The decision to move away from our old forum wasn’t taken lightly, but it became clear that change was necessary. Here’s why:
The old platform, phpBB, had become increasingly difficult to update and upgrade. Many of its extensions were outdated or abandoned, making it a challenge to maintain and improve. The issues caused by the last upgrade pushed me to look for an alternative rather than trying to fix the persistent problems.
After many weeks of researching, I decided to go with Flarum, a modern and lightweight forum platform similar to Discourse. Flarum has an active and engaged community, and most of its extensions are actively maintained, ensuring better long-term support. It’s distributed under the MIT license, which aligns with our values, and it uses the same tool we use to update our website, making it a natural choice.
After discussions with other contributors, I decided not to migrate data from the old forum. While data migration pathways exist, much of the content was outdated, and we felt it was better to start fresh with a clean slate.
The old forum will remain accessible at https://old-forums.ghostbsd.org and will be set to read-only next week.
Feel free to share your ideas if you have any suggestions for extensions or features to improve the new forums. Let’s work together to improve this space for the GhostBSD community!
