@RogerBW I have very fond memories of those times, being active in some German RPG Maker community. I still feel to this day, that it was the best online community, that I was part of. (rdn-online it was, not sure if anyone here knows it.) Such a forum I envision running. Maybe I am being nostalgic. But I could imagine inviting friends only and having various subforums for our interests and maybe bring to life some good discussions, knowledge collections and resource collections.

I just looked up, whether there is something like #phpbb in the #python world and found #flaskbb. However, the official project website got hijacked by sports betting ... Not very confidence inspiring, and the developer or maintainer stated, that they don't have time to maintain it any longer, so flaskBB is out.

@julian Thanks for the suggestion. I think though, that it is way to JS heavy for me. I want basically everything static pages and I don't need anything like live chat and stuff. Based on NodeJS makes me feel like it might be a resource hog on a small server and with all the supply chain dramas happening in the JS ecosystem, I am not sure I want to run it on my server.

Maybe I should have stated my goals a bit more precisely in my OP.

@topher1kenobe That goes in the direction I am looking for. Association with WP makes me very wary, but I will look into that. Maybe it is much better designed than WP.

@RogerBW I know about Discourse, but it is kind of exactly what I don't want. Way too JS heavy and doesn't feel like an oldschool forum software at all to me. I'd prefer something, that is more generating static pages, without requiring JS and each post and topic having a URL and all that. Still thanks for the recommendation. Maybe I will consider it after trying others.

#askfedi What is the best oldschool #forum software one can self-host on a small server?

"Best" as in some tradeoff of the following:

* bugfree (or not many bugs)
* safe, as in no or no discovered CVEs
* features for users, mods and admins
* maintainability
* safe, as in allows invite-only, and maybe review posts before being actually visible

Background is, that I have been thinking about hosting one for a long time, but it would probably be only for friends and friends of friends.