= Django Forum Apps Comparison =

Yvan Seth's blog entry [http://yvan.seth.id.au/Entries/Technology/Code/Django_Forum_Software.html Django Forum Software] from December 2007 lists a few well-known discussion forum applications for Django. This page continues on the same tracks and tries to gather a comparison of essential features in those applications.

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{{{
#!html
<table class="listing">
  <caption>Features currently evaluated</caption>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <td>Feature</td>
      <td>Description</td>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>demo</td>
      <td>
	If the application has a public demo site, a link and
	login/password are given.
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>guest-post</td>
      <td>Visitors can post messages without registration.</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>notify</td>
      <td>
	An administrator can be notified by E-mail and/or SMS about
	new messages.
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>moderate</td>
      <td>
	It's possible to hide new messages until they are approved by
	an administrator.
      </td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
}}}

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{{{
#!html
<table class="listing">
  <caption>Summary of major Django forum/discussion apps and their support for the above features</caption>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <td>Application</td>
      <td>Author(s)</td>
      <td title="Link to demo with login/password">demo</td>
      <td title="Visitors can post without registering">guest-post</td>
      <td title="E-mail/SMS Notification / Thread Subscription">notify</td>
      <td title="Moderator can accept/reject messages before they are published">moderate</td>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td><a href="http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/UsingFreeComment" 
             title="django.contrib.comments">contrib.comments</a></td>
      <td>Django authors</td>
      <td title="demo">?</td>
      <td title="guest-post">Yes</td>
      <td title="notify">No?</td>
      <td title="moderate">?</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a href="http://code.google.com/p/django-comment-utils/" 
             title="django.contrib.comments with django-comment-utils">comment-utils</a></td>
      <td>James Bennett</td>
      <td title="demo">?</td>
      <td title="guest-post">?</td>
      <td title="notify">?</td>
      <td title="moderate">?</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a href="http://code.google.com/p/django-threadedcomments"
             title="django-threadedcomments">django-threadedcomments</a></td>
      <td>Eric Florenzano</td>
      <td title="demo">?</td>
      <td title="guest-post">Yes</td>
      <td title="notify">Yes</td>
      <td title="moderate">Yes</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a href="http://code.google.com/p/django-forum/" 
             title="Simple Django Forum Component">django-forum</a></td>
      <td>Ross Poulton</td>
      <td title="demo">?</td>
      <td title="guest-post">no</td>
      <td title="notify"><a href="http://code.google.com/p/django-forum/issues/detail?id=8">patch</a></td>
      <td title="moderate">no</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a href="http://code.google.com/p/counterpoint"
             title="forum written with django">counterpoint</a></td>
      <td>Colin Grady</td>
      <td title="demo">?</td>
      <td title="guest-post">?</td>
      <td title="notify">?</td>
      <td title="moderate">?</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a href="http://www.jonathanbuchanan.plus.com/repos/forum"
             title="Jonathan's Django Forum">Django Forum</a></td>
      <td>Jonathan Buchanan</td>
      <td title="demo">
        <a href="http://incremental.homedns.org:81/">guest/guest</a>
      </td>
      <td title="guest-post">No</td>
      <td title="notify">No</td>
      <td title="moderate">No</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a href="http://code.google.com/p/snapboard"
             title="S(imple), N(imble), A(ttractive), P(ython) board">snapboard</a></td>
      <td>Bo Shi, JW Mayfield</td>
      <td title="demo">?</td>
      <td title="guest-post">?</td>
      <td title="notify">?</td>
      <td title="moderate">?</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a href="http://code.google.com/p/diamanda"
             title="Diamanda “MyghtyBoard” FORUM">MyghtyBoard</a></td>
      <td>Piotr Malinski</td>
      <td title="demo">?</td>
      <td title="guest-post">?</td>
      <td title="notify">?</td>
      <td title="moderate">?</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a href="http://sct.sphene.net/wiki/show/Board/"
             title="Sphene Community Tools">Sphene</a></td>
      <td>Herbert Poul</td>
      <td title="demo">?</td>
      <td title="guest-post">
	yes
	<span title="can be configured (if captchas are enabled, anonymous users have to answer them)">*</span>
      </td>
      <td title="notify: only registered users">reg *</td>
      <td title="moderate">
	no
	<span title="messages can be set to be hidden from threads and posts views, but an admin UI is missing. Code changes required to make new posts hidden">*</span>
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a href="http://zyons.com/"
             title="Zyons Community Applications">Zyons</a></td>
      <td>Ian Holsman?</td>
      <td title="demo">?</td>
      <td title="guest-post">?</td>
      <td title="notify">?</td>
      <td title="moderate">?</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
  <tfoot>
    <tr>
      <td colspan="6">
        Column headings and * symbols reveal verbose descriptions when the mouse pointer hovers over them.
      </td>
  </tfoot>
</table>
}}}

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This page was originally created by [http://djangopeople.net/akaihola/ akaihola]. There's a [http://groups.google.com/group/django-users/browse_thread/thread/56a6b62aba0c8766 django-users thread] about this page. I'll update information posted on that thread to this page.

=== Comments ===
[http://djangopeople.net/insin Jonathan Buchanan]: django-discussion is not actively maintained or developed at this time (parts of it were extracted into [http://code.google.com/p/django-mptt/ Django MPTT]) – [http://code.google.com/p/django-threadedcomments django-threadedcomments] looks like a more complete and feature-rich implementation of the type of functionality it provided, so I've removed discussion and put threadedcomments in its place.

=== To do ===
Ideas for making this page better:
 * add column for supported Django versions/revisions/branches