Which software should we move to? What do YOU use?
Requirements:
- Receives updates, is updated constantly.
- Not (very) new, so it has a sort of stable history. We don't want to put our members to risk.
- It can use any technology, stack, language - as long as it's not IIS/Microsoft locked in.
- FOSS software is preferred - our users love FOSS.
So far I found these as candidates:
- Discourse. It's modern, it's fast, it can handle A LOT OF ABUSE. Our forums would never face such degree of spam and posts but yeah, I have seen people throwing everything they had at it and it did not break. Pretty well done. It's also modern, "real-time-ish". They offer free hosting for projects that quality (we do) or free on-site hosting. Open-source.
- NodeBB. Feels and looks very close to Discourse. There is a fully free "developer edition" that we could easily use. It's open-source.
- phpBB. We used this in the past and it's a great forum software. Heck, it was the market leader for many long years. When we moved to SMF from phpBB, the development came to a halt. There were no big updates, there were no small updates. Just nothing. SMF was getting regular updates constantly. So the choice was obvious. The tables have turned however. phpBB moved on. Added a new site, a great new plugin repository, and new updates come out left and right. Looks like a great FOSS target too.