Comparison of Forum Options?

Hello,

Is there a comparison of forum options anywhere?

Last year, I had contacted presales support about what I was looking for and, in my notes, I have that I would need Profile Groups, Profile Group Pages and Profile Group Discussions modules. And also phpBB integration. I see there is a Forum module in the Marketplace, but I don't have that in my notes.

Is there a comparison somewhere of what each offers? The Marketplace descriptions don't seem detailed enough for me to figure out what I would need. I would need site-wide forums and subforums within forums. I don't know if that could be accomplished with some kind of profile hierarchy (if that's even possible) or if I need to integrate with phpBB. I'd like to avoid having to have phpBB integration because then you have two different systems from two different companies that you need to maintain as far as updates go. Would be easier if it could all be done with Jamroom without the phpBB integration.

Thanks!
updated by @dcr: 06/13/16 09:09:19AM

This system you are using here is the Forum module.

It works on a users profile. If you only wanted one forum for the entire site then the best way to do it would be to create a profile for the site wide stuff.

For example, here on jamroom.net we have the 'The Jamroom Network' profile that holds all of the site wide stuff related to jamroom. The url of the forums is:
https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/forum

But since there are other developers who release their own stuff too, they each get a forum as well:
https://www.jamroom.net/ultrajam/forum
https://www.jamroom.net/b360/forum

originally this was the only forum system. Then Ning users came along and they were used to having GROUPS and group discussions. So if you wanted to allow groups, and let each group have its own forum too, then you'd go down the GROUPS module with the GROUP DISCUSSION module added too.

Not sure when you would ever want to run phpBB alongside jamroom. There is probably a use-case for it that I'm not familiar with.

I'm thinking in terms of having an organizational structure with forums and subforums (or maybe they're called nested forums).

For example, let's say you have an Entertainment forum. In that forum, you have subforums for Books, Music, Television and Movies. Each of those subforums may be further divided. So you might have a structure like this:

Entertainment forum
* Books forum
** Fantasy Novels forum
** Nonfiction forum
*** Biography forum
*** Historical forum
*** Political forum
** Romance Novels forum
* Movies forum
** Action/Adventure Movies forum
** Biographic Movies forum
** Romantic Comedies forum
* Music forum
** Classical Music forum
** Country Music forum
** Pop/Top 40 Music forum
** Rock 'n' Roll Music forum
* Television forum
** Dramas
** Reality TV
** Sitcoms
updated by @dcr: 03/12/16 11:14:19AM

Make each of them a profile and give the quota they are in access to the forum module.

Docs: "Profile"
https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/documentation/using-jamroom/2984/profile

Docs: "Quota"
https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/documentation/using-jamroom/2985/quota

So all of your users will be in one quota, while your topics will be in another.

say one quota is called "topics" and another called "standard users"

In the "topics" quota create each of the profiles with the name of the topic, so they come out at:
your-site.com/books
your-site.com/fantasy-novels
your-site.com/nonfiction

and the forum will be found at
your-site.com/books/forum
your-site.com/fantasy-novels/forum
your-site.com/nonfiction/forum

forums can then be divided into categories from within the forum module. You're currently looking at the 'using jamroom' category for this thread.