Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
This article may contain original research. (April 2026) |
This article or section possibly contains original synthesis. Source material should verifiably mention and relate to the main topic. (April 2026) |
This article outlines the general features commonly found in various Internet forum software packages. It highlights major features that the manager of a forum might want and should expect to be commonly available in different forum software. These comparisons do not include remotely hosted services which use their own proprietary software, rather than offering a package for download which webmasters can host by themselves.
Basic general information about the forums: creator/company, license, etc. Systems listed on a light purple background are no longer in active development.
| Creator | Latest release date | Current stable version | Programming language | Supported databases | License | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bbPress[1] | WordPress Foundation | 2026-10-06 | 7.1.3[2] |
PHP[3] | MariaDB, MySQL[4] | GPL[5] |
| Beehive Forum[6] | Project Beehive Forum Developers | 2016-11-05 | 1.5.2 | PHP | MySQL[7] | GPL |
| Discourse[8] | Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc. |
2026-01-08; 9 months ago[±] |
v2026.1.0[9] |
Ruby, JavaScript | PostgreSQL[10] | GPL |
| Discuz![11] | Comsenz Inc. | 2022-12-31 | X3.5 | PHP | MariaDB, MySQL[12] | Proprietary |
| Flarum[13] | Flarum B.V. | 2025-03-12 | 1.8.10 | PHP | MySQL, MariaDB[14] | MIT |
| FluxBB[15] | FluxBB.org Developers | 2018-12-31 | 1.5.11 | PHP | MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite[16] | GPL |
| FUDforum[17] | Advanced Internet Designs Inc. | 2026-06-14; 3 months ago | 3.2.1[18] |
PHP | MariaDB, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite[19] | GPL |
| Ikonboard[20] | Matt Mecham (original creator) Joshua Johnson | 2012-10-19 | 3.1.5A | Perl | MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL | Proprietary |
| Invision Power Board[21] | Invision Power Services Inc. | 2024-11-12 | 4.7.19[22] | PHP | MariaDB, MySQL[23] | Proprietary |
| MyBB[24] | MyBB Group | 2025-06-02; 16 months ago | 1.8.39[25] |
PHP | MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite[26] | LGPL, moving to BSD in 2.0[27] |
| Phorum[28] | Brian Moon | 2017-08-23 | 5.2.23 | PHP | MySQL[29] | Phorum License 2 (BSD like) |
| phpBB[30] | phpBB Ltd. | 2026-09-24; 19 days ago | 3.3.19[31] |
PHP | MariaDB, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQL Server[32] | GPL |
| PunBB[33] | PunBB | 2021-03-09; 5 years ago | 1.4.6[34] |
PHP | MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite[35] | GPL |
| Simple Machines Forum[36] | Simple Machines | 2026-10-11; 2 days ago | 2.1.8[37] |
PHP | MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL[38] | BSD License |
| Syndie[39] | Anonymous (related to I2P) | 2016-08-14 | 1.107b | Java | Open source, multiple licenses | |
| Vanilla Forums[40] | Vanilla Forums | 2022-09-27 | 2022.019[41] | PHP | MariaDB, MySQL, Percona Server[42] | GPL[43] |
| vBulletin[44] | vBulletin Solutions Inc. | 2026-03-12; 7 months ago | 6.2.0[45] |
PHP[46] | MariaDB, MySQL[47] | Proprietary[48] |
| XenForo | XenForo Limited, Kier Darby, Mike Sullivan | 2025-07-15; 14 months ago | 2.3.7[49] |
PHP[50] | MySQL[51] | Proprietary |
| WoltLab Suite Forum | WoltLab GmbH | 2025-04-15 | 6.1.7 | PHP | MariaDB, MySQL | Proprietary (Forum); LGPL 2.1 (Core) |
| Apache Answer | Apache-2.0 license | |||||
| Creator | Latest release date | Current stable version | Programming language | Supported databases | License |
Most forums provide an option for the forum owner to customize the look and feel. Some forums also allow the administrator to create multiple styles or themes, and allow the user to choose which one they wish to view. Themes may simply be a different set of colors and graphics, or they may involve a different layout to the forum, such as one optimized for small-screen devices.
The comparison table shows whether a forum software allows forum administrators to customise the "template" of the forum (or specific sections thereof) without altering the released code. Support is considered partial where it is only possible to add CSS rules in this way.[52]
Unread message tracking refers to the way that is used by forum software to track and display messages that have not yet been read by the current user. This can be one of the following:
This column judges the ability to allow users to export data from the forum installation and then import it in new installations of the same software (cf. right to fork and data portability) or feed it to data conversion tools.
Software portability is a key assessment criterion for the choice and procurement of software.[110]
Whether the software can be used with standard Email or NNTP clients. Adoption of standard protocols is key for interoperability.[111]
Whether the internationalization and localization of the software are sufficient to both allow and actually provide grammatically correct support for the native language of the target users.[112]
For the purposes of this table, we consider languages used by a number of installations/users equal to at least 1% of the top million web properties using that software,[113] without major reported bugs in support.
Single sign-on is often required to enhance web accessibility of the application.[114] This can be accomplished with standards like OAuth and OpenID.
To prevent loss of content from browser crashes and the like, forum software may be equipped with the ability to automatically save unfinished posts as drafts, like some word processor and text editor software.
Drafts may be stored server-side (in the forum account) or client-side (browser's local storage). The former benefits from the ability to immediately resume drafts on another device, whereas the latter allows saving drafts while internet is disconnected and slightly reduces bandwidth consumption.
Automatic recommendation systems based on content and users can help forum users find existing discussions similar to those they are browsing or on the topic they are searching,[115] or else reach the correct users with their posts, avoiding to "spam" the forum with duplicate or off-topic posts.[116]
Many users do not bother to search a forum and directly create new threads to seek an answer to a question. On some forums, when the user types a new thread subject, the forum software brings up similar threads automatically on the side. This helps keep the number of redundant threads (or the overall forum pollution) to a lower level as users who neglect to search for a topic and are posting a thread may find the answer to their question as they are creating the new thread.
Most forums are at risk of continuous attack by forum spammers, largely promoting websites with no relevance to the forum's niche. Systems vary in how they are geared to defense, and checking the offering is an important consideration before selection. A forum cannot succeed unless there is an effective system of defense, and an efficient set of tools for spam removal.
CAPTCHAs are a common feature used among most internet forum software and are often used to prevent automated registrations.
Banning or deleting membership should come as standard, with the ability to blacklist the username, email address or IP address for variable time spans.
Reference to an anti-forum spam database can be built into the forum software, or offered as add-ons for specific databases.
Human-friendly forum URLs do not have a query string and instead contain only the path of the topic. A user-unfriendly URL may contain cryptic parameters, numeric IDs, or file type extensions (e.g. .php) that do not matter to the user and could change if the forum is reimplemented using a different programming language. User-friendly URLs are easy to remember and to type, and may enhance search engine optimization (SEO).
In general this is accomplished via URL mapping, however, historically in many forum software packages, human-friendly URLs are an afterthought implemented via URL rewriting, and URLs often contain a numeric ID which represents the thread, while the remainder of the URL can in reality be any string: http://example.com/forum/12345/lets-use-friendly-urls and http://example.com/forum/12345/bogus-path-actually point to the same thread, http://example.com/forum/12345/. These are also known as URL slugs.
The only non-controversial counter-argument to using user-friendly URLs is that they would be leaked in the HTTP referer header field when a user clicks on an external link from a post, which is undesirable for private (sub)forums, since a URL derived from the topic title could convey sensitive information.[117] This issue can be resolved by rewriting external links to point to a redirection page that performs referer hiding.
{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
This article outlines the general features commonly found in various Internet forum software packages. It highlights major features that the manager of a forum might want and should expect to be commonly available in different forum software. These comparisons do not include remotely hosted services which use their own proprietary software, rather than offering a package for download which webmasters can host by themselves.
This comparison covers notable software licenses which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project, or the Fedora Project.
Simple Machines Forum (SMF) software is an open-source web application that provides Internet forum and message board services. It is developed by Simple Machines. The name reflects the creator's initial goal of providing a website that could be operated by novice programmers and requires minimal server resources. Simple Machines won the forum-software.org best free forum software award in 2009.
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion platform where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes publicly visible. The name comes from the forums of Ancient Rome. Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; for example, a single conversation is called a "thread" or "topic". A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure; a forum can contain a number of sub-forums, each of which may have several topics. Depending on the forum's settings, users can be anonymous or have to register with the forum and then subsequently log in to post messages. On most forums, users do not have to log in to read existing messages.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.