Recommend me forum software suitable for non-technical users
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Some time ago, I was made co-administrator on a forum related to one of my other hobbies, and learned from another admin that there are non-concrete plans to move the forum to another server (long story made somewhat short: it’s a forum for a club, but currently runs on a server owned by one of the members, who isn’t exactly quick in actually doing stuff, so the club kind of intends to take it under its own wing). This makes me think that it may be a good time to update the forum to something more modern and especially user-friendly than phpBB that it uses now. Like I said, there’s nothing concrete yet, but I kind of want to be prepared — and possibly simply suggest it may be time to fix the current forum issues.
However, as my experience with modern forum software is limited to NodeBB, XenForo and
, and none of those as anything other than a normal user, I’m looking for recommendations for what software might be good for this. Basic requirements, as far as I see them right now:- phpBB 3.x import. This is probably the most important one. The current forum has been running phpBB for about fifteen years, and of course those posts need to be preserved.
- WYSIWYG editor that can be switched to (preferably) Markdown or (else) BBCode. Computer skills of users on this forum range from (not to put too fine a point on it) me, down to people who type in all caps because they don’t know they can also use lowercase letters. It would greatly help most of the users if they don’t have to see markup codes of any kind. However, I don’t like WYSIWYG editors myself, so I want a non-WYSIWYG mode too.
- Easy uploading of images directly to posts. Without having to go through user’s image galleries or other superfluous steps. Drag-and-drop preferred, but having to click a couple of buttons isn’t a problem.
- Not a maze in the admin area. My main gripe with phpBB is how difficult it is to find anything there behind the scenes.
- Preferably free. Mostly because that’ll probably be an easier sell to the people holding the club’s purse strings :)
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PHPBB 3.2 or XenForo.
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@loopback0 phpBB is exactly what I want to get away from, if it’s up to me :) I had looked at XenForo’s site, and it does seem to offer what I’m after, even if phpBB import is a two-step process. Do you happen to know what its admin area is like, in terms of usability?
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@Gurth said in Recommend me forum software suitable for non-technical users:
Do you happen to know what its admin area is like, in terms of usability?
I can't rememer but they have a demo.
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A Facebook page.
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Anybody suggesting XenForo, is it MVC or a normal architecture? I like the one implementation I've used but I'd sooner rewrite it than pay for it if it's not readable.
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@loopback0 said in Recommend me forum software suitable for non-technical users:
I can't rememer but they have a demo.
Wait, how did I miss that? Thanks for pointing it out, I’ll have to browse around a bit there and see if it would work for me.
@admiral_p said in Recommend me forum software suitable for non-technical users:
A Facebook page.
That would immediately remove myself as one of the forum’s users.
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@Gurth
Only upsides then
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I would say Discourse but it doesn't have that WYSIWYG editor (unless you don't mind a super-alpha plugin). So I'd say probably XenForo is your best bet.
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This post is deleted!
Create a XenForo demo
