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I think I need a forum extension for this site. I have made a few Joomla extensions available for download. I actually get quite a bit of feedback from the user base; mostly about installation issues and requests for new features. It is indeed customary and commendable to maintain a publicly accessible forum for the users. Therefore, I have decided to install a forum component. In the forum components section of the Joomla extension repository, I have found the following native 1.5 forum components for Joomla. They all have a sizeable user base, and are flagged as "popular" or "editor's pick". They also have a good number of reviews: The children of FireboardKunena, ccBoard, and FrenzyBB are forks of the erstwhile leading forum extension for Joomla: Fireboard. What happened? It all started when the Joomla Extension Repository officials unpublished Fireboard in November 2008. The official motivation was "no comment at this point". Initially, the move caused something close to a panic amongst Joomla users. Making things worse, the core Fireboard team at BestOfJoomla.com did not clarify what was going on. Why did the Joomla Extension Repository officials slap a ban on Fireboard? The original authors, BestOfJoomla seem to endorse the Kunena Fireboard fork. Several opportunistic attempts -- made possible by the confusion in the Fireboard ranks -- to scavenge Fireboard's erstwhile popularity and user population, have lead to at least two other forks: ccBoard and FrenzyBB. Agora
Agora seems to be profiting to no end from the confusion in the Fireboard ranks. Agora had been already vigourously competing with Fireboard. With Fireboard disappeared from the face of the earth, nobody knew where else to turn to, except to Agora. Consequently, the user vote of confidence has pushing Agora to the forefront, with a staggering 102 reviews at the extension repository. The Fireboard children, that is, ccBoard with 64 reviews, Kunena with 29 reviews and FrenzyBB, with 7 reviews, seem to be lesser gods in the frenzy to appoint a legitimate successor dominant forum extension to the now defunct Fireboard. It looks like the children of Fireboard will not regain the leading position of their illustrious ancestor. Simplest ForumEinstein's maxim "Keep everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." obviously also applies to forum software. "As simple as possible." We want simple software. We don't want our software to be littered with things we don't need or will never use. On the other hand, we still want that special feature that happens to be very useful in our own particular situation, and that is obviously not part of the simplest possible incarnation of the software. "But not simpler." Therefore, Einstein's maxim implies that the simplest forum software still needs an elaborate extension mechanism to satisfy the various special needs of the special interest groups in the user base. Therefore, any such simple forum software which wants to be viable on the long run, will have a minimum level of complexity, caused by the large size of its extension mechanism. This extension mechanism will invariably be already quite sizeable, if it wants to be useful, meaningful. It needs to cover large areas in the typical ways in which users want to extend the software. Agora or Simplest Forum? What horse do I bet on? Agora came before Simplest Forum. It feeds off its source code, its experience, its user base, and its contributors. Agora seems to sport an elaborate extension mechanism, to offer integration with other important extensions such as Community Builder and Jomsocial. For Agora, competing with Simplest Forum is relatively easy. Agora just needs to turn as many native features as possible, into plugins. From there, Agora can make installation of these native plugins optional. By judiciously making reasonable choices of what to offer by default and what not, Agora can make life easier for novice users. Novice users can just leave the installation profile to its reasonable defaults, and click ok. Advanced users, on their side, will easily be able to create a minimal, no-fringes installation, able to compete on small size and simplicity with Simplest Forum. Simplest Forum still needs to elaborate and prove the completeness and usefulness of its extension mechanism over time. They may not have that time, because Agora will obviously try to hang on to its lead. Therefore, I believe that a more veteran player such as Agora stands the best chance to emerge as the class leader in the Joomla forum software and fend off competition from newcomers such as Simplest Forum. But then again, if Agora makes serious mistakes in its development strategies, Simplest Forum or even another forum extension could still win the game. So, at this point, my choice is Agora.
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