I'm considering writing an article comparing a selection of open source php based forum applications. phpBB is the best known example but there has been increasing concern about the frequency of security vulnerabilities that are identified and how they are handled. To a certain point phpBB is very much a victim of its own success and part of me wants to stick with it despite the problems in the belief that they will be resolved. This is especially true given the upcoming release of phpBB 3.
Despite my hopes for phpBB 3 it makes sense to re-evaluate our choices periodically and with phpBB now seems like a good time. Searching the internet brings up a number of choices and plenty of commentary (see
here,
here and
here) but I couldn't find a good comparison of more than 2 projects and even these were less detailed than I would have liked.
As such this is turning into my next big project. So far I've found the projects below:
Simple machines
Punbb
Vanilla
FUDforum
Phorum
BBPress
. . . and obviously
phpBB.
If you know of any other forum projects or if you have any comments on those listed already do please let me know.