Phorum status and future plans

Dear development team,

Years ago I used to use Phorum for some small website projects I had. Now I have not been in need of forum software anymore for quite long, but it seems I will be soon again. Since I was very impressed with Phorum back then obviously this was the first place to look at. I must admit though that what I found raised some concern for me about the future of Phorum. Phorum itself has hardly changed at all since I used it in 2008, except for some security changes. It is still version 5.2, while I remember how version 5.3 was expected to be ready within two years back then. Some points which strengthened my concerns:
- The count of support request topics (much less than to be expected from an awsome OpenSource project)
- The fact that the developer blog's last entry dates from November 2011, one full year ago!!
- Even though php 5.3 has been here for over 3 years now and has evolved pretty well in regard to OOP, I see no topics in the development forum discussing the possibility of using that in a Phorum 6 version. Heck, the oldest mentioning of a Phorum 6 version dates from May 2010.

So what I wonder about is, and I mean this absolutely without any disrespect: how alive is Phorum at the moment, and what are the ambitions of Phorum for the future? Are there enough developers involved to move forward with Phorum? Does Phorum at all want to move forward, or is it just maintaining the current 5.2 version? Will Phorum still be here in 2 years? Will it still be relevant for new projects, or will it be outdone by newer more modern forum packages?

Now if the development team would like to see Phorum being still relevant in the future and if they would like to attract new users and developers, what is being done or what is planned to be done to reach those goals in the future?

Obviously I only say this because I think it would be shame if all the knowledge and effort in the Phorum software and through the Phorum team would go to a waste and die a slow death.

My best regards
Mortada

Surely a relatively small number of support requests points to the ease of use and stability of Phorum?
If the forums themselves were dead I would agree it would be concerning, but there is plenty of development going on in the Modules forum. The Phorum devs have always said they wanted a stable core with most "extra" functionality implemented via modules.

I think there are many, many sites that rely on Phorum to run, so I can't see it stagnating any time soon.

As far as I know, Brian is not a fan of OOP for OOP's sake - if the devs can get Phorum running faster by not using it I think they will continue to do so.

/\dam

--
My notable Phorum sites:
Movie Deaths Database - "review comments" system mostly powered by Phorum
Learn Chinese! - integrated forum quiz

Quote

- The count of support request topics (much less than to be expected from an awsome OpenSource project)

That speaks for a mature product.

Quote

- The fact that the developer blog's last entry dates from November 2011, one full year ago!!

Blogs are not where development happens. People got a life ;-).

Quote

- Even though php 5.3 has been here for over 3 years now and has evolved pretty well in regard to OOP, I see no topics in the development forum discussing the possibility of using that in a Phorum 6 version. Heck, the oldest mentioning of a Phorum 6 version dates from May 2010.

Speaking performance-wise OO programming in PHP was just made usable in PHP-5.3+, yeah.
Building Phorum as an OO tool would be a full rewrite from scratch without any usable version for quite a while thats why we are a bit hesitant but stll thinking about it.

Quote

Does Phorum at all want to move forward,

Yes

Quote

or is it just maintaining the current 5.2 version?

No

Quote

Will Phorum still be here in 2 years?

Yes

Quote

Will it still be relevant for new projects, or will it be outdone by newer more modern forum packages?

Depends on what you want. If you are just hunting for the best new language features then you should use something else.
If you want to use something speedy, extendable and working on a lot of hosting packages - then use phorum.

Quote

Now if the development team would like to see Phorum being still relevant in the future and if they would like to attract new users and developers, what is being done or what is planned to be done to reach those goals in the future?

More developers would be nice - to be honest - no idea though on how to attract those.

---

Thomas Seifert

Than you for your comment, Thomas. Keep it up with Phorum. Really good solution for us.

http://greenavis.com/