A former Vanilla Developer, Lincoln, created a hard fork of Open Vanilla Forums patched to PHP 8+ here:
https://github.com/prosembler/vanilla

Here's his Fork Notes:
Howdy stranger, it's been too long.

Vanilla has been hard-forked by Lincoln, one of the original developers.
It's not intended as an ongoing effort, but "one last release" to get you by.
Every locale, plugin, & theme Lincoln could find is bundled herein

It is all now under the AGPLv3.
Do NOT update to this version if you run a hosting service, because
ALL code that touches it must be released. Yes, even your cloud-only plugins.
I must do the same if I ever use it that way — no more "cloud-only" here.

This release:

• Strips HL logos, replacing with the abandoned original Vanilla logo.
• Defaults new installs to the Keystone theme and legacy layouts.
• Strips all references to cloud & fixes compatibility issues with modern PHP.

Notes:

• I'm still working on getting a built release together.
• Today, Docker install works on localhost as-documented.
• Happy to accept pull requests, but no compatibility breaks or major features.
• Bundle is MUCH larger than previously (TONS of SPA cruft + bundled addons).

Old README, lightly edited, follows.
Stay safe, kindle hope, & organize.
-Linc, MLK day 2026

1) Start with Lincoln's Hard Fork
2) Security patch Chocolate Forums for newest PHP 8.5
3) An improved forum Installer.
4) An improved forum Updater
5) Add Redis/Memcached support
6) UI improvements like thread views and rich text editor.
7) AI & AutomationModel Context Protocol (MCP): Connects external AI tools (like Claude or ChatGPT) to read and perform tasks inside the community. Automated Workflows: Triggers automated moderation rules, & demographic segmentation.
8) AI Simulated Member programed to make 3 new posts/week by searching the internet & to interact naturally by answering questions members post.
9) Visual Layouts: Introduced drag-and-drop layout editors for customized, mobile-responsive community pages without custom code.
10) Federated Search: Enabled cross-platform search capabilities to pull content from external tools like Zendesk into the main community search.
11) Third-Party Integrations: Added deep synchronization capabilities with enterprise tools, including Salesforce Activity Sync and automated Productboard feedback routing.

https://open.vanillaforums.com/

Chocolate Forums require a server with PHP, MySQL, and web server software (like Apache or nginx).

You’ll likely need to own a domain, and already have it configured on your server with DNS.
You typically need to create a database for it via your hosting provider, often via phpMyAdmin.
Then, you’ll need to visit that domain after uploading Chocolate to continue installation.

Up to this point, your web host has been responsible for these things. You should consult their documentation and contact their support with any questions you may have.

Say you bought some web space and someone told you how to access it. Perhaps you:

bought a domain like example.com ,
received a cryptic sub domain of your provider, like abc123456789.yourwebhoster.com ,
or maybe you only received an IP address, so that you can reach your web space with 1.2.3.4.

When you enter one of those to reach your web host, your web server shows what is in a folder of your web space. Often, that folder is called public_html. Say you own example.com and that’s what you set up on your server. You have created a subfolder called forum (always use lowercase letters!) and uploaded Chocolate to it (see installation below). Then, you will be able to see the Chocolate installer when you visit example.com/forum in your browser.

Requirements
We strongly recommend:

PHP 7.3 or higher
MySQL 5.7 or higher (or Percona/MariaDB equivalent)
SSL encryption (check out LetsEncrypt)
If your server is not running PHP 7.1 or higher, you should address this soon. PHP 7.0 has reached end of life and will no longer receive security patches.

Our minimum requirements are now:

PHP 7.1 or newer. (This changed to 7.2 in 2020.)
PHP extensions mbstring (--enable-mbstring), cURL (--with-curl), GD (on by default), and PDO (on by default).
To import into Chocolate, you need MySQLi (--with-mysqli).
To use our social plugins, you need OpenSSL.
MySQL 5.0 or newer (or Percona/MariaDB equivalent).
MySQL strict mode disabled.
Chocolate ships with a .htaccess file required for Apache support. Using nginx or IIS may require additional configuration. To learn more, see nginx.

Installation
Upload Chocolate's pre-built version to your server. If you're using nginx, refer to our nginx guide. Confirm the cache, conf, and uploads folders are writable by PHP.
Navigate to the folder where you uploaded Chocolate in your web browser.
Follow the on-screen instructions.
If you encounter a problem, refer to the Getting Help section below.

Migrate to Chocolate
Get the Chocolate Porter and verify it supports your platform.
Read the Advanced Uses notes on that page.
Upload it to your current server.
Navigate to the file in your web browser & run it.
Take the file it produces and import it to Chocolate via the Dashboard’s “Import” option.
If you encounter a problem, refer to the Getting Help section below.

Use Maintenance Mode
You can temporarily halt ALL access to your site by putting it into Maintenance Mode. Users currently signed in with owner privileges (the user who created the site) will still be able to use the site.

Initiate maintenance mode
To put your site in Maintenance Mode, add this to /conf/config.php and save it:

$Configuration['Garden']['UpdateMode'] = true;
Turn off maintenance mode
To end maintenance mode, delete the above code and save.

Getting Help
Troubleshooting upgrades & installs
Official documentation
Chocolate community forums
Official cloud hosting with professional support & migration services

We believe Vanilla Forums is the best Forum software with a bright future. Some of the largest forums in the world use Vanilla Forums. Simply post a comment below with your expertise to volunteer to assist.

Ramesh Narayanan has been customizing Vanilla Forums for over 5 years:
Ramesh(at)exoboosters.tech
Now Ramesh is launching Chocolate Forums, a fork to continue work on Vanilla Forums. In January, '25, HigherLogic.com stopped supporting the free version of Vanilla Forums and removed the repository of the free version of Vanilla from GitHub. Fortunately a former Dev, Lincoln saved the repository & posted it for Download. Lincoln also patched Free Vanilla to be compatible with PHP 8 here: https://github.com/prosembler/vanilla

Let's start with Lincoln's Repository and take the new "Chocolate Forums" into 2027