Is there any future for Phorum?

For many years now Phorum development has completely stalled. Thomas, is it not time to tell the plain truth about the future of the online-forum I once believed was the best among all? It would be fair to everybody whoever invested in Phorum or who wants to implement it. Thank you for being frank and fair.

Repeating the question over and over again won't get you another answer.
As said already: [www.phorum.org]

There is currently no ongoing development beside of critical fixes.
I'm for one using the 5.3 development code in production and I'm doing minor customer coding.

We can't see in the future, if some additional developers will pick it up, it might change quickly.

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Thomas Seifert

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Thomas Seifert
Repeating the question over and over again won't get you another answer.
As said already: [www.phorum.org]

There is currently no ongoing development beside of critical fixes.
I'm for one using the 5.3 development code in production and I'm doing minor customer coding.

We can't see in the future, if some additional developers will pick it up, it might change quickly.

That reply was posted almost a year ago, there nothing wrong to follow up on it.

Bill

Thanks for your reply, Thomas! When I wistfully watch how other forums are continuously being developed (i..e.Tapatalk/Wordpress integration), I am afraid that the time for Phorum is slowly running out. I am surprised that Brian Moon lets his baby or let's say aged elephant slowly die in the prairie without posting any enlightening comment. Thomas, you do a great job keeping up the support in this dire situation but - just by observing the amount of posts per month - I conclude that general interest for Phorum has diminished. Unfortunately, I feel I put my eggs in the wrong basket.

Is it better to make a painful break than draw out the agony?

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Thomas Seifert
Repeating the question over and over again won't get you another answer.
As said already: [www.phorum.org]

There is currently no ongoing development beside of critical fixes.
I'm for one using the 5.3 development code in production and I'm doing minor customer coding.

We can't see in the future, if some additional developers will pick it up, it might change quickly.

Interesting Conversation.

The demise or resurrection of Phorum.. and it begs the Question, What is the Future of ALL Message Boards and their ilk in the Future? Let's face it most are just Boring.

Social Networks, Twitter, and other such ephemerata continual to excite the momentary, and override the conversational and durable.

I'm not a PHP coder, but I am working on some concepts to incorporate HTML5's marvelous possibilities with Message Boards and blur the lines with its integration with Enhanced Multi-Media WebPages.

As things go, the pendulum now swings toward fast, flashy, and fleeting, just as the trend of phones was once for smaller and smaller to the point of uselessness and now is moving back to bigger and bigger. (New iPhone, etc.)

The future Board will probably be some combination of all the Above resulting in a Non-Bored Board User.

Have a Great Day, and Thanks for all the Work You've Done.
We non-PHPers Appreciate it.


Roland

Costa Rica
Roland@SlothCreek.com

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ZenBlaster
Interesting Conversation.

The demise or resurrection of Phorum.. and it begs the Question, What is the Future of ALL Message Boards and their ilk in the Future? Let's face it most are just Boring.

Social Networks, Twitter, and other such ephemerata continual to excite the momentary, and override the conversational and durable.

Well said. As a Usenet veteran, I've been adrift since it was
sidelined into oblivion. Searching elsewhere for "the conversational
and durable," I've found that most forums are using software
that has adopted the irritating distractions of social networks,
such as ratings systems and avatars. Reddit, for example,
has adopted ratings systems to an extreme.

Then I happened upon a Phorum-powered forum called Fairfax Underground
( [www.fairfaxunderground.com] )
and liked its simplicity. Now I'm wondering how to locate more
forums that use Phorum.

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korsakov
Unfortunately, I feel I put my eggs in the wrong basket.

Is it better to make a painful break than draw out the agony?

Since you're in agony, the answer is yes.

I still love phorum, and still have a use for it on some of my smaller projects. For my biggest and very very active community though, we had to move on to something else. The community wanted some of new features, tapatalk compatibility, etc, and for a while I would hand code new things into my Phorum community, manipulate things here to make them work the way I wanted, etc.

But I am a hobbyist programmer and there was a limit to what I can do and the time available for me to do it. It's the same situation with Tom, Brian, and Marcel (I can remember this other name at the moment). This is a freeware script that is developed as time permits. But as time goes on, it has to be delegated to other things, careers, marriage, kids, i.e. responsibilities. It's not like that with paid forum software.

The turning point for me was when I moved to a new server, and all my images and avatars we're broken. Nobody had the time really to give me support here, and I had a broken site that people depended on. I switched to paid software and hired a company to transfer everything from the Phorum database to the new software.

If your community's needs are small, Phorum fits the bill with ease, and I truly believe it is the best freeware forum product out there, especially if you have a knack for some HTML template editing and perhaps a little PHP coding as well. If you're community is desiring more, then give them what they want.

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Robert Angle
Phorum lover, nothing more.
Ruminations

Hi Robert, It is kind of sad that such a comment needs to come from a long-time user, that there is apparently no founder being able to deliver a "State of the Phorum" speech. We can be thankful that Thomas is still providing support to the newbies. Thank you Thomas!

Apropos Tapatalk: I was recently able to get an ambitious developer from Tapatalk to create an interface to Phorrum. Are you or anybody else interested to check it out?

60% of people are browsing the web on tablets and smartphones..or is it more by now?

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korsakov
that there is apparently no founder being able to deliver a "State of the Phorum" speech

I'm not sure what you want to hear. Brian, as the original founder, left the team quite some time ago because he also simply doesn't have the time to care for "his baby".
I wrote everything that I had to tell about this and I, unfortunately, haven't seen any developer chime in.

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Thomas Seifert

No, I have not been aware that Brian left. Maurice also disappeared without a note as far as I know. To attract developers Phorum needs to make money or create attractive incentives with the help of sponsors. Nobody will work for free. Why do other forums well? Why is Phorum on the decline? Because there is no change.I just find the overall style a bit questionable.

Korsakov,

Apparently you believe the developers owe you an explanation or something , you are wrong.

What you bought the day you downloaded it for free, was all that was offered. This is no different than commercial software, except you pay for commercial software. Microsoft discontinues software all of the time. Computer game software shops go out of business on pretty regular basis.

Hello Scott, I asked a couple of questions and I expressed astonishment. That was all. So, do you have anything to put on the table, a bright idea or a suggestion that would make this exchange more productive and helpful? If not, why write at all?

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Scott Finegan
Korsakov,

Apparently you believe the developers owe you an explanation or something , you are wrong.

What you bought the day you downloaded it for free, was all that was offered. This is no different than commercial software, except you pay for commercial software. Microsoft discontinues software all of the time. Computer game software shops go out of business on pretty regular basis.

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korsakov
Hello Scott, I asked a couple of questions and I expressed astonishment. That was all. So, do you have anything to put on the table, a bright idea or a suggestion that would make this exchange more productive and helpful? If not, why write at all?

Calm down. There is really no reason to get aggressive on other forum members.
Its people like you who make it dull to work on open source projects. Its sucking up all the energy for no reason and it gets totally uninteresting to spend the free time on projects.

Robert and Scott really hit the nail on the head with all what they said. Life goes on.

Yes, Brian has left the team quite some time ago, Maurice went silent over the last years as well - yeah, there are other responsibilities.
I took over hosting and management of the site to keep it running and I'm checking the forums regularly, every now and then also coding a line on the old code.
For my current requirements on clean and maintainable code I would write it all from scratch in an OOP way - but I don't have the time to do it all alone in the rare spare time, therefore it will probably stay quite a while in the state it is right now if no one gets a contract to do some base work for a revamp and I see nothing like that in any corner.

Everything that could be said was written in this topic. I'll close it.

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Thomas Seifert