Is Flarum a Good Choice for My Upcoming Community Forum?

Kabir I believe this discussion is important not only for you but also for anyone planning to create a forum.

I have tried several software like MyBB, vBulletin, and XenForo over the years.

When I last used MyBB, there were no automatic updates, and everyone I knew continued using older versions. The main reason for this was the lack of support from the core team for developers, except for a few MyBB plugin developers. At that time, I had to purchase nearly 10 paid plugins and themes.

I’m relatively new to Flarum; I discovered it six months ago. However, especially when compared to MyBB, my only answer to this question would definitely be Flarum.

Core extensions and FriendsOfFlarum extensions will already meet most of your needs.

Does Flarum meet these requirements immediately, or will I need significant customization?

Mobile support (including PWA), an invitation system (via extensions), and automatic forum and extension updates come with an experience similar to WordPress. Badges, profile comments, and hundreds of extensions are actively maintained.

Are there must-have extensions/add-ons I should consider?

Yes, at the very least, you can check the https://freeflarum.com/extensions page, which contains a small list of tested and verified extensions. You can find the most popular extensions there.

How easy is it to manage updates and maintenance via cPanel?

I need to answer this with a comparison. It’s much easier than MyBB. However, it’s not as simple as WordPress. Occasionally, manual intervention may be required due to issues caused by certain extensions.

How does Flarum compare to MyBB in terms of performance and flexibility?

It depends on what you mean, and I think you should test it yourself to see.

Are there any hidden costs or difficulties I should be aware of?

SSH. While Flarum can be used without SSH, sometimes it’s the best way to resolve issues.

All of this is based on my 6-month user experience. During this time, I’ve experimented with developing a few extensions, and the support from the community made me very happy.

My top recommendation is to create a free forum at https://freeflarum.com.

You can achieve everything you want there. If it meets your needs, you can even connect your domain to it and enjoy a seamless experience. You’ll also eliminate hosting costs.

I'm a bit tired from writing all day, so I'm not feeling very wordy, so forgive the terse response. While I'm a big fan of the idea of 'give it a go' via Freeflarum (never tried it myself), I think getting to grips with it yourself on your own platform is also a good idea.

In terms of management via CPanel, I've managed one via Plesk for probably around 2 years now with little to no issues. When I first started using Flarum, the extension manager (https://docs.flarum.org/internal/extension-manager/) did not exist, so it was a lot more tedious jumping into a terminal and managing Flarum. But as things stand at present, unless I'm doing something silly, the extension manager does a good deal of the work.

I did see it was compared to WordPress in terms of management - if set up correctly, it's on par with, and you can do most of what you need to do via the extension manager.

In terms of useful/must-have extensions - I don't know your needs, but MyBB is fairly feature-rich, so I would use the official Flarum extensions list to work out 'what people are using’: https://flarum.org/extensions?tableSortColumn=downloads&tableSortDirection=desc

I would say FOF/Upload ( https://flarum.org/extension/fof/upload) is a requirement for most people (should be shifted into core IMO).

In terms of your actual list:

• https://flarum.org/extension/fof/doorman - handles invites
• Extension manager (comes with Flarum) does everything you'll need - shouldn't need CPanel beyond database setup, although YMMV
• I mean, the license terms you could have checked yourself in a matter of seconds, but sure, here is a page: https://flarum.org/software/benefits that breaks all that down .
• User features : lots of these exist, mostly in the form of extensions and in many cases more than one. In short, do your own research. Because of the way Flarum extensions are posted (with a discussion attached normally), you can do a full look over the history of the extension to see how well it’s supported and in general what issues people are running into.
• Mobile support ... so far as I'm aware, no native apps exist. PWA is an option, but I haven't looked too deep into this.

• Does Flarum meet these requirements out of the box, or will I need significant customization? Depends on what you want to do. Based on what I've read, you could have most of it up within an hour (not including messing with visuals).
• Are there must-have extensions/plugins I should consider? Yep, IMO, fof/upload as noted above, but do your own research.
• How easy is it to manage updates and maintenance via cPanel? Easy, but YMMV depends on how your cPanel is set up and how your knowledge set can deal with whatever issues you may encounter.
• How does Flarum compare to MyBB in terms of performance and flexibility? no idea.
• Any hidden costs or challenges I should be aware of? Depends on what you do, I guess. The core is FOSS, and a massive amount of the extensions are FOSS too. Some cost money (one-off, yearly), others are subscriptions (hate subs), but for the most part, unless you are looking for something very specific, you can coast cost-free. If your needs exceed what's offered, then expect a developer to want to be paid for your request (usually via bounty).

I think you need to dig into the documents, wander the community, and check out the extensions list (all linked above) to find out if Flarum suits you, maybe setup a dev/staging setup and play with the 'product' before making your own decision.

People don’t buy from companies, they buy from people. And the best people to sell your product are the ones who use it and love it.

Thank you @RelicSystem and @huseyinfiliz for drafting such great, extensive replies. I applaud your contributions.

More recommendations can be found here: https://www.slant.co/topics/898/viewpoints/7/~best-web-forum-software-packages~flarum#recommendations (although it seems there are no recent ones).

Kabir not visible to you but I hold many more roles than the ones you can see. You can make roles invisible to non-elevated users.

Kabir I switched from Xenforo to Flarum and I find there are 2 necessary notes when using Flarum. First, if you install Flarum on your hosting and manage it using cpanel, be sure to sign up for hosting that supports SSH access. Second, you have to learn a little about Composer. All Flarum installations and updates go through Composer. However, if you don't know much about composer like me, there are still other options, for example installing Flarum using a zip file; Install and update Extensions using Extensions manager. However, when updating Flarum, I still have to use Composer, I haven't found any other way.

huseyinfiliz Usually, Flarum updates automatically while updating a different extension

This is actually true for minor and patch releases. Your composer.json restricts flarum to a major version as depicted by flarum/core set at a certain value.