The Forum Wiki - User contributions [en]

MiniBB

2023-11-30T19:00:15Z

Arantor: Created page with "{{stub}} miniBB is a standalone free to download forum software. More information: https://www.minibb.com/ Category: Free Forum Software Category: Stubs"

{{stub}}
miniBB is a standalone free to download forum software.

More information: https://www.minibb.com/

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

Codoforum

2023-11-30T18:58:32Z

Arantor: Created page with "{{stub}} Codoforum is a free forum platform. More information: https://codoforum.com/ Category: Free Forum Software Category: Stubs"

{{stub}}
Codoforum is a free forum platform.

More information: https://codoforum.com/

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

YAF.NET

2023-11-30T18:36:13Z

Arantor:

YAF.NET stands for 'Yet Another Forum.NET' reflecting that it is written using the .NET framework (specifically, C# with ASP.NET)

More information: https://www.yetanotherforum.net/

GitHub repo: https://github.com/YAFNET/YAFNET

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

XMB

2023-11-30T18:35:55Z

Arantor:

XMB - eXtreme Message Board - was originally started in 2001, and went dormant around 2007. The community subsequently picked it up and continued maintaining it.

More information: https://www.xmbforum2.com/

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

StoryBB

2023-11-30T18:24:04Z

Arantor:

StoryBB was a fork of [[SMF]] that was started in 2017 and (mostly) discontinued in 2022, intended as both a modernisation project of the SMF code, but also with a distinct focus on roleplay features.

Support for the idea of 'characters' as a subset of accounts (as opposed to 'subaccounts' being real accounts connected together) is a core feature, along with several other roleplay-first features including 'in character' vs 'out of character' boards, complete with revised presentation to showcase the characters, topic invites, a character timeline builder and approvable character sheets.

It was discontinued mostly due to a growing sense of perceived dissatisfaction with the roleplay scene, relating to the lack of interest of platforms beyond Jcink, much interpersonal drama in the scene that the StoryBB author would rather entirely avoid becoming part of, and a general observation that forums are dying.

GitHub repo: https://github.com/StoryBB/StoryBB

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

IkonBoard

2023-11-30T18:23:55Z

Arantor:

IkonBoard was founded in autumn 1999 by Matt Mecham as a Perl-based forum system that would store posts as files on the server.

Work continued from version 0.9 in autumn 1999 to the 3.x series in 2002, under Mecham's leadership and it grew new features (including database support), but owing to business interests and the sale to a corporate owner, Mecham would ultimately depart in 2002 to form [[Invision Power Services]].

Meanwhile development would loosely continue - including a full PHP port of the platform - and while it was apparently in development as late as 2006, there are no current sites run by the platform's owners.

[[Category: Paid Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

YABB

2023-11-30T18:23:43Z

Arantor:

YABB, short for Yet Another Bulletin Board, was created by Zef Hemel and others sometime in 2000.

It is self hosted and written in Perl. Original versions of the software did not use a database but stored all the posts as files on the server.

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

ElkArte

2023-11-30T18:23:35Z

Arantor:

ElkArte is a fork of [[SMF]] that occurred in 2012 after some questionable comments were made that caused the entire development team to resign in unison.

Having largely completed what they considered a viable SMF 2.1 to their satisfaction, they forked and began a process of modernising the software internally and throughout.

More information: https://www.elkarte.net/

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

Protendo

2023-11-30T18:23:21Z

Arantor:

Protendo was a short-lived fork from [[SMF]] that started sometime in 2011.

Its primary developer was 'Bloc', one of the most prevalent designers in the SMF community and someone that had worked on the default theme in the past (mostly on 1.1's Core and 2.0's Curve)

Protendo was based on the view that the frontend theme should be able to control precisely how things should be displayed, even if the data was not necessarily available (a design trait driven originally by SMF's views on separation of concerns, that the backend should provide data to the front end only)

Much of the design that was done for Protendo was later released in conventional themes for SMF, and it is unknown how far Protendo development was taken before it was ultimately shelved.

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Unsupported Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

FluxBB

2023-11-30T18:22:58Z

Arantor:

FluxBB was founded in 2008 as a fork of [[PunBB]] citing the need to keep it free of commercial interests, after the original founder left that project.

The last major release was in 2018, though maintenance commits are visible in the GitHub repo from 2021.

The project used to have a website at fluxbb.org but this is not working as of November 2023.

GitHub repo: https://github.com/fluxbb/fluxbb

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

PunBB

2023-11-30T18:22:37Z

Arantor:

PunBB was founded in 2003 to be a lightweight, fast forum eschewing some common features to be add-ons (e.g. polls were not a core feature).

PunBB's lead developer left the project in 2008, for which principle development was forked into [[FluxBB]] by a new team.

There is a small but dedicated community still maintaining PunBB over at https://punbb.informer.com/

GitHub repo: https://github.com/punbb/punbb

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

MyBB

2023-11-30T18:22:21Z

Arantor:

MyBB was founded in 2002 as an alternative forum platform to phpBB and YABB SE, with more than a passing nod to vBulletin in its technical and aesthetic design choices.

MyBB is still actively developed, available in a self-hosted form, and is written in PHP.

More information: https://mybb.com/

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

YABB SE

2023-11-30T18:22:09Z

Arantor:

YABB SE, or Yet Another Bulletin Board (Splinter Edition), was founded in 2001 shortly after the 1.0 release of [[YABB]], by Jeff Lewis and Joseph Fung, as a rewrite/port of YABB to the PHP language, because Perl wasn't commonly available on hosting environments.

It was actively developed until 2003 or so, and released under the GNU GPL license.

While the YABB SE forum community website is preserved at https://www.yabbse.org/ this has not been powered by YABB SE in some years, and is now actually powered by an instance of SMF, albeit modified under permission to cite itself as YABB SE.

== SuperMod ==

Sometime in 2002, an unofficial release of YABB SE was made, under the name SuperMod. This comprised the latest version of YABB SE, plus around 150 mods sourced from the community, as a single monster release.

It was known for being more buggy and unreliable than YABB SE, and fell behind on security patches.

== ttForum ==

Sometime in late 2002 or early 2003, a group took the code for YABB SE (and not even the latest version), removed all of YABB SE's copyright notices and replaced all of them with their own, 'ttForum'.

== Legacy ==

Between these two projects, the founders of YABB SE, plus a mod author from the community felt the best approach was to create a new project that held the spirit and some of the design principles of YABB SE but under a new closed license that would not permit derived works (beyond mods and themes), which would become [[SMF]].

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Unsupported Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

Flarum

2023-11-30T18:21:45Z

Arantor:

Flarum is a modern PHP-based, mobile-first community platform. It was founded in 2014 including former developers of [[esoTalk]] and [[FluxBB]].

More information: https://flarum.org/

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

Wedge

2023-11-30T18:21:34Z

Arantor:

Wedge is a fork of [[SMF]].

It was started in the summer of 2010 as a private fork of SMF because at that time the license had not yet been opened. It was formed by two prominent members of SMF's ecosystem, Arantor and Nao, who felt very strongly that after the internal struggles of the team in early 2010, that SMF had a limited future.

From 2010 to 2013 they worked to modernise SMF and add new features. Arantor left in summer 2013 citing personal tension with Nao, and would later rejoin the SMF dev team for a few months.

There was a website at wedge.org but this appears to be offline as of November 2023.

GitHub repo: https://github.com/wedge/wedge

Notable features:
* flexible warning/infractions system
* rules based moderation system to moderate or prevent posts
* integrated media gallery system

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

SMF

2023-11-30T18:21:25Z

Arantor:

SMF - Simple Machines Forum - was founded in 2003 after license issues with [[YABB SE]].

The original core development team was Jeff Lewis, Joseph Fung and "[Unknown] W. Brackets", and SMF 1.0 was released in 2004.

More information: https://www.simplemachines.org/

== The name ==

The name was chosen to imply both the fact that it should be simple to use, but also that it was never intended to be only a forum product; the use of 'simple machines' in the plural was to indicate the intent for an ecosystem of which the forum was merely the first.

== 1.0 release ==

During the development phase, it was referred to as 'Unknown's secret project', and developed alongside security patches and support for YABB SE but all major development had stopped on YABB SE by early 2003 to make way for SMF.

It debuted in early 2004 for public consumption, featuring an upgrader/importer for YABB SE forums, plus a copy of the stock YABB SE theme (dubbed Classic), and its own new default theme, Babylon.

== 1.1 release ==

1.1 was released in autumn 2006 featuring a new default theme (internally referred to as NDT during its development) and later named Core. Both Classic and Babylon themes were shipped with 1.1.

The main development focus in 1.1 was integration support for portals (e.g. a bridge to Mambo/Joomla), though various general improvements were added.

It was around this time that Jeff, Joseph and Unknown began to transition out of the community to focus on other things in their lives.

== 2.0 release ==

Several major features were added in 2.0: support for PostgreSQL and SQLite databases, post moderation, built in warning system, paid subscriptions.

However, there was a lot of internal debate within the team especially during 2009-2010 and the project changed management as well as license; the 2.0 release was finally made in 2011 under the BSD license.

2.0 also debuted with another new theme, Curve, and Core was also shipped with it. Classic and Babylon ports for 2.0 were later made.

== 2.1 release ==

After much internal tension, 2.1 was finally released in 2022, nearly 11 years after the previous release (though the team had continued to make security and maintenance releases in that time for the 2.0 branch).

2.1 ships with a number of modern features: responsive theme by default (dubbed Curve2), likes, mentions, alerts, redesigned admin panel, post and PM drafts, a new WYSIWYG editor, better support for Unicode.

SQLite support, as well as support for admin panel backups were dropped due to a lack of reliability, and minor other options were dropped, much to the community's displeasure.

== 3.0 release ==

A 3.0 release is in the works.

== Forks ==

Several forks were made from SMF after the license was updated.

* [[Wedge]]
* [[ElkArte]]
* [[Protendo]]
* [[Eos Alpha]]
* [[StoryBB]]

[[Category: Free Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

VBulletin

2023-11-30T18:21:12Z

Arantor:

Note: the correct name of this platform is vBulletin; the capitalisation of the V is enforced by the wiki software.

== Early history ==

vBulletin was founded in 1999 or thereabouts, run by a company called Jelsoft, with a first release in 2000, which was commercial only.

By 2007, the 3.x series had become one of the de-facto solutions for web based forums, and owing to the number of forums they themselves ran using the software, Jelsoft was acquired by Internet Brands.

== Post acquisition ==

Plans were made in early 2008 or so for a new 4.0 version, but Internet Brands signalled their intent to move the development to an offshore team, leaving the Jelsoft team to 'review' the output.

This caused several departures from the team, including its then lead developer, Kier Darby, and a senior developer, Mike Sullivan, who would go on to form [[XenForo]].

== 4.x era ==

In 2009, the 4.0 version was released, and initial uptake was limited because 4.0 was a significant overhaul compared to 3.x, such that a number of features were initially missing from the software.

During this time, Internet Brands sued XenForo citing breach of copyright and inappropriate use of intellectual property (implying that XenForo had taken some of the vB 4.0 design and materials). The lawsuit would eventually be settled in private.

== 5.x era ==

In 2012, the 5.0 version was released, and much like the 4.0 initial release, this was a significant overhaul that removed a number of features, some of which would eventually be re-added.

== 6.x era ==

In 2023, the 6.0 version was released. This appears to have been a modest development on top of the 5.7 series.

However, it was not unnoticed that the number of communities run by vBulletin was now cited as being 40,000, down from prior claims of 120,000 active installs.

[[Category: Paid Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

Woltlab Burning Board

2023-11-30T18:20:58Z

Arantor:

{{stub}}

Woltlab Burning Board is a forum and content management suite produced by Woltlab GmbH in Germany.

The core is a CMS, which is offered for free, with the forum, gallery and other modules being paid extras.

While WBB 3 was offered in English, it was generally understood that support in German was very much the norm and little English support was available; with WBB 4 onwards, there has been a pronounced effort to support English users.

More information: https://www.woltlab.com/en/

[[Category: Paid Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

Ultimate Bulletin Board

2023-11-30T18:18:57Z

Arantor:

Ultimate Bulletin Board is one of the oldest web forum platforms that is still operating, and is often considered one of the progenitors of the format.

It is self-hosted, but is a paid platform.

More information: https://www.ubbcentral.com/

[[Category: Paid Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

CBACK

2023-11-30T18:18:43Z

Arantor:

CBACK is a self-hosted forum platform written in PHP.

The development team is German, though the platform is dual language.

Website: https://cback.net/en/ - licenses start at €39 for a one-site license with 1 year support.

[[Category: Paid Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

Invision Power Services

2023-11-30T18:18:35Z

Arantor:

Invision Power Services is the name of the company Matt Mecham went to work for after departing [[IkonBoard]]

They are the developers of the platform previously known as Invision Power Board (IPB), Invision Power Services (IPS) and currently Invision Community.

More information: https://invisioncommunity.com/

[[Category: Paid Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

Vesta

2023-11-30T18:18:27Z

Arantor:

Vesta is a roleplay-focused forum platform, designed from scratch by Kendra Alvarez.

Prior to 2018, Kendra, under the handle Arceus, had produced a mod for SMF for running roleplays but was dissatisfied with the SMF community and the lack of progress SMF was making and instead decided to roll her own.

The project was originally known as Gaia Athens, later Vesta Athens, with a mentioned in-development edition called Salerno.

The software was originally available for a $10 purchase from Arceus's site but this has been discontinued as the author has other priorities.

It should be noted that Vesta was hostile to any kind of published addons; if they were not created by Arceus herself they were not welcome.

[[Category: Paid Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

XenForo

2023-11-30T18:17:47Z

Arantor:

{{stub}}
[[File:XenForo community.png|300px|thumb|Right|XenForo's Support Forum]]
'''XenForo''' is a threaded paid forum software founded in 2009, first released in 2010. Developed by a few ex [[vBulletin]] developers, it is one of the most popular forum platforms used today. Customers can either chose to [[self host]] their XenForo board, or purchase their [[cloud hosting]]. Many communities who once used vBulletin or [[Invision Power Services]] have made the switch to Xenforo throughout the 2010's.

More information: https://xenforo.com/

=== XenForo Pricing In USD ===
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! scope="col"| Price for Self Hosting License (Without Add-Ons)
! scope="col"| Price for Monthly / Yearly Cloud Starter Package
! scope="col"| Price for Monthly / Yearly Cloud Standard Package
! scope="col"| Price for Monthly / Yearly Cloud Business Package
|-
! scope="row"| $160
! scope="row"| $60 / $648
! scope="row"| $100 / $1,080
! scope="row"| $250 / $2,700
|}

[[Category: Paid Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

XenForo

2023-11-30T18:17:10Z

Arantor:

{{stub}}
[[File:XenForo community.png|300px|thumb|Right|Xenforo's Support Forum]]
'''Xenforo''' is a threaded paid forum software founded in 2009, first released in 2010. Developed by a few ex [[vBulletin]] developers, it is one of the most popular forum platforms used today. Customers can either chose to [[self host]] their XenForo board, or purchase their [[cloud hosting]]. Many communities who once used vBulletin or [[Invision Power Services]] have made the switch to Xenforo throughout the 2010's.

More information: https://xenforo.com/

=== XenForo Pricing In USD ===
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! scope="col"| Price for Self Hosting License (Without Add-Ons)
! scope="col"| Price for Monthly / Yearly Cloud Starter Package
! scope="col"| Price for Monthly / Yearly Cloud Standard Package
! scope="col"| Price for Monthly / Yearly Cloud Business Package
|-
! scope="row"| $160
! scope="row"| $60 / $648
! scope="row"| $100 / $1,080
! scope="row"| $250 / $2,700
|}

[[Category: Paid Forum Software]] [[Category: Stubs]]

Xenforo

2023-11-30T18:16:16Z

Arantor: Redirecting to the canonically correct spelling for XenForo.

#REDIRECT [[XenForo]]

StoryBB

2023-11-26T01:31:51Z

Arantor: Created page with "StoryBB was a fork of SMF that was started in 2017 and (mostly) discontinued in 2022, intended as both a modernisation project of the SMF code, but also with a distinct focus on roleplay features. Support for the idea of 'characters' as a subset of accounts (as opposed to 'subaccounts' being real accounts connected together) is a core feature, along with several other roleplay-first features including 'in character' vs 'out of character' boards, complete with revise..."

SMF

2023-11-26T01:28:30Z

Arantor:

Woltlab Burning Board

2023-11-26T01:27:23Z

Arantor: Created page with "Woltlab Burning Board is a forum and content management suite produced by Woltlab GmbH in Germany. The core is a CMS, which is offered for free, with the forum, gallery and other modules being paid extras. While WBB 3 was offered in English, it was generally understood that support in German was very much the norm and little English support was available; with WBB 4 onwards, there has been a pronounced effort to support English users. More information: https://www.wol..."

Woltlab Burning Board is a forum and content management suite produced by Woltlab GmbH in Germany.

The core is a CMS, which is offered for free, with the forum, gallery and other modules being paid extras.

While WBB 3 was offered in English, it was generally understood that support in German was very much the norm and little English support was available; with WBB 4 onwards, there has been a pronounced effort to support English users.

More information: https://www.woltlab.com/en/

XMB

2023-11-26T01:24:54Z

Arantor: Created page with "XMB - eXtreme Message Board - was originally started in 2001, and went dormant around 2007. The community subsequently picked it up and continued maintaining it. More information: https://www.xmbforum2.com/"

Vesta

2023-11-26T01:17:16Z

Arantor: Created page with "Vesta is a roleplay-focused forum platform, designed from scratch by Kendra Alvarez. Prior to 2018, Kendra, under the handle Arceus, had produced a mod for SMF for running roleplays but was dissatisfied with the SMF community and the lack of progress SMF was making and instead decided to roll her own. The project was originally known as Gaia Athens, later Vesta Athens, with a mentioned in-development edition called Salerno. The software was originally available for a..."

Invision Power Services

2023-11-26T01:13:17Z

Arantor: Created page with "Invision Power Services is the name of the company Matt Mecham went to work for after departing IkonBoard They are the developers of the platform previously known as Invision Power Board (IPB), Invision Power Services (IPS) and currently Invision Community. More information: https://invisioncommunity.com/"

IkonBoard

2023-11-26T01:11:33Z

Arantor: Created page with "IkonBoard was founded in autumn 1999 by Matt Mecham as a Perl-based forum system that would store posts as files on the server. Work continued from version 0.9 in autumn 1999 to the 3.x series in 2002, under Mecham's leadership and it grew new features (including database support), but owing to business interests and the sale to a corporate owner, Mecham would ultimately depart in 2002 to form Invision Power Services. Meanwhile development would loosely continue -..."

XenForo

2023-11-26T01:06:00Z

Arantor:

XenForo is a paid platform founded in 2009 (with initial release in 2010) by Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan, formerly lead and senior developer at Jelsoft, creators of [[vBulletin]] (though Kier was not lead developer until the 2.x series)

More information: https://xenforo.com/

XenForo

2023-11-26T01:05:46Z

Arantor: Created page with "XenForo is a paid platform founded in 2009 (with initial release in 2010) by Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan, formerly lead and senior developer at Jelsoft, creators of vBulletin (though Kier was not lead developer until the 2.x series) More information: https://xenforo.com/"

XenForo is a paid platform founded in 2009 (with initial release in 2010) by Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan, formerly lead and senior developer at Jelsoft, creators of vBulletin (though Kier was not lead developer until the 2.x series)

More information: https://xenforo.com/

VBulletin

2023-11-26T01:04:31Z

Arantor: Created page with "Note: the correct name of this platform is vBulletin; the capitalisation of the V is enforced by the wiki software. == Early history == vBulletin was founded in 1999 or thereabouts, run by a company called Jelsoft, with a first release in 2000, which was commercial only. By 2007, the 3.x series had become one of the de-facto solutions for web based forums, and owing to the number of forums they themselves ran using the software, Jelsoft was acquired by Internet Brands..."

YAF.NET

2023-11-26T00:52:16Z

Arantor: Created page with "YAF.NET stands for 'Yet Another Forum.NET' reflecting that it is written using the .NET framework (specifically, C# with ASP.NET) More information: https://www.yetanotherforum.net/ GitHub repo: https://github.com/YAFNET/YAFNET"

CBACK

2023-11-26T00:50:54Z

Arantor: Created page with "CBACK is a self-hosted forum platform written in PHP. The development team is German, though the platform is dual language. Website: https://cback.net/en/ - licenses start at €39 for a one-site license with 1 year support."

PunBB

2023-11-26T00:48:50Z

Arantor: Created page with "PunBB was founded in 2003 to be a lightweight, fast forum eschewing some common features to be add-ons (e.g. polls were not a core feature). PunBB's lead developer left the project in 2008, for which principle development was forked into FluxBB by a new team. There is a small but dedicated community still maintaining PunBB over at https://punbb.informer.com/ GitHub repo: https://github.com/punbb/punbb"

Wedge

2023-11-26T00:46:38Z

Arantor:

FluxBB

2023-11-26T00:46:10Z

Arantor: Created page with "FluxBB was founded in 2008 as a fork of PunBB citing the need to keep it free of commercial interests, after the original founder left that project. The last major release was in 2018, though maintenance commits are visible in the GitHub repo from 2021. The project used to have a website at fluxbb.org but this is not working as of November 2023. GitHub repo: https://github.com/fluxbb/fluxbb"

Flarum

2023-11-26T00:44:18Z

Arantor:

Flarum is a modern PHP-based, mobile-first community platform. It was founded in 2014 including former developers of [[esoTalk]] and [[FluxBB]].

More information: https://flarum.org/

Flarum

2023-11-26T00:42:31Z

Arantor: Created page with "Flarum is a modern PHP-based, mobile-first community platform. More information: https://flarum.org/"

Flarum is a modern PHP-based, mobile-first community platform.

More information: https://flarum.org/

YABB SE

2023-11-26T00:40:46Z

Arantor:

SMF

2023-11-26T00:39:12Z

Arantor:

MyBB

2023-11-26T00:38:00Z

Arantor: Created page with "MyBB was founded in 2002 as an alternative forum platform to phpBB and YABB SE, with more than a passing nod to vBulletin in its technical and aesthetic design choices. MyBB is still actively developed, available in a self-hosted form, and is written in PHP. More information: https://mybb.com/"

Protendo

2023-11-26T00:36:24Z

Arantor:

Protendo

2023-11-26T00:36:10Z

Arantor: Created page with "Protendo was a short-lived fork from SMF that started sometime in 2011. Its primary developer was 'Bloc', one of the most prevalent designers in the SMF community and someone that had worked on the default theme in the past (mostly on 1.1's Core and 2.0's Curve) Protendo was based on the view that the frontend theme should be able to control precisely how things should be displayed, even if the data was not necessarily available (a design trait driven originally by SMF..."

Protendo was a short-lived fork from SMF that started sometime in 2011.

Its primary developer was 'Bloc', one of the most prevalent designers in the SMF community and someone that had worked on the default theme in the past (mostly on 1.1's Core and 2.0's Curve)

Protendo was based on the view that the frontend theme should be able to control precisely how things should be displayed, even if the data was not necessarily available (a design trait driven originally by SMF's views on separation of concerns, that the backend should provide data to the front end only)

Much of the design that was done for Protendo was later released in conventional themes for SMF, and it is unknown how far Protendo development was taken before it was ultimately shelved.

ElkArte

2023-11-26T00:33:23Z

Arantor: Created page with "ElkArte is a fork of SMF that occurred in 2012 after some questionable comments were made that caused the entire development team to resign in unison. Having largely completed what they considered a viable SMF 2.1 to their satisfaction, they forked and began a process of modernising the software internally and throughout. More information: https://www.elkarte.net/"

Wedge

2023-11-26T00:31:14Z

Arantor: Created page with "Wedge is a fork of SMF. It was started in the summer of 2010 as a private fork of SMF because at that time the license had not yet been opened. It was formed by two prominent members of SMF's ecosystem, Arantor and Nao, who felt very strongly that after the internal struggles of the team in early 2010, that SMF had a limited future. From 2010 to 2013 they worked to modernise SMF and add new features. Arantor left in summer 2013 citing personal tension with Nao, and..."

Wedge is a fork of [[SMF]].

It was started in the summer of 2010 as a private fork of SMF because at that time the license had not yet been opened. It was formed by two prominent members of SMF's ecosystem, Arantor and Nao, who felt very strongly that after the internal struggles of the team in early 2010, that SMF had a limited future.

From 2010 to 2013 they worked to modernise SMF and add new features. Arantor left in summer 2013 citing personal tension with Nao, and would later rejoin the SMF dev team for a few months.

There was a website at wedge.org but this appears to be offline as of November 2023.

Notable features:
* flexible warning/infractions system
* rules based moderation system to moderate or prevent posts
* integrated media gallery system

SMF

2023-11-26T00:26:37Z

Arantor: Created page with "SMF - Simple Machines Forum - was founded in 2003 after license issues with YABB SE. The original core development team was Jeff Lewis, Joseph Fung and "[Unknown] W. Brackets", and SMF 1.0 was released in 2004. == 1.0 release == During the development phase, it was referred to as 'Unknown's secret project', and developed alongside security patches and support for YABB SE but all major development had stopped on YABB SE by early 2003 to make way for SMF. It debute..."

SMF - Simple Machines Forum - was founded in 2003 after license issues with [[YABB SE]].

The original core development team was Jeff Lewis, Joseph Fung and "[Unknown] W. Brackets", and SMF 1.0 was released in 2004.

== 1.0 release ==

During the development phase, it was referred to as 'Unknown's secret project', and developed alongside security patches and support for YABB SE but all major development had stopped on YABB SE by early 2003 to make way for SMF.

It debuted in early 2004 for public consumption, featuring an upgrader/importer for YABB SE forums, plus a copy of the stock YABB SE theme (dubbed Classic), and its own new default theme, Babylon.

== 1.1 release ==

1.1 was released in autumn 2006 featuring a new default theme (internally referred to as NDT during its development) and later named Core. Both Classic and Babylon themes were shipped with 1.1.

The main development focus in 1.1 was integration support for portals (e.g. a bridge to Mambo/Joomla), though various general improvements were added.

It was around this time that Jeff, Joseph and Unknown began to transition out of the community to focus on other things in their lives.

== 2.0 release ==

Several major features were added in 2.0: support for PostgreSQL and SQLite databases, post moderation, built in warning system, paid subscriptions.

However, there was a lot of internal debate within the team especially during 2009-2010 and the project changed management as well as license; the 2.0 release was finally made in 2011 under the BSD license.

2.0 also debuted with another new theme, Curve, and Core was also shipped with it. Classic and Babylon ports for 2.0 were later made.

== 2.1 release ==

After much internal tension, 2.1 was finally released in 2022, nearly 11 years after the previous release (though the team had continued to make security and maintenance releases in that time for the 2.0 branch).

2.1 ships with a number of modern features: responsive theme by default (dubbed Curve2), likes, mentions, alerts, redesigned admin panel, post and PM drafts, a new WYSIWYG editor, better support for Unicode.

SQLite support, as well as support for admin panel backups were dropped due to a lack of reliability, and minor other options were dropped, much to the community's displeasure.

== 3.0 release ==

A 3.0 release is in the works.

== Forks ==

Several forks were made from SMF after the license was updated.

* [[Wedge]]
* [[ElkArte]]
* [[Protendo]]
* [[Eos Alpha]]