forum software

[Steven Avery]

I actually use a forum software, vBulletin, more as a blog than a forum.

Take a look.

Pure Bible Forum.
http://www.purebibleforum.com/

It seems to me that it sections out much better than a blog, and has nice ability to quickly put in pictures, change fonts, move posts, etc.
Granted it misses some of the blog niceties, ideally I would coordinate a blog with the forum.

vBulletin has not made everybody happy the last years, I am on V.4 and have no plans to go to V.5.  Yet I do occasionally run into glitches, one would lose data when a page would become white.  Usually a large overloaded thread with many pics.  That experience, which happened a few times and was difficult to troubleshoot, dampened my enthusiasm a bit.

So I may do the couple of hundred dollars and start Xenforo.  Then I actually would add features and plug-ins and perhaps build up a community of sorts.  I would like the Facebook sign-in, since I have many involved in Facebook, but that seems to not really function. Twitter sign-on is supposedly very good.

Then there is SMF and ElkeArte and such, Tuxman talked about them on another thread.  Less or no $, perhaps just as good in many ways.

And I may also use, separately, a forum as an adjunct to an e-commerce biz. (Precious metals.) There are many WordPress plugins that do forums, that are a bit rinnky-dink, that is another alternative. (We use WooCommerce under WordPress.)

Some of the other nouveau forums are here:
https://www.slant.co...elkarte-alternatives

Trying to get good SEO without a lot of time/money investment is one factor.

Your free-form thoughts welcome!

(I would keep vBulletin in its blog mode. It does many things very well.)

Steven

[Tuxman]

Both SMF and its fork ElkArte are free software, in one way or the other. Still, if I had the choice, I'd write my own forum software, (more or less) a PunBB or Phorum in a less insane language. I had already started twice. But there's only so much lifetime ...

I had a XenForo once. It was nice, but it had no users. Also, that one XenForo design is everywhere today, all newer forums look exactly the same. That's boring.

[Steven Avery]

Since so many of my Bible friends are on Facebook (with some migrating to MeWe) the Facebook log-in for a forum would be a major plus.  One person would recognize another, and with a click would see a familiar profile.  My feeling is that, if I really want discussions, this is a huge plus.

However, Facebook I think makes the API difficult and changing.

If you know of a forum that has solid Facebook log-in that would be a plus.

With vBulletin I put out a couple of hundred  $$ years ago, then hosting fees only.
So, similarly, I would not balk at some cash for Xenforo.

The "sameness" of Xenforo would not perturb me much, since the goal is practical research and conversation.
And there is probably ways to get around that, if needed.