ForumKitt - Community Forum Platform PHP Script

ForumKitt - Community Forum Platform

ForumKitt is a self-hosted forum platform for building and running an online community on your own website. It brings discussions, member profiles, events, a resource library and paid memberships together in one place.

It's made for creators, businesses and organisations that want full control of their community and its data. The installer has it running in a few minutes, and branding, members and moderation are all handled from one admin panel.

Version: 2.1 Updated: Sep 29, 2026

👉 Learn more about ForumKitt

Features

Discussions

• Categories, forums and tags
• Threaded or in-order replies
• Rich editor with images, video and code
• Questions with accepted answers
• Polls, showcases, announcements and your own post types
• Search with filters

Engagement

• Points, levels, badges and a leaderboard
• Reactions, votes and @mentions
• Follow members, with a personal feed
• Private messages
• Live notifications and email digests

Monetization

• Paid memberships: monthly, yearly or lifetime
• Stripe, PayPal, crypto and bank transfer
• Members-only forums, resources and events
• Ad placements across the site

Events and resources

• Events with RSVPs, reminders and waitlists
• Online, in person or hybrid events
• Resource library for guides, files and downloads

Moderation and safety

• Reports and an approval queue
• Automatic spam checks, word filters and link rules
• Trust levels for new members
• Warnings, bans and IP bans
• Two-factor sign-in and captcha

Customization

• Two themes, with light and dark mode
• Your own colours, logo and fonts
• Custom pages and footer links
• Translate into any language

Admin

• One admin panel for everything
• Web installer and one-command updates
• Social sign-in with Google, GitHub, Facebook and GitLab
• API and webhooks

👉 See every feature

Requirements

• PHP 8.3 or newer
• MySQL 8, MariaDB 10.4+, PostgreSQL 13+ or SQLite 3.35+
• PHP extensions: intl, fileinfo, zip and mbstring
• A cron job that runs every minute
• Shared hosting, a VPS or a cloud server

Instructions

You can install ForumKitt yourself in a few minutes. The built-in web installer sets everything up for you, and our documentation walks you through each step.

Changelog

Version 2.1.0 — 2026-09-29
- Added: Two new themes, Kitt Editorial and Kitt Bold
- Added: Lemon Squeezy and Paddle payment gateways
- Added: A new sign-in and registration layout
- Fixed: Minor bug fixes
Version 2.0.0 — 2026-09-25
- Added: Paid memberships with Stripe, PayPal, crypto and bank transfer
- Added: Events with RSVPs and reminders
- Added: Resource library
- Added: Custom post types and labels
- Added: Threaded replies
- Added: Member follows and a personal feed
- Added: Video embeds
- Added: Custom pages
- Added: Two new themes, Kitt Default and Kitt Classic
- Added: Two-factor sign-in with an authenticator app
- Added: Guest access settings for each forum
- Added: Tag suggestions and tag aliases
- Added: Custom icons for badges, levels and reactions
- Improved: Faster, single-page app navigation
- Improved: Redesigned admin panel with grouped settings
- Improved: Trust levels, with posting limits and review rules for each level
- Improved: Moderation and spam protection, including link blocking and automatic spam checks
- Improved: Email, storage and social sign-in now set up from the admin panel
- Improved: Advertising, with new ad zones
- Removed: The six 1.x themes 
- Fixed: Minor bugs and performance improvements
Version 1.2.0 — 2026-08-31
- Added: Trust levels — capabilities that unlock as members participate
- Added: File and image attachments on posts
- Added: Autosaved drafts for threads, replies and post edits
- Added: Member blocking
- Added: Move, merge and split for threads
- Added: Advanced search with filters and sorting
- Added: Data export and account closure
- Added: Social sign-in for Google, GitHub, Facebook, LinkedIn, GitLab and X
- Added: REST API at /api/v1 with personal access tokens
- Added: Outgoing webhooks with signed payloads and delivery logs
- Added: Captcha support for reCAPTCHA and Turnstile
Version 1.1.0 — 2026-08-03
- Added: Advertisement module with banner slots
- Added: Translation manager for site languages
- Added: Nimbus, Graphite, and Bloom themes
Version 1.0.0 — Initial release — 2026-07-24