This article outlines the general features commonly found in various Internet forum software packages. It highlights major features that the manager of a forum might want and should expect to be commonly available in different forum software. These comparisons do not include remotely hosted services which use their own proprietary software, rather than offering a package for download which webmasters can host by themselves.
Contents
General information
Basic general information about the forums: creator/company, license/price etc.
Flat vs. threaded
Duplicate thread prevention
Many users do not bother to search a forum and directly create new threads to seek an answer to a question. On some forums, when the user types a new thread subject, the forum software brings up similar threads automatically on the side. This helps keep the number of redundant threads (or the overall forum pollution) to a lower level as users who neglect to search for a topic and are posting a thread may find the answer to their question as they are creating the new thread. Instead of having to search the forum, and then creating a thread if there is no satisfying answer, duplicate thread prevention allows the user to go and seek the answer to a topic. An example is Stack Overflow.
User-selectable themes
Most forums provide an option for the forum owner to customize the look and feel. Some forums also allow the administrator to create multiple styles or themes, and allow the user to choose which one they wish to view. Themes may simply be a different set of colors and graphics, or they may involve a different layout to the forum, such as one optimized for small-screen devices.
Calendar
Some forums provide calendar functionality for storing events and appointments, either per-user or as a forum-wide shared calendar.
Image attachments
Most forums provide the option for a user to upload an image along with a message posting. This is usually accompanied by a space limit (e.g. 1MB per user) to prevent users from filling up the forum host's webspace. Some forums also allow other types of files to be uploaded. Some allow inline linking to images hosted on image hosting services.
One major usability issue is whether images can be uploaded to a forum and displayed inline in message postings easily (or at all). The presence of "image attachment uploading" does not imply that in-message display of images within the flow of message text is possible (or if possible, easy to achieve).
Unread message tracking
Unread message tracking refers to the way that is used by forum software to track and display messages that have not yet been read by the current user. This can be one of the following:
Forum spam defenses
Most forums are at risk of continuous attack by forum spammers, largely promoting websites with no relevance to the forum's niche. Systems vary in how they are geared to defense, and checking the offering is an important consideration before selection. A forum cannot succeed unless there is an effective system of defense, and an efficient set of tools for spam removal.
CAPTCHAs are a common feature used among most internet forum software and are often used to prevent automated registrations.
Banning or deleting membership should come as standard, with the ability to blacklist the username, email address or IP address for variable time spans.
Reference to an anti-forum spam database can be built into the forum software, or offered as add-ons for specific databases.
User-friendly URLs
Human-friendly forum URLs do not have a query string and instead contain only the path of the topic. A user-unfriendly URL may contain cryptic parameters, numeric IDs, or file type extensions (e.g. .php) that do not matter to the user and could change if the forum is reimplemented using a different programming language. User-friendly URLs are easy to remember and to type, and may enhance search engine optimization (SEO).
In general this is accomplished via URL mapping, however, historically in many forum software packages, human-friendly URLs are an afterthought implemented via URL rewriting, and URLs often contain a numeric ID which represents the thread, while the remainder of the URL can in reality be any string: http://example.com/forum/12345/lets-use-friendly-urls and http://example.com/forum/12345/bogus-path-actually point to the same thread, http://example.com/forum/12345/.
The only non-controversial counter-argument to using user-friendly URLs is that they would be leaked in the HTTP referer header field when a user clicks on an external link from a post, which is undesirable for private (sub)forums, since a URL derived from the topic title could convey sensitive information. This issue can be resolved by rewriting external links to point to a redirection page that performs referer hiding.
Export
This column judges the ability to allow users to export data from the forum installation and then import it in new installations of the same software (cf. right to fork) or feed it to data conversion tools.
Email interface
Whether the software can be used with standard Email clients. Adoption of standard protocols is key for interoperability.
Single sign-on
Single sign-on is often required to enhance web accessibility of the application. This can be accomplished with standards like OAuth and OpenID.
Data storage
Information about what data storage system can be used.