This and other scripts mentioned in the post can be found in this archive.

Script which-Forum.pl. Examines the HTML page code for the presence of a forum engine signature in it. We used similar reception when determining WordPress and Joomla, but there is a couple of differences. First, the script itself does not upload the page code, and reads it from STDin or a file transmitted as an argument. This allows you to upload a page once, for example, using WGET, and then drive it through several analyzers if we are not alone. Secondly, in this script, the presence of signature is a 100% sign of the engine. Last time the presence of signature only gave the weight to the corresponding engine and "won" the engine with the greatest weight. I decided that in this case this approach only will complicate the code.

To test the work of the script, I spent a slight study. I am a list of several thousand forums and drove each of them through my script, thereby determining the percentage of the program's triggings and the popularity of various engines.

To get a list of forums, I took advantage of Google Parser. Search engine Requests of type were sent

site: Forum. *. ru
Site: Talk. *. RU
Site: Board. *. RU
SITE: SMF. *. RU
Site: phpbb. *. ru
....

etc. Full code generator code you will find in the file gen-forumSearch-URLS.PL. In addition to zone.ru were also used.su .ua .kz I.BY. Last time, this study was difficult, since sites on Wordpress and Joomla do not have similar signatures in the URL. Catalogs like cmsmagazine.ru/catalogue/ do not provide sufficient sampling. What is 600 sites on Drupal?

I must admit, the results of the experiment were upset of me. Of the 12590 studied sites, only 7083 engines were determined successfully, that is, only in 56% of cases. Maybe I did not take into account any engine? Is it really bitrix at half to see? Or did I stand more time to pay the search for signatures? In general, additional research is required here.

Among the 56% of successfully identified engines most popular, as expected, turned out to be IPB (31%), PHPBB (26.6%) and VBulletin (26.5%)

For them with a large lag behind SMF (5.8%) and Dleforum (5.3%). My favorite PunbB was only 6th place (1.64%). I would not advise to greatly trust these numbers (they say, every third forum in RuNet works on IPB), but certain conclusions do, of course, you can.

For example, if you intend to make a website on the forum engine and plan to modify the forum, say, pay users of 0.01 $ for each message with automatic output of funds once a week, then you should choose one of the three most popular engines. The more popular the forum, the greater the chances of finding a programmer who disassembled well in it.

If significant changes in the engine is not expected, it may make sense to choose not the most popular engine, for example SMF or PUNBB. By this you reduce the number hacker attack On your forum and the number of spam automatically sent on it.

Scripts for search / definition of forums can also be found not one practical use. The first thing that came into my head personally is to sort the identified forums on the Titz and place the posts with links to one of their sites on the first hundred. However, hundreds of forum dofolllow links did not affect TIC (2 updates passed), so it's better not to spend time here, unless you are interested in transitions.

It is clear that the name of the scripts is far from the only one. I think you will easily come up with how else you can use them.

Let "S Not Forget Good Old Forum Software. Geeks Use Them for Tech Support. Businesses Use Them for Collaboration. Here" S Our Take on 70+ Forum Engines, Hosts, and tools.

Forum Engines (FREE Software)

POCOO - NEVER HEARD OF A PYTHON-POWERED BOARD? Neither Did I, Until I Found Pocoo. IT "S WSGI COMPATIBLE, AND HAS AN ADVANCED PLUGIN SYSTEM.

Punbb - With Xhtml-Compliant Pages, Simplicity, and Speed, What "s Not to Like?

Quicksilver Forums (QSF) - Based on The Now Dead Mercuryboard, QSF HAS GROWN INTO A MATURE ENGINE SPORTING FEATURES SUCH AS 3D PERMISSIONS OR SKINNING.

RFORUM - Strong Forum with Mailing List Integration, Powered by Ruby.

Simple Machines Forum (SMF) - Originally a Fork of Yabb SE, Smf Features Wysiwyg, Powerful Groups, and Much More. Note: There IS Some Dispute About Whether SMF IS Free Software or Not, Since You Are Not Allowed to Redistribute The Forum / Software ItSelf without Written Permission.

Snitz - Basic ASP Forum.

Tiny Forum That Stores Is Information in TXt Files Instaad Of A Database.

Unclassified NewsBoard Forum (UNB) - Easy to Use Forum Engine with Jabber Notification.

USEBB - Lightweight, Clear, And Efficient Board Package.

Vanilla - Terrific Ajaxified Forum With a Really Nice Look You Won "T Find Anywhere ELSE.

VikingBoard - Minimalistic Board Engine for High Performance.

Viscaccha - Board with Integrated CMS and Conversion From Cutecast, Vision Board, PhpBB, and WBB.

Yabb - Easy To Install and Easy to Use, Yabb Is More Than Yet Another Bulletin Board.

Yazd - Basic Forum Engine Under The Apache License.

Forum Engines (Commercial)

AspnetForum - Clean and Powerful ASP.Net Forum Engine. $ 85- $ 169.

Burning Board - Easy to Set Up Board That Will Import Existing Invision Power Board, MyBB, PHPBB, PunbB, Simple Machines Forum, Or VBulletin Forums. $ 139.99- $ 269.99.

Fusetalk - Powerful Forum Software Used by Big Names such as Adobe, Boeing, NASA, NBC, US Airforce, McAfee and Lonely Planet. But The Names Will Cost You. $ 649- $ 4599.

FusionBB - Calendar, Photo Gallery, Paypal, Article Templates, and Much More Are Available with this Great Piece of Software. $ 425 Flat Fee OR $ 149 Flat Fee and $ 39 / Year.

IDEAL BB - ASP / COM Board with a Nice Revision Feature. $ 299- $ 2099.

INVISION POWER BOARD (IPB) - One of the most Popular Commercial Boards of All Time. $ 149.99- $ 299.99.

Jive Forums - Powerful Board Used by Companies Such As Ea and Espn. Unfortunately, Very Expensive. $ 14950 Flat Fee, $ 1950/1000 Users, $ 4950/5000 Users, OR $ 9950/20000 Users.

MyProbb - Powerful Anti-Spam Features Makes This One A Keeper. IT "S Cheap, Tooo. $ 25 / year.

UBB.Threads - $ 725 Flat Fee OR $ 229 Flat Fee and $ 125 / Year.

vBulletin - Extremely Popular Board with Tons of Features. $ 160 Flat Fee OR $ 85 / Year.

WOWBB - WYSIWYG, INTERNATIONALIZATION, AND MUCH MORE AVAILABLE WITH THIS Php board. $ 99 Flat Fee OR $ 55 / year.

Forum Hosts.

Blursoft Metaforum - Has a Ton of Ajax Features, But Manages to Stay Search Friendly. And Yes, The Back Button Does Work. FREE.

Conforums - Unlimited Categories, Boards, and Posts with Html and JavaScript Customization. FREE.

Cutecast - Basic Forum Hosting. FREE.

Goboardz - Nice Forum with Photo Sharing and A Nice Interface. FREE.

Hyperboards - A BIG Hosting Provider WITH Global Logs Forum (One Hyperboards Account Logs Forum), Skins, Pages, and Unlimited Posts and Boards. FREE.

INVISION POWER BOARD (IPB) - One of the most Popular Commercial Boards of All Time. $ 10- $ 75 / month.

Proboards - A Well Known Host Powered by Yabb. FREE.

Sudden Launch - Forum Host with Unlimited Posts, Replies, And Boards. FREE.

WOWBB - WYSIWYG, INTERNATIONALIZATION, AND MUCH MORE AVAILABLE WITH THIS PHP BOARD. $ 99 Flat Fee and $ 3.95 / Month or $ 7.95 / month.

Forum Integration.

bBPRESS AND WORDPRESS INTEGRATION - OFFICIAL HOWTO ON INTEGRATING THE TWO SISTER PROJECTS.

Joomla Component That Adds a Powerful Forum.

INTEGRATING VANILLA AND WORDPRESS - OFFICIAL GUIDE TO INTEGRATING THE TWO POPULAR CMSS.

IPBWiki - Connects Invision Power Boards and MediaWiki.

Joomla! Vanilla - Bridge Between The Joomla Cms and Vanilla.

Forum Tools.

BBCodextra Firefox Extension - Context Menu to Insert BBCode OR (X) HTML. Freeware.

Everyone knows that I just can not live without Jumla, but, in my opinion, there is no good forum in the components. Therefore, I work with forum engines. One of the new ones I just recently began to use is starting a new category SMF, I hope with useful material. We start with small, well, and as newcomers are very useful.

First steps in SIMPLE MACHINES FORUM search engine optimization: We delete copywrites and external links

Immediately make a reservation that I only work SMF 2 and this article will relate to this version of the free forum engine.

And so, permanent readers know how much I do not like to put on "10" external references to the official sites of the engines, including forum. That is why the first thing I delete copywrites and whole 4, attention 4 external references of the species " SMF 2.0.2 | SIMPLE MACHINES | SMF © 2011 | Xhtml "! To do this, connect to the site for FTP Forum / Themes / name of your topic/ and edit the file index.template.php.. Naturally, at the bottom there is a code (about 330 lines), which is taking out that not believable to us external links. Therefore, we delete: "

Tours and rest in Australia

Online forums are one of the most popular types of Internet resources. This is quite explained, as the forums are the perfect platform for free communication of visitors. The forum is an excellent way to organize the community on your site and to form a permanent audience of visitors.

There are many forum engines. I have long wanted to check the forum engines. I will not compare them - this is the topic of a separate article.

When choosing a forum engine, I advise you to determine for yourself the following points:

1. What functions of the forum you need. Most of the forum engines have wide opportunities, but some nuances are not implemented in all forum CMS. I recommend to visit the official sites of the engines and get acquainted in detailed description functional.

2. A paid or free engine - this moment should also be considered. In this review, only two paid engines - VBulletin and IPB, the rest are free.

3. The development of the community - when the engine has a developed community both in English-speaking and in the Russian-speaking Internet, it is a big plus. The development of the community is directly related to the number of different modifications, refinement and design templates. If the engine has a small community, then you need to keep in mind that many moments will have to be solved on their own.

4. Date last update The engine is if the engine is not updated for a long time, it suggests that the developers do not develop it or abandoned further development. This is a big minus. Internet technologies are constantly evolving, and the forum with obsolete functionality will limit the possibilities for its further development.

Okay, there is enough loud words 🙂. I will start with the most popular forum engines, based on this CMS rating.

This is my favorite forum engine, and I keep my own forum Planet Photoshop on this engine. The reason is not only that this is a free forum engine, but also that it has a wide functionality, has developed communities both in the English-speaking Internet and in RuNet, so for PHPBB has developed many mods for every taste with which you can Even more to expand the functionality.

User Action, Moderator, Administrator Logs, Accurate Moderator and Administrator Access Rights, Identification search robots, creation of user groups, polls, attachments in messages and personal messages - just part of the PHPBB functional.

I also like the way in what direction phpbb is developing from version to version. PHPBB is convenient for both the administrator and moderators and ordinary users.

My opinion over several years of use PHPBB is a wonderful forum engine, not demanding to hosting resources, and providing all the necessary potential for maintaining the forum.

Useful PHPBB resources:

Invision Power Board is a paid forum engine, which is very popular on the Internet. Cost in RuNet can be found. It employs many well-known forums. It has developed communities in the English-language and Russian-speaking Internet.

For IPB, there are additional official applications (Gallery, Blog, File Archive Module). In addition, there is a visual message editor, a textual version of the forum optimized for search robots, a tool for convenient backup of the forum database, a detailed log of administrators and moderator actions, as well as a log of search robots.

Useful sites on Invision Power Board:

vBulletin is a wonderful forum engine. It is paid, the cost can be found. Along with IPB, VBulletin is a leader among paid engines.

Podcasting support, automatic generation of RSS FIDID FORUM, the possibility of creating visitors to social groups and clubs in the forum on the forum, gallery of users of users, supported tags, the ability to add the forum to social bookmarks by users themselves - the most interesting features of VBulletin, in my opinion.

punbB is a very light and simple forum. The forum control panel is convenient and intuitive. PUNBB has fewer opportunities, but it is compensated by the speed of its work and inconspicuous to hosting resources.

PUNBB developers make focus on lightness, speed and compactness.

Useful PUNBB resources:

Yabb is a free forum engine written in Perl. Unlike most other forum engines, Yabb to store data does not use a database, but files.

Comfortable text editor To write messages, ample opportunities for administrators and moderators, the ability to change the settings and templates "on the fly", the ability to convert the page to the "Print version" - that's not all the possibilities of the Yabb forum engine.

Now a slight digression. If you are interested in learn about those methods of promotion, which give a good effect to increase target attendance, then I can offer my paid study of SEO intelligence http://seorazvedka.ru/, in which I on the example of 10 profitable young sites from different subjects showed, How they are moving and described how this can be used to promote their resources.

SMF is another fast and lightweight forum engine. It is undemanding to the server resources and is actively gaining popularity.

OpenID support, user alerts system, it is possible if necessary to prey themes, messages and attachments, WYSIWYG editor for messages - and this is not all that SMF allows!

Intellect Board - original free engine. The idea of \u200b\u200bthe developers of the Intellect Board is idea to create a website based on the forum. The functional Intellect Board is very wide - a collection of articles, presentation, news, file archive, photo gallery, IRC chat, encyclopedia. In fact, the Intellect Board is a full-fledged site management system.

The main features of the Intellect Board are the ability to set the rules for all sections, supporting GD and GD2 graphic libraries to create reduced copies of pictures and photos, the ability to make warnings and encouragements by moderators and administrators (and warnings can be both indefinite and limited time), rating Topics, articles, files and photos /

EXBB (EXCLUSIVE BULLETIN Board)

EXBB is an easy and free forum engine. He also, like Yabb, does not require a database and stores information in text files.

EXBB has the following advantages: Pages are generated very quickly, the load on the server is minimal, the high degree of hazard sustainability, the forum is working on files, databases are not required, it is enough to work in the hosting to support PHP.

Vanilla is an original forum engine that is interesting for its modulosis. Big plus this forum CMS - most modules are installed in one click

Pros Vanilla: Own framework, allowing you to write extensions, the ability to build communities (voting, tag clouds, blogs, chat, carmaken additions, etc.), the convenience of installing additions (in most cases flooded, pressed one button - and that's all!), Extensibility of standard functional (modularity) by add-ons that are now written about 450.

Another interesting feature of the Vanilla's forum engine is a whisper system - you can simply send someone to someone with a whisper, without leaving the topic page or create the topic "whisper", which will be a visual correspondence story.

Well, let's start giving small tips on optimizing and promoting sites (forums) on PHPBB. In this case, we will spend a small hack that will help get rid of external Link View " Powered by phpbb ©... ". In this publication, we will look at 2 ways with which you can do this - reception for pHPBB 3.x.x..

Remove the external link Powered by phpbb © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 PhpBB Group and Russian PHPBB support

The first way to remove external links with the inscription Powered by phpbb © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group. And so, the easiest way is to delete using the admin panel. We go into the administrative panel, go to the "Styles" menu item, we see the panel where the block is located in the menu, we are interested in the "Style components" block, and in it "patterns". According to the standard in the proposed window, we will see the following: Prosilver and Subsilver2, although Muga is different if you installed them. In general, do not essence. From the closed kit, select the default used. Click on the "Edit" button next to the template. Next, a window appears with the "Select the template file". Next, select the "template file" - "overall_footer.html". The HTML editor appears below. Find the following code: " Powered by PhpBB 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 PHPBB GROUP"And just delete, although you can install your link and inscription."
(Translation_info) "(Which is below, can also be deleted) - This code is responsible for localization for example an external link with the inscription" Russian PHPBB support ".

The second way to remove an external link with the inscription Powered by phpbb © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 PHPBB GROUP. This method is similar, but we connect to the site of Pratacolau FTP. Go to the next STYES path / OVERAL_FOOTER.html_footer. And edit the same code that we edited above. If you change the code, do not forget to set UTF encoding - so on the place of the ankors may appear "Crakrooms" (squares, and other incomprehensible characters).