Beehive Forum
Beehive Forum is a free and open source forum system using the PHP scripting language and MySQL database software.
The main difference between Beehive and most other forum software is its frame-based interface, which lists discussion titles on the left and displays their contents on the right.
Other features which differentiate Beehive from most forums include:
Targeted replies to specific users and/or posts.Safe HTML posting (malicious code is stripped out), rather than BBCode, via WYSIWYG editor, helper toolbar, or manual typing.A relationship system, allowing users to ignore users and/or signatures that they dislike.Powerful forum-wide and per-user word filtering, including a regular expression option.A flexible polling system, allowing public or private ballot, grouped answers, and different result modes.A built-in “light mode” that allows basic forum access from PDAs and web-enabled mobilephones.
The source of these useful yet distinct features is not just from the minds of developers, but also from the people who use the software.
With its mix of technical features and user friendly interface, Beehive is used by a range of audiences, from Linux users to senior citizens and more. Beehive is used by the popular UK technology website The Inquirer.
History
Beehive Forum was started in 2002 by a group of ex-PC Format forum members (known then as NPCFF – Not PC Format Forum) who were upset when Delphi forums decided to cripple the service for their non-paying members. The first release, labelled Beehive Forum 0.1 beta, was released on the 27th June, 2002.
The latest stable version, Beehive Forum 0.9.1, was released on 24th July 2009, and includes a variety of fixes, improvements, and new features.
The latest bleeding edge version is often used and tested at the new haunt of NPCFF members, now known as Teh Forum, from where free unofficial support may also be found.
The majority of Beehive is written by Matthew Beale, and he is currently the primary coder for the project
Security & Vulnerabilities
Beehive is one of the most secure Open Source forums.
On 28 November 2007 Nick Bennet and Robert Brown of Symantec Corporation discovered a security flaw related Beehive’s database input handling. The vulnerability could “allow a remote user to execute SQL injection attacks”. The flaw affected all versions of the software up to 0.7.1. The Beehive Forum team responded very rapidly with a fix released, in the form of version 0.8 of the software, later that day.
The current version of Beehive does not have any known security vulnerabilities.