My 10 cents worth...
A forum is by definition...
"a meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged."
The forum software used here is "ok" for that purpose. It's active, people do respond, we have a nice community. It could probably be improved with better searching etc, but currently it works ok.
However, what the forum is NOT includes:
1. A place to report bugs, validate bugs, comment on bugs, and track bugs through to resolution and AwareIM release/build numbers
2. A place to store a structured list of feature requests and improvements to AwareIM
3. A place to vote up and down and comment on the above feature requests
4. A place to discuss and document how to implement workarounds for Aware "shortcomings". That is, things that don't work quite as you would expect (or hope) but there is a workaround that others have implemented that may solve your problem.
5. A place to record Aware release, notes, and discussion around how to implement and use some of the great features that are documented (in very short format) here:
https://awareim.com/changelog/?C=M;O=D;F=2I would LOVE Support to introduce a site/software solution that does point 1 to 5 above. For our business it would:
- reduce the cost of reporting bugs, building workarounds, and understanding when fixes are live
- ensure the Aware product roadmap is full of features that the community values (above the squeaky wheel approach)
- improve people's use of the new features that are released into Aware
- improve community and focussed discussion around Aware features
I think "forum software" is never going to do the above, it's a solution that is like bug tracking, Stack Exchange, online documentation etc. I will leave it others more knowledgeable than me to recommend actual software solutions, but generally speaking I would prefer a
new type of software rather than a new forum software.
Rod. Aware 8.3 (latest build), Developer Edition, on OS Linux (Ubuntu 18) using GUI hosted on AWS EC2, MYSQL on AWS RDS