What is the BEST forum software available today?

[simplulo]

Regarding SMF 2.X , I'm not sure but I think I've heard theymos say that the second version has a lot of security issues, even more than the first one.

Security should be one of the key comparison criteria, and it should be evaluated as objectively as possible, not by hearsay. Every product, OTF or home grown, is going to have security issues, but I would tend to trust more the one that has the most eyeballs, and SMF gets a lot. This might be useful:
http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Understanding_SMF_Security

Actually, the current version of SMF used here is heavily modified to address many flaws, both functional, feature related as well as exploits.

Every product, OTF or home grown, is going to have "flaws" (requirements gaps). Theymos addressed those of SMF 1.x--we're talking about 2.x. The existence of the customizations has been mentioned repeatedly throughout his RFC threads:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45372.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50617.0
but has Theymos documented his mods somewhere? It would be nice to see a list, and then see which of them has been addressed by 2.x or an available mod, and estimate the effort required to recreate the others.

Participants in this thread should be asking themselves what is special about the bitcoin community that requires features not used by the other thousands of online communities. It would probably be simpler and cheaper to contribute those additional features back to an open-source project like SMF, or provide them as mods:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/

Sorry, I am allowing myself to be goaded into expressing a product opinion. Analysis first....

[mprep]

Regarding SMF 2.X , I'm not sure but I think I've heard theymos say that the second version has a lot of security issues, even more than the first one.

Security should be one of the key comparison criteria, and it should be evaluated as objectively as possible, not by hearsay. Every product, OTF or home grown, is going to have security issues, but I would tend to trust more the one that has the most eyeballs, and SMF gets a lot. This might be useful:
http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Understanding_SMF_Security

Actually, the current version of SMF used here is heavily modified to address many flaws, both functional, feature related as well as exploits.

Every product, OTF or home grown, is going to have "flaws" (requirements gaps). Theymos addressed those of SMF 1.x--we're talking about 2.x. The existence of the customizations has been mentioned repeatedly throughout his RFC threads:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45372.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50617.0
but has Theymos documented his mods somewhere? It would be nice to see a list, and then see which of them has been addressed by 2.x or an available mod, and estimate the effort required to recreate the others.

Participants in this thread should be asking themselves what is special about the bitcoin community that requires features not used by the other thousands of online communities. It would probably be simpler and cheaper to contribute those additional features back to an open-source project like SMF, or provide them as mods:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/

Sorry, I am allowing myself to be goaded into expressing a product opinion. Analysis first....

Actually you might be onto something. Though only checking if the issues in SMF have been addressed is not enough. I think theymos mentioned there are issues not present in SMF 1.x but present in 2.x. You'd actually need to hire a lot of reputable experts to look through and suggest fixes/fix what's wrong, flawed or can be exploited in any way.

[simplulo]

Looks like someone has made a reasonable forum based on SMF 2.x:
https://www.bitcoinforum.com
Dunno the story behind it.

[tsoPANos]

From my experience, I can tell toy that discourse is the best-looking forum software, having both modern UI and ease of use....

[mprep]

From my experience, I can tell toy that discourse is the best-looking forum software, having both modern UI and ease of use....

What about security? It might look good, but be flawed in the backend.

[blacksnoopy]

My first touch with XenForo was at Chevereto.com/community. I like the functionality and appearance.

[tsoPANos]

From my experience, I can tell toy that discourse is the best-looking forum software, having both modern UI and ease of use....

What about security? It might look good, but be flawed in the backend.

Sadly discourse is a beta stage which means a lot of exploits out there...
But the future of discourse is very ambitious.

[Viceroy]

Discourse may be ready, want to try it?

[Initscri]

I've used both MyBB and Xenforo. I used to (and still am) a member of the community forums at MyBB. I develop plugins there and relate a lot of my expertise considering I have used the forum on-and-off for over 3 years atleast (probably more like 4). However, I voted for Xenforo because I believe Xenforo (as a premium software) has more and is going to have more of a feature base than MyBB ever will.

If premium is an option, go for Xenforo.
If free is the best choice (which it might be because open source should match with open source), then MyBB would be best.

I wish there was a split choice TBH.

[Manheim]

Why Phpbb is not on the list ?    (I am fan of Forumotion hosting which is working on PHPBB as far as I know )

[Snorek]

Is not this topic belongs to the Meta section of this forum? Also I do not know what is the best - the great thing is that you can choose what you will use. With that variety of software you are not limited to one solution.