Where Have the Joomla Forums Gone?

There has been an interesting update to the forum sections on the Joomla Extensions Directory. It has been split into Native Joomla Forums and Forum Bridges. 

I was shocked to see only five native Joomla forums remaining. There are two native forums with a wide range of features:

• FireBoard (still in legacy mode on Joomla 1.5 until version 2.0 in the fall)
  
• Joo!BB (still in Alpha)

And three very basic forums:

• Simplest Forum
• Rapid Forum
• Nice Talk

Other solutions such as LoudMouth and Kookaburra have been
discontinued. The upside is that as native forums have flagged, there are some great bridges for 1.5 including J!Fusion and Rokbridge.

Further Reading

• 3 ways to improve your Fireboard
• Fireboard tips for robots.txt
• phpBB3 Integration Can Be The Joomla 1.5 Killer App