Threads
Close/Lock Problematic Threads
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Yes |
Users Management | |
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User Groups
Organize and define groups of users, and apply different actions and settings on them.
Common Groups: Guests, Members, Moderators, Administrators,... |
Yes |
User Registration |
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Limit Features For New Users
Features are limited if a user has created a small number of posts.
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No |
Guest Posting | Yes |
Multiple Administrators | Yes |
Send Warnings to Users
Inform users by email or PM that they infringe the board rules, and could be excluded for such behavior.
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Yes |
Forum/Section Restricted Access
ACL could be use to determine if a user or a group of users can access (in read only, post message) to some sections
and topics.
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Yes |
User Banishment | Yes |
Users can create their own account, and a Single Sign on feature is active on all forum of the same top domain name (i.e. forumcommunity.net and forumfree.it). This is really convenient for users who are posting on several boards, and don't want to customize and type their bio and info each time they join a forum of the service.
By the way, the administration is really simple, and the integration of InvisionFree is really well polished. I is actually almost impossible to guess it by only having a look at the Administration Dashboard.
Database Management | |
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Backup Database
Backup forum datas that you could store somewhere else.
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No |
Prune Database
Remove old and unused datas from your forum.
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No |
Restore Database
Restore a backup of your database if the previous install crashed.
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No |
Administration Tools | |||
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Statistics
Statistics about posts count, users, traffic...
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Yes |
Error/Notice Log Viewer
Forum Logs could be consulted.
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Yes |
Tasks Scheduler
Maintenance tasks are regularly launched and could be scheduled.
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No |
Mass Mailing
Send an email (newsletters, advertisements, information,...) to all users.
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Yes |
Installation & Upgrading | |
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Installation Method
How this forum software could be installed.
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Installation Wizard |
Upgrading Method
How this forum software could be upgraded.
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Upgrade Wizard |
Updates Notifications
The Admin Panel informs you when a new version is released.
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No |
Forum Migration
Convert an existing forum to ForumCommunity.
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No. |
You don't have to take care about database, which is hosted on ForumCommunity.net architecture, and is protected against crash and can be recovered quite easily. This is typically an huge advantage of hosting your forum on this kind of service.
Security & Spam Protection | ||
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CAPTCHA
Captcha protects your forum against spam bots.
e.g.,
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Yes
Complexity:
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Abnormal Behavior Detection
Detect users or request strange behaviors, and try to process proactive actions.
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No | |
Words Filtering
Offensing Words are automatically replaced.
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No | |
User Blacklist
Prevent specific user accounts to register (based on email address, name,...) and disable potentially harmful members.
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Yes | |
IP Blocking
Prevent access to spam robots and other scripts that could attempt
DDOS or Brute Force attacks on your forum.
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Yes |
You will be protected globally by the ForumCommunity network, which ensure you a really low spamming traffic. By the way, you can take measures against spamming or aggressive users by banning them, either temporarily or definitely.
Customization | |||
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Plugins
Add new features to your forum installation.
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No.
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Themes
Modify the style of your forum easily.
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Yes.
~1388 Available Themes. |
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Custom BBCodes | No | Smiley Packs | Yes |
Custom Thread Icons |
Yes |
Additional User Profile Fields
Ask more about your members with custom fields.
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No |
Integration with Applications, Social Networks, Intranet... | |
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Social Networks
Users can share information from their social network account...
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No. |
CMS / Blog Bridges
Integration with existing Web publishing tools.
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No. |
User Accounts Integration
Do users be able to log in with their corporate, Google, Facebook,... accounts?
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No. |
Content Aggregation
Forum allows to integrate news and content from other website,
using an aggregation protocol (RSS, RDF, Atom,...).
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No. |
Same as with plugins, it's not possible to customize, in terms of features, your board.
However, the choice of themes, the global layout and CSS customization is really big, and it is really convenient to modify the header/footer of your forum, to choose a new logo/background and to modify any existing images. This of course also applies for smileys and thread icons.
One of the well thought thing is that you can add a different HTML snippet on each sections of your forum, which is particularly useful if you use the same board for hosting different people (think about roleplay team, MMORPG,...)
![]() ForumCommunity Graphic Administration - HTML Code |
![]() ForumCommunity Graphic Administration - Images and Icons |
![]() ForumCommunity Graphic Administration - Colors and Styles |
Norms & Accessibility | |
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HTML / XHTML Markup
See W3C HTML Definition.
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HTML 4.01.
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Click to see if it respects HTML norms.
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CSS Stylesheets
See W3C CSS Definition.
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CSS 2. ![]()
Click to see if it respects CSS norms.
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Accessibility (WAI)
Web Accessibility ensures that the forum is usable by people of all abilities and disabilities.
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Conformance to A level.
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UTF-8 Support
Default encoding used to support all locales and countries.
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Yes |
Conformance to W3C Norms
Does ForumCommunity correctly follow (X)HTML and CSS norms?
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Yes. |
ForumCommunity.net and ForumFree.it were a really good surprise: really dynamic, powerful and easy to use, it is actually surprising that it is not that spread all over the world. As its original author said, surprisingly, it is one of the Top 10 website in Italy, but this situation is really different when you cross Europe border.
This review was then a good way to discover than forum communities are also really dynamic in Europe as well, and that it easily competes with other big competitors like Forumotion, ProBoards or ZetaBoards.