FluxBB is a fairly little-known open-source forum software written in PHP. It offers only the absolutely essential features a forum software needs, focusing instead on stability and performance. Still, it is trusted by some of the biggest Linux distribution forums out there, and it's predecessor PunBB was used in the former Facebook Developer Forums. It was downloaded almost 200,000 times.

We are currently overhauling the entire application, building on the modern Laravel framework in its not-yet-released fourth version.

Choosing a framework instead of a home-grown, optimized solution is an interesting compromise between developer comfort (and development speed) and overhead that comes with the framework.

We learned a lot about why performance matters still with all the modern technology and especially where it matters and where it does not.