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Forums

Here I will layout different forums, and the ones I have used and ones I currently use.

Forums I use

I used to use:

Comparisons

Information updated as of August 27th 2020

Name License Free Open Source? Paid Pricing Version Last Update Language
bbPress GPL v2.6.5 2020-05 Wordpress Plugin
Discourse GPL $100/mo v2.5.1 2020-08 Ruby >= 2.5.2
ElkArte BSD v1.1.6 2019-07 PHP >= 7.1
Flarum MIT v0.1.0-beta.13 2020-05 PHP >= 7.2.9
FlashBB Custom v2.0.1 2018-06 Python 
FluxBB GPLv2 v1.5.11 2018-12 PHP >= 5.6
miniBB GPL $70/lifetime v3.4.2 2019-10 PHP >= 4.1.0
MyBB LGPLv3 v1.8.24 2020-08 PHP >= 5.2
NodeBB GPLv3 $250/mo v1.14.3 2020-08 NodeJS >= 12.18
Phorum Custom v5.2.23 2017-01 PHP >= 5.2
phpBB GPLv2 v3.3.1 2020-08 PHP 7.1.0+ but less than PHP 7.3
PunBB GPLv2 v1.4.5 2020-01 PHP >= 4.3.0
Simple Machines Custom v2.0.17 2019-12 PHP >= 5.4.0
Vanilla Forums GPLv2 Contact them 3.3 2019-10 PHP >= 7.1

I would recommend any of the ones still currently having security and bug fixes. Such as bbPress/Discourse/Flarum/MyBB/NodeBB/phpBB

I would also recommend PHP 8 support if using PHP.