Forum Module Future?

Hey there @CMSTheme,

If you haven’t seen it yet, in October EllisLab made these comments regarding the Discussion Forum Module:

Discussion Forums The web has changed a lot in just a few years. Discussion forums are not as ubiquitous as they once were, and they have trended towards simplicity. This works to the advantage of the Discussion Forum module, since it was never conceived as something that would engage in a blow for blow feature war with dedicated forum solutions like vBulletin. But if you have a content-first site that also needs discussion forums for your community or customers, it’s incredibly advantageous for your CMS to handle it. We’ve decided to include Discussion Forums with ExpressionEngine. This accomplishes two things Simplifies releases for us and customers. Since they are intertwined, updates had to occur in lock step anyway. Having only one set of files to deal with and one update makes it easier for everyone. Increases adoption. Optional features can be nice for additional revenue streams. But it also means that many of your customers may never try a feature, limiting its adoption and thus the attention it receives. Both points help justify continuing development of the forums, such as improving the experience of building and maintaining a theme.

The full post: https://ellislab.com/blog/entry/expressionengine-3-is-here

Based on your question, I’m hoping the last sentence mentioning rolling it into the core as way of justifying continued development may be what you’re looking for.

Hope this helps, Reuben

Reuben is absolutely correct. While it is not as high priority as other publishing features in ExpressionEngine, it is still important to small segment of our audience (including us!). It’s also a great selling point—perhaps your site doesn’t need forums now, but if it does in the future, ExpressionEngine is ready with a fully integrated solution.