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15 Free Best Open Source Forums

Updated On 12/02/2016 Author : Pradeep Kumar Topic : Resources Short URL : http://hbb.me/1JtjZyn

CONNECT WITH HBB ON SOCIAL MEDIA Like Share 8.3K Follow@HellBoundBlog 5,601followers

I was about to start a forum for HBB, but due to my semester Best Free Blogging Tools

exams and tight schedule, I was not able to make it Grammarly Dropbox

unfortunately.
HootSuite Buer

I made a list of good free and open source forum software for ThirstyAliates Evernote

using and I thought I can make this as an article, so here it is. In Instamojo Payoneer

this article, I mentioned 15 free best open source forums. But

personally, I recommend bbPress and phpbb. If you know any
Tweetsby@HellBoundBlog
other good forum, please share it in the comments!
HellBoundBloggers

Best Open Source Forums @HellBoundBlog

Willbeattending#BlogX(blogx.in)onFeb11th
(NewDelhi).
P.S. Description of each forum taken from respective sites. Credit goes to them!
Willbethereforthewholeday,lotstolearn&
network.
1. phpBB Forums

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phpBB

Millions of people use phpBB on a daily basis, making it the most widely used open source bulletin
board system in the world. phpBB is released under the GNU General Public License, you may make
changes to the code without rst having to obtain permission from the phpBB Group.

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2. bbPress Forums

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bbPress

bbPress is forum software with a twist from the creators of WordPress. Have you ever been
frustrated with forum or bulletin board software that was slow, bloated and always got your server
hacked? bbPress is focused on web standards, ease of use, ease of integration, and speed.

3. Discourse

Discourse is a popular open source forum software. They are famous for their minimalist
conversation style forum threads. Discourse provides paid hosting for using their forum or you can
install Discourse on DigitalOcean, which is pretty much cheap compared.

4. Vanilla Forums

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Vanilla Forums

Vanilla is an open-source, standards-compliant, multi-lingual, theme-able, pluggable discussion

forum for the web. With over 450 plugins so far, Vanilla is ideal for custom community solutions.
Vanilla has been adopted by over 300,000 businesses, brands, and fans.

5. Simple Machines Forums

Simple Machines Forum

Simple Machines Forum

Simple Machines Forum SMF in short is a free, professional-grade software package that allows
you to set up your own online community within minutes. Its powerful custom made template
engine puts you in full control of the lay-out of your message board and with our unique SSI or
Server Side Includes function you can let your forum and your website interact with each other.

6. miniBB Forums

minibb

miniBB is a free standalone open source software for building Your own Internet forum, written in
PHP and using a mySQL database as the backend. Its developed with a pretty simple purpose of
posting and getting messages, which includes answering questions, spreading opinions, providing
users support and another kind of online public communication between website owners and their
visitors, and between visitors themselves.

7. YetAnotherForum

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YetAnotherForum

YetAnotherForum.NET (YAF) is The Open Source Discussion Forum for sites running ASP.NET. 100%
written in C#, YAF (pronounced like laugh) is a unique combination of Open Source, Microsofts
.NET platform and an international collaboration of the .NET developer community. Growing and
changing daily, the YAF project is lead by Jaben Cargman of Tiny Gecko. YAF runs on any web server
that supports ASP.NET v2.0 (and above) and SQL Server. YAF is licensed under GPL.

8. IceBB Forums

IceBB

IceBB is a powerful, fast, free, and open-source forum solution powered by the free PHP and MySQL.
IceBB scales well, no matter how many users or posts, due to its clean and ecient code. It can also
be fully customized to your needs with full skin and language support. A powerful admin control
center, along with easy-to-use moderation tools, allows you to easily manage all aspects of your
forum.

9. YaBB Forums

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YaBB

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YaBB is a leading FREE, Open Source community forum system (bulletin board, message board)
written in Perl. Learn how it started, who is on the project team, and what the main features are. This
system is the rst and most popular open-source Perl forum software and it runs very fast.

10. MyBB

MyBB

MyBB is a discussion board that has been around for a while; it has evolved from other bulletin
boards into the forum package it is today. Therefore, it is a professional and ecient discussion
board, developed by an active team of developers. The MyBB history has been recorded and is
available for the interested to read. You can also read more about the MyBB team and why they
develop MyBB in their spare time.

11. DeluxeBB

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deluxebb

DeluxeBB is a powerful open source bulletin board, which helps you create your own web
communities in less than 10 minutes. The board is written completely in PHP and uses a MySQL
database to store its content. All pages are optimized for speed and security. What we believe is not
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database to store its content. All pages are optimized for speed and security. What we believe is not
necessary to overload the software with features like many other forum providers, we always keep
the speed, security and easy handling as our primary objectives.

12. punBB

punbb

PunBB is a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board. It is released under the GNU General
Public License. Its primary goals are to be faster, smaller and less graphically intensive as compared
to other discussion boards. PunBB has fewer features than many other discussion boards, but is
generally faster and outputs smaller, semantically correct XHTML-compliant pages.

13. FluxBB

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Fluxbb

FluxBB is a fast, light, user-friendly forum application for your website. FluxBB was designed as a
lighter, faster alternative to some of the traditional feature heavy forum applications. It is easy to use
and has a proven track record of stability and security making it an ideal choice of forum for your
website.

14. Phorum
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14. Phorum

Phorum

Phorum gives the web designers the power to rearrange the data in any shape, form or fashion they
could want. The templates are in pure HTML with simple to understand text commands embedded
in them. You can use the provided templates as a starting point or start from scratch. The power is in
your hands. Phorum has a very exible hook and module system.

15. UseBB

UseBB

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UseBB is an Open Source forum package developed in PHP 4 and using the popular MySQL database
back-end to store data. Unlike other popular forum systems, UseBB does not strive to have as many
features as possible, but to be one of the easiest and most usable forum packages, limiting the basic
feature set to only the essential. UseBB is pure forum software.

15. XMB: eXtreme Message Board

XMB: eXtreme Message Board

XMB is a lightweight PHP forum software with all the features you need to support a growing
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XMB is a lightweight PHP forum software with all the features you need to support a growing
community. With outstanding community support and contribution, you will nd XMB to be easy to
setup, customize, and enhance. It oers the key features you need to get your message board up
and running

These are some of the best free open source forums we came across, we might have missed some,
so if you know any, feel free to let us know in the comments below.

By Pradeep Kumar
CEO and Founder of Slashsquare, Indian Blog Network and Web Consulting Media. HBB is a part of
Slashsquare Network. I'm a Tech Blogger, Striving Entrepreneur, Atheist, and Proud Indian. Catch me on
Facebook and Twitter.

My Website Follow 5.4K Follow@SPradeepKr 4,000followers Pradeep Kumar

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48 Comments

bob
mybb and phpbb free software doesnot have invite only registration include in them sir?

26/06/2016 at 3:56 PM Reply

Maik Thiele
Deluxebb.com is sold. Codoforum is cool and simple too.

17/03/2016 at 5:53 PM Reply

bob
this is the best list.hatso to pradeep kumar sir.
friends i want to create invite only registration forum
can you say which is best for this
05/03/2016 at 3:10 PM Reply
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Pradeep Kumar
Try Discourse mate.

05/03/2016 at 3:31 PM Reply

bob
thanq sir for reply.
mybb and phpbb free software doesnt have that invite only registration option
include them sir.

05/03/2016 at 4:41 PM Reply

Prateek
Also include Flarum in the list. There are many other new softwares, you would love to update the
list. Thanks

12/02/2016 at 3:06 PM Reply

Santhosh veer
Try this advanced and secure Responsive PHP Forum
Code forum ( http://codoforum.com )
light weighted and High end mobile responsive forum build with PHP/MysQl and bootstrap.
Good Secure Php Forum

23/01/2016 at 6:50 PM Reply

Beth
Currently it sounds like Expression Engine is the top blogging platform available right now. (from
what Ive read) Is that what youre using on your blog?

04/09/2013 at 10:26 PM Reply

niels webdesign
Ive tried Vanilla, but i think phpBB has a better forum style

09/11/2012 at 7:17 PM Reply

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salvatore
really great list, but being WP fan I absolute vote for bbPress

17/09/2012 at 12:12 PM Reply

santosh
are there any opensource forum software with ajax support?

16/08/2012 at 8:08 PM Reply

Pradeep Kumar
You can try SNAF Santosh,
http://code.google.com/p/snaf/

17/08/2012 at 3:04 AM Reply

geetha
Really a great list of open source forums heard many of them but didnt try some of them.

06/03/2012 at 10:52 PM Reply

tips inside
Awesome collection for forums, i thumbs up to miniBB, it's very tiny and eective it will surely
useful for beginners and for study,
thanks again

05/12/2011 at 10:09 PM Reply

MaloManty
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28/05/2011 at 2:26 AM Reply

Pradeep
Till now i have only tried smf and phbb hope gonna try rest too.
thanks for sharing

21/01/2011 at 9:12 PM Reply

arriejela
I am glad to naly nd this kind of forum i was looking for , so i will do my best to keep up

21/11/2010 at 3:26 AM Reply

Asad Khan
I only knew phpBB .bbPress and SMF before as they are more popular.Thanks for adding more to
my list.

02/06/2010 at 12:15 AM Reply

samuel
lol hahaha man nice post!!!!!!! love this! thanks

31/05/2010 at 9:04 PM Reply

Frank
Hi great article thanks for sharing. What would be a good Irish or UK forum or website source for
body modication?
Frank

28/05/2010 at 3:27 PM Reply

Frank
What would be a good Irish or UK forum or website source for body modication?

28/05/2010 at 3:24 PM Reply

Round Up For the Week Ending 28-05-2010

[] 15 Free Best Open Source Forums []

28/05/2010 at 1:45 PM Reply

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2/14/2017 15FreeBestOpenSourceForums

stock trading course

Thanks for sharing your open source forum list, Im now a member of some of this list and there are
available of resources.

27/05/2010 at 9:36 PM Reply

Additional Blogging Tools To Interact More With Your Readers | Creative

Blogging Ideas
[] Installing a forum in your site, can help you a lot to get high trac to your blog/site. With the help
of forum you can easily solve problems asked by readers, so it is a super good way to increase
interaction with your readers. If youre planning to install a forum on your site, Pradeep a got a huge
list of 15 open source forums. []

27/05/2010 at 7:18 PM Reply

Fluollino
I am glad to be a member right here and seem forward to talking to you all and sharing some of my
hobbies which include woodworking and designing plans for woodworking.

27/05/2010 at 7:03 PM Reply

Chris
Mybb all the way. It is easy to install and setup, has a great selection of plugins and is really easy to
customize the themes.

26/05/2010 at 6:44 AM Reply

Dev | Technshare
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Great list of open source forums. Though my favorite is mybb.
Thanks for sharing this great list.

24/05/2010 at 9:44 AM Reply

Directory Sieve
If you are planing to start a forum, start with Vbullitin, because these opensource scrips has next to
no support and they gets spammed really badly. i have tried quite a few of those, like phpbb, smf
etc. which were all getting spammed a lot.
I like opensource, but remember, not everything which is opensource is like wordpress and
bbpress which is based on wordpress is not even half as good, so think about it before you start a
forum. go for a professional script, vbullitin is my favorite though its quite expensive,

22/05/2010 at 12:26 AM Reply

Chethan
By The way, what is BB?

21/05/2010 at 8:58 AM Reply

S.Pradeep Kumar
I believe Bulletin Board!

21/05/2010 at 9:27 AM Reply

Rohit
Preet good list. I have worked with ppPress and PHPbb and I recommend these two for most of the
people. But people who want to make business out of Forums, they should try vBulletin!

20/05/2010 at 9:04 PM Reply

Biodun
Nice list, i m more familiar with phpBB and SMF, thanks for the list. Bookmarked!

20/05/2010 at 5:48 PM Reply

chandan@work at home blog

So all forums are related to software, ASP.NET, I like digital point, v7network forum for learning
about SEO, link building.

20/05/2010 at 11:45 AM Reply

Robin
I have experience with all of these forum installation, and maintenance. Nice list.
Robin

20/05/2010 at 11:15 AM Reply

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Anish K.S
Me running a Mybb forum, its cool.

19/05/2010 at 9:53 PM Reply

Alok
Yes, Arun BBPress is best for WordPress blogger and user friendly.

19/05/2010 at 4:59 PM Reply

Arun Basil Lal

Nice, right on time. I think I will go with bbPress. Also checking out phpBB and SMF.

19/05/2010 at 7:50 AM Reply

Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing

Not bad on timing; a forum is in the plans for me as well. I've always liked PHPBB the best, but I will
check out some others; the list is much appreciated.

19/05/2010 at 6:45 AM Reply

Josiah@Free iPad
Holy crap! You continue to surprise me with these lists. I had no idea there were so many free
Previous forums
Article software solutions out there hah. I was under
Like the impression
Share Tweet that phpbb, bbpress and smf
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where the only ones..
Actually, invisionfree isnt on there, any reason for that?

19/05/2010 at 4:21 AM Reply

S.Pradeep Kumar
I thought it was a forum hosting site? or?

19/05/2010 at 3:14 PM Reply

Robin
Its a free forum software which is actually a version of invision board (IPB Board) a
very good competitor for VBulletin (another paid forum software). Invisionfree is no
more secure one to use with the server. Can give some trouble to the hosting
provider with some instant aws.
Paid forums always have awesome addons, plugins and components compare to
free one. So far SMF is one of the good forum software in security.
PhpBB used by so many people and when we add some plugins to it the real
security problems starts at that point. I recommend SMF than PhpBB.

20/05/2010 at 11:18 AM Reply

Anup@Hack Tutors
Hey! Thanks for these links. Is this popular forum among the net?

18/05/2010 at 10:05 PM Reply

DrigmaabiberM
I have only just joined this particular community forum and I have got to be the newest member and
I look forwards to chatting with you all in here before long.

18/05/2010 at 8:55 PM Reply

ashok
my favorite is SMF, PunBB, SEO Board.. SEO board is very simple, i like that most,,

18/05/2010 at 8:49 PM Reply

Tech Sputter
In myBB we do not have to maintain our own web server, we may also not have sucient time to
create n upload our own forumsso they give it for free this is reallu good n useful

18/05/2010 at 8:37 PM Reply

Tech Sputter
myBB n yaBB i ve tried them before they are really useful to use n cope up with

18/05/2010 at 8:33 PM Reply

Dev | Technshare
i don't know about yaBB, but mybb is one of my favorite.

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24/05/2010 at 9:35 AM Reply

Srivathsan G.K
Nice list, havent tried out anything. Will try out phpbb dummy

18/05/2010 at 8:05 PM Reply

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