Security is a moot point; I don’t think any popular forum software is all that exploitable. DigitalPoint is one of the largest forums out there, and more importantly, one of the more enticing forums to hack because of the revenue potential that could be stolen. (The site is highly monetized.) Yet the owner of DigitalPoint trusts XenForo enough to have switched to it from vBulletin last year.
Ben, I’m not totally sure what you mean by a “beta test”; can you elaborate?
I mean that we’d stand up an instance, somewhere, and use it in a limited capacity for a while before making a decision about whether or not it would be a good move for the community to make.
A large majority of those aren’t actual users. Spam bots come by and automatically register a user. Luckily we have the 2 reply post per user thing for new users that stops you from seeing their spam.
There are a lot of users named dsfjksfkjlfsd, dfkkd9ejf, nodo3jf and things like that you’ll see as the recent visited users. They are all junk.
A lot of people who do read these forums never create an account, because they don’t want to participate in the discussions, they are simply looking at it as a guest for newsworthy tidbits on Peercoin’s current status.
Forcing every one to register wouldn’t work either, because a large number of people like to remain anonymous while they read.
If there is a particular feature you like from an alternate forum software that is critical that we have here, let’s figure out what that is and see if SMF has a way to provide it.
But before any mod is added, we need to examine it and watch its use with baited breath in case an issue arises.
Gotcha Ben. So either on this domain or another?
I’ll try to investigate Discourse some more the next couple days to figure out if it might be better than XenForo. If FuzzyBear is too busy for the foreseeable future, I could probably set something up if need be.
OK so here is my thoughts…
I tried a drupal forum when i first launched peercointalk and that was hit with some serious spam and I could never really get it under control with the features available through free plugin downloads. Had to put the forum on lockdown and no new members allowed and no posts allowed just to stop the spam. So i switched to SMF
With SMF you get the added advantage that yes pretty much ALL other crypto coins forums are SMF based, hence most users are a member of bitcointalk and know how the forum setup works and features to expect etc. It also means that if a vulnerability is found then usually" it will show up on other forums first and I keep the codebase up to date and we have yet to have a breach of security (touch wood) so far.
This does NOT mean to say that SMF provides the best platform in my opinion for our forum. The BurrerflyLabs forum is actually quite nice and has features people have discussed they would like to see. I do feel though now we have all seen what SMF basic package has to offer and we are arguing over extra features (that may be possible to code up ourselves in the SMF framework, or maybe not). My thoughts are as well we are not going to be able to please everyone, and we may find that the new forum has these features we want but we loose say other features we have taken for granted here on SMF.
Also time… yes I am pretty much completely slammed with work and it would only be sensible to port the forum to a new platform when I have the proper time to dedicate to the task. We would not want to loose the content on this forum, and we would need to look at how we transfered the info across etc and what we do with existing users etc etc
By all means please investigate other forums. I am MORE than happy to set a forum up on http://testforum.peercointalk.org to give users a test of what someone recommends as a platform to try. Also do not feel that the forum HAS to stay in solely my control as admin. If someone feels they want to step up and take over the forum then please don’t be shy. It is a BIG responsibility and I will not just be handing control over to anyone, also don’t worry i am not actively looking to hand over the forum… but what I am also trying to get at is that…
I have spent a LOT of time playing round and learning how SMF works and the admin roles setup and user experience etc… if there is a port to another platform I would be starting from scratch on how to set the forum up and administrate it… so if that was the case I would need some help from someone who has used the new forum software before.
SMF does not work with mobile devices… ??? I have installed Taptalk here on the forum exactly for that?? does it not work for you? or were you not aware? I got prompted when i went to the browser on my android phone to install taptalk plugin for the forum, links with my account, sends me updates etc… only thing i cant do is administrate through it… but i can just use the net browser for that?? so can u expand more what you mean by that.
Making the forum look like the Peercoin facebook and reddit etc pages… this is something that can and yes should be done. Its is just a “theme” modification. Again I will be honest the “theme” mods have been low on my list of things to look at, but there are other themes you can select and there was a request for a “dark theme” that I installed which works well when viewing at night. Themes can be custom written, or existing ones modded to our preference, and there is a “default” theme. All these are extra plugins I can install on the forum, but I have had a few issues installing some plugins as some cause others not to work or can’t be installed. There is some work I need to do here to clean up the forum as well but this again I have just not had the dedicated time to do, but is more of a priority before installing any new plugin features. But again do please feel free to browse around for SMF theme plugins and send me links to ones you link in this thread so we can all discuss them.
well done for reading this far here have a tune on me 
https://soundcloud.com/einmusik/shells-extract
Fuzzybear
Fuzzy Wuzzy was a woman?
I didn’t realize Tapatalk was installed on here; my mistake. That’s great we do have mobile support then.
I have (and still do) run forums, and have some free time, and might be willing to step up to a managerial role if needed.
After some sandboxing, I am impressed with Discourse. It is more future-proofed than XenForo from what I can tell (as far as the technology it’s built on), and has some neat features that XenForo is lacking, even though Discourse is not even at version 1.0 yet. One such feature is that new replies to a thread are displayed in real time, meaning if you are viewing a thread and someone replies their post will magically appear on the screen; you don’t need to refresh the page.
Another cool feature is that you can highlight text from a post, and then you are given a popup option to quote that text in a reply. It’s pretty nifty. XenForo has an add-on that allows this functionality, but it’s nice that Discourse has it in the core.
The only thing I question is whether Discourse is right for this type of forum, where there are a LOT of different category options as its current state. Discourse seems to encourage less but broader categorization. I think pushes for a slight sway from classical forum architecture.
EDIT: Probably the best place to get a feel for Discourse is here: http://bbs.boingboing.net/
Keep in mind some of us use older computers to visit the forum. I post a lot using the computer at my job, which is ancient. I just checked and that forum doesn’t even work on this computer. It doesn’t display at all. SMF works perfectly for me though.
Same here, also getting the message - browser is too old - on my 2 year old tablet.
Ah, bummer. These are the browser requirements from the Discourse FAQ page:
What are the minimum browser requirements? Discourse is a JavaScript application designed for the next 10 years of the Internet, so the minimum web browser requirements are high:[ul][li]Internet Explorer 10+[/li]
[li]Google Chrome 24+[/li]
[li]Firefox 14+[/li]
[li]Safari 5+[/li][/ul]We do officially support Internet Explorer 9, but some functionality will be unavoidably broken.
My experience with XenForo has been excellent over at TinnitusTalk.com. I find SMF very outdated, and would be screaming for a switch if there were no concerns with security.
Butterfly Labs’ forum looks awful.
Discourse is very interesting, but looks more radically different which may bring some issues. If you believe it is better suited, please press further.
XenForo website, FAQ, manual, and add-ons.
[ul][li]Human-readable URLs![/li]
[li]HTML 5 Microdata in Breadcrumb.[/li]
[li]Displays well on mobile devices, and there is at least some Tapatalk support (add-on). Try with TinnitusTalk.com and see.[/li]
[li]Buttons to like, agree, deem funny, crown winner, etc. which can be quite useful to keep thread quality up by avoiding “meaningless”/contentless posts.[/li]
[li]Non-interruptive multi-quote functionality.[/li]
[li]Good rich text editor. (with plain BBCode mode)[/li][/ul]
Reviews:
XenForo review – Forum Software Reviews
IP.Board vs Simple Machines 2 vs vBulletin 4 vs XenForo – Forum Software Reviews
“My 2013 Review of XenForo” – Web Hosting Talk
“One Month After Switching From vBulletin To XenForo…” – Digital Point
I can help with the license cost, and would gladly be part of setting it up. Let’s not rush into it though, this should be done well. The largest hurdle I assume is migrating the forum database. There are a few migration tools, but most of them don’t seem to be great.
Will PrimecoinTalk.org be redirected to PeercoinTalk.org? Doesn’t seem like a good idea to serve the same site on multiple domains. Complicates implementation of TLS later.
Edit: YACoinTalk uses Discourse.
Edit 2: DarkcoinTalk uses XenForo.
I like SMF, I say we stick with it.
Someone even put up a XenForo that syncs with BitcoinTalk.org!
“Bitcointa.lk: the Bitcointalk community with a proper forum software.” (emphasis their’s)
— https://bitcointa.lk/pages/features/
Storjtalk runs the same SMF 2.0.9 as PeercoinTalk does. They have a very good theme. How much would be required for someone to create a similar one for Peercoin? Peer4commit. 
NuBits running Discourse seems like a success otherwise. 
Edit: Add links.