What is the Future of phpBB?

[JLA]

So my question is - "What is the future for phpBB"?

The question about the future is interesting but many have little hope for any real innovation or a continuation of the PHPBB platform. But again - if it is not broken and presents the data and content in a user friendly manner - then.... if its not broke then.........

Are forums dead - or will they ever die completely - no

Still running phpbb2 (now almost 20 years) and it works better (due to changes and improvements) than it ever did as originally written. If you want your board to do something (then as we did) sometimes you need to innovate and make the changes yourself.

[wingmanfoilclub]

PHPBB seems to me to still be one of the best forum software solutions out there because of how robust it is. But the way PHPBB accomplishes its many features through visible BBCode in the UI is also off-putting to many users in the modern setting. Users don't want to see actual code or have to learn how to use the UI, or see options like "Do not automatically parse URLs." They just want intuitive integrated functioning like they see on Facebook. The more simple the interface looks and acts the better (while maintaining features).

I think the best path forward for PHPBB would be to do a major overhaul of the UI; simplifying the UI while at the same time adding more community focused features like a pop-up chat box for PMs, reactions, and a more customizable and robust user profile as a separate page for each user. All integrated without an extension or by official extensions.

PHPBB has to adapt to compete with Facebook groups. In my niche (the sport of wingfoiling), there are so many different Facebook groups (Ex. Groups based on age or weight, groups in different regions, used gear groups, a general wingfoiling group which is the biggest groups), but all of these groups are run by different individuals, there is no connection between the groups, and they are not easily searchable or archivable. Not to mention many of these group owners are charging for posts and hiding content they don't want seen. It's all very shady and disorganized. But there is no incentive for users to leave Facebook groups and sign up for a different site without a better solution.

With so many people using WordPress, PHPBB should simplify the UI and function as a fully compatible plugin within WordPress using the same login and session. PHPBB should become an integrated community platform for WordPress, not just a forum platform. Some of the work Axew3 is doing is really clever.

What I want to do with PHPBB is use it within my webpage as a way for my community members to be able to interact and also access all the information they want on wingfoiling in one place. (And not to have to answer the same question 3 times a day on different Facebook groups). I also would love to see PHPBB become more of a tool for building searchable databases. The user permissions and information is all there. Being able to set up a template for static pages that users can add information to like a wiki and then be moderated would be super powerful. And then have infrastructure to list the pages in an organized fashion and also make them searchable by taxonomies such as location, keyword, etc.

This is all just a bunch of rambling from someone trying to start an online community in 2024 that hasn't found the right tool to do so that actually would draw users away from the mess that is Facebook groups.

I do believe if PHPBB doesn't adapt, it will die.

[halil16]

What I've seen over time is that all the fanfare is overwhelmed by the fact that it's already doable with many extensions and style customizations.

You could say that BBcodes are difficult because social media has made people too lazy to even bother with simple things. But everyone can easy learn it . I've seen a few extensions being developed to solve this.

What I've come to believe over time is that anything is possible with phpBB.

[ssl]

PHPBB has to adapt to compete with Facebook groups.

phpBB and Facebook are two very distinct interfaces, and phpBB will never compete with the social network Facebook.
And above all, Facebook users very rarely go to a phpBB forum, although for a search for information, phpBB is much tidier than the Facebook draft.

[nou nou]

I ran a forum for a decade now and coming up to 50K relatively high quality posts - getting new users every day, and continuing to improve it with features and content. My users love it.

It's true that in the beginning a lot of people were complaining that the way to interact with the forum felt somewhat archaic - lots of that has been resolved with useability features as well - but now that the amount of content is so much larger, as a store of information to consult it beats everything else out there, like Discord, Facebook Groups, etc (which a lot of my users ALSO use). Today though, no one is complaining. Requesting some more features, sure, but no complaints.

I also read somewhere (sorry, tried to find the article but didn't find it) that there is a trend among younger users to move away from social media and gravitating towards more "static" forms of communication, like flat forums and wordpress sites.

Personally I'm a huge fan of phpBB, no doubt because I know it pretty well by now. I've had to learn hard and fast but it's so bloody solid.

[sejn]

Hi guys,

I have just installed an instance of phpBB on my personal site. Its basically to keep a small community alive because the ning.com site is being retired on May 31st and its a very niche art software thing most people will probably never heard of.

So I have created static versions of the existing ning site, looking at options to make that content searchable hopefully automatically posting to the phpbb site.

We have also setup a discord and there is facebook/reddit options but phpbb seems to fit the ning format best in my opinion. If i can find a way to make the legacy content searchable it should be perfect.

But even to join this site there are totally leftfield questions on setup of phpbb just to join.. wtf??? why? surely new people joining are joining for advice. Like I have 30+ years in software dev but I had no idea what I should be answering and just did a chatgpt on it. Which still did not give me the correct answer but I could work it out from there.

And simple things - how do you make a post sticky? I still cannot answer that. I'm sure spending more time it will become clear but its certainly not obvious.

But in terms of the previous poster there should be, as other developers have done in the past, ICQ I think, Skype, many others, Make a cutdown admin menu. Or do what apple have done make settings searchable.

Anyway hopefully development continues because I do think the boards are totally relevant. Facebook groups...hmmm.. they are neither as personal not relevant if you ask me. just my 2 cents.

Anyway I found this topic by googling is phpbb relevant in 2024. but reading the comments here I agree it is. The future? Don't know i'm totally new to this but hopefully.

If people can be releasing new software for the C64 still in 2024 its not gonna die

Sejn sawberry.

[Mick]

But even to join this site there are totally leftfield questions on setup of phpbb just to join

What do you mean? Do you mean the anti-bot CAPTCHA questions while signing up?

And simple things - how do you make a post sticky? I still cannot answer that

Thats odd because if I search how do you make a post sticky it comes up with the answer at least a dozen times.

Both of the above are off topic in any case.

[JJezek]

PHPBB has to adapt to compete with Facebook groups. In my niche (the sport of wingfoiling), there are so many different Facebook groups (Ex. Groups based on age or weight, groups in different regions, used gear groups, a general wingfoiling group which is the biggest groups), but all of these groups are run by different individuals, there is no connection between the groups, and they are not easily searchable or archivable. Not to mention many of these group owners are charging for posts and hiding content they don't want seen. It's all very shady and disorganized. But there is no incentive for users to leave Facebook groups and sign up for a different site without a better solution.

I definitely agree that FB discussions are cluttered, confusing, the algorithms don't give everyone the information they need, it's hard to arrange to participate in an event - but there's not enough will to return to structured discussions with a good notification system, which is PHPBB.

In my opinion, enough discussion forums were killed by social networks, especially Facebook, in my area around/after 2010. But Facebook is nowadays declining and dying out (and trying to reverse it with even more monetization and notification of everything), there is almost no younger generation there anymore. Registering on FB is a problem for them, but asking on a discussion board (even as anonymous) is not so much anymore - in my experience. As at one time it seemed like FB was a network for everyone, now I have newly registered people on the forum who don't have it. So is there a future in returning to discussion boards or will something new emerge?