Although I’ve been fairly quiet with this site for a few months, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been busy.  This article covers a few items that you may find interesting.

As we head into 2019, many of us are gearing up for Joomla 4 which is currently in late alpha testing.  Apart from major makeovers in terms of look-and-feel, the biggest difference is that Joomla 4 will be the first version to exclusively use PHP 7.  This will mean that people currently relying on PHP 5.6{footnote}PHP 5.6 is approaching its end of life and what to do about it{/footnote} who anticipate moving to J! 4 will need to equip themselves with PHP 7.  This will also bring with it problems for website owners who may still be running much older versions of Joomla (e.g. J! 1.5 or J! 2.5) especially if they do not have the ability to run different versions of PHP on their webhosting platforms so that their differently-versioned J! websites will continue to operate.

In preparing ourselves for the eventual release of Joomla 4—some time in 2019—the Joomla development team has been tidying up Joomla's source code with the release of J! 3.9 in October this year.

Could someone tell me if there exists an updated comparison table between Kunena and phpBB?a forum user, Joomla Forum, 8-Apr-2018

It is impossible, whatever views we may have about Kunena or phpBB or any other forum product, to say anything about them without a broad understanding of the issues this topic may cover; it is also impossible to do justice to these matters in a few words. There are, however, three points that we can make:

1. I am unaware of any comparison “table” that exists comparing the differences between Kunena and phpBB.  If such a table exists we should be grateful if someone could point us to it.  Further, because I am unaware of an existing “table”, I don’t know how anyone can comment on whether such information has been updated.
2. There is an abundance of literature on the internet, not to mention user reviews in the JED, that speak about people’s experiences with different forum products available for Joomla.  As readers of my blog would know, I have written thousands of words about various Joomla forum products (including personal observations and experiences I have with them).
3. Irrespective of whatever forum product people may choose—they may choose one over another because of ease-of-integration, reliability, robustness, durability, level of support, ease-of-use, documentation, security, etc.—an internet discussion forum is used to grow a website’s content without the site owner having to do all the hard work themselves.  Some products are evidently better than other products when compared from an operational and administration perspective.  Whatever reasons people choose to use a forum product, the final decision rests with the site owner and the purpose(s) for which the forum is required on that website.

Donut Score is a module{footnote}This extension uses some concepts and techniques developed by HighCharts.com.{/footnote} to visualise numerical data (e.g. percentage results) with a simple Javascript-driven donut chart. Install the module, create an instance (or multiple instances of it), assign it to a module position and a menu page (or pages) and see the results.

The simplest way to describe what this module does and how to configure its settings is to view a live demonstration.  The module settings are listed in this article.

Module settings

Module tab

Advanced tab

Top Topics for Kunena is a module for the Kunena component that displays a list of forum topics (a) have been viewed the most number of times, or (b) that have the most posts/replies.  Requires Kunena—version 3.0, 4.0 or 5.x—forum component must be installed.

Module settings

Module tab

Filtering Options tab

Top Posters for Kunena is a module for the Kunena component that displays a list of most active users in the forum.  Requires Kunena—version 3.0, 4.0 or 5.x—forum component must be installed.

Module settings

Filtering Options tab