SMF Vs Phpbb3

[fantanoice]

I'm interested to know the pros and cons of each and which one is better in the long run.

From what I know:

SMF Pros:
- Easy to install mods and other features

SMF Cons:
- Many 'outdated' looking skins (not that there are some nice ones around)

Phpbb3 Pros:
- *Not exactly sure*

Phpbb3 Cons:
- Difficult to install mods


My list is far from complete, so feel free to fill in the blanks, if you like.

 

[Nathan]

Well it's really up to user preference but if your going to do cons and pros:

phpBB:

Pros: There's a lot of free skins that look good.
Has a massive amount of mods and support.
Easily customizable.

Cons: Blinky stinks.
Modifications require manual editing.
The community is huge, therefore majority of the free skins are overused.

I don't really use SMF so there's are based on my browsing experience while using SMF:

Pros: There are actually some good free themes from dziner.

Cons: Looks unfinished.
Is very dull.
Crap quick reply.
Crap PM system.

Just my opinion.

 

[ros]

SMF Pros:
Very active, polite community support forum
Huge selection of mods that are instantly installable(including quick reply and pm mods)
SMF themes are now CSS-based in 2.0, so themes should vary a lot more.
Instant install of themes
Regular updates that you install instantly from admin panel
Less resource intensive than phpBB
More secure than phpBB (search it)

 

[NBK*Twitch]

SMF 2.0 (sorry never used 1.x)

Pros :
Themes are alot better then in 1.x and there are alot of good looking themes.

Mods are so simple to install thanks to the package manager. There is also a nice guide to manual install aswell.

The community has great support and for me they always helped in under 2 hours.

The admin cp is probably the easiest I have used on any forum software.

Oh and the inital install of SMF 2.0 is simple as fudge.

As said above SMF is more secure then phpbb

Cons:

You normally have to go to another site besides the smf one to find the good skins.

There isn't to many third party smf sites.

Making a theme yourself could be quite troublesome.

Phpbb3

Pros -

Tons of mods and themes.

Themes are simple to install.

Large community and many third party sites so you can be sure to find something you want.

Alot of mods aswell.


Cons:

PHPBB3 is secure aswell,but since it is used so much hacking or cracking of a phpbb3 site is common.

The mods are not so easy to install since you can only do manual install and bet it will work.

As said above with such a large community some skins are used way to much.

For me the admincp was not to easy to get use to.


Thats about all I can think of right now.

 

[Fullmoon]

I dont think SMF has outdated skins! My forum is on SMF. We have edited the main skin to make a Red (default) or Blue version. Take a look at it.

Phpbb... Has LOADs of spam, and hard to install mods

I vote SMF

 

[Bejay]

I find phpbb to be great for the advanced permissions. Like PM ban and stuff like that. Also, you can make them not see the profiles. 😀

 

[ELCaD]

phpBB is great for permissions, but you can achieve some good stuff with SMF mods.
I like the way SMF works but really don't like the look of SMF1.
SMF 2 however looks GREAT in my opinion and is far superior to phpBB3.
I was a big fan of phpBB3 but then decided to try out the RC2 of SMF2.0 and instantly fell in love with it!

 

[Shahrier]

IPB ftw 🙁

 

[NBK*Twitch]

I find phpbb to be great for the advanced permissions. Like PM ban and stuff like that. Also, you can make them not see the profiles. 😀

Not arguing,but SMF has that feature too 😉.

 

[Nebulous]

phpbb looks better and is more user friendly...
But SMF is easier to maintain / administrate.

 

[DracoJesi]

I used to use phpBB....

PhpBB used to be king of the free forums out there. But it's become so dated. It used to be that you couldn't even do sub-categories without the CH mod, which heavily edited the forum coding (it was worth it), making it, for all intensive purposes... incompatible with most mods.

Sure you could edit them to work... but the problem is (and keep in mind that I'm comfortable with code) that the files your given that tell you which modifications to make aren't at all commented well. All they do is say "find this, insert this before that" extra. They don't tell you what part of the code does what. This is a problem because they assume that your running a stock install. Which means after several modifications, especially huge ones like CH, the code has changed so much that the install guides aren't very helpfull at all.

So I'd always have to figure it out myself. I could always get it working eventually but it took more time than it should have and most people would be SOL.

I can't say I hate phpBB, I've used it for many years and it really did pave the way for later forum software.

I here that despite PhpBB3 being out, you still need a mod for subforums.

They really messed up when moving to PhpBB3, what did it really bring? Everybody who had spend all the time getting there mods to work wasn't about to start all over again, especially when the mods for phpBB3 were/are sparse.

That's when allot of people switched, I honestly think much of the momentum for the project has gone. It's interesting to because Open Source projects tend to be superior to commercial ones allot of the time and tend to have more efficient and customizable code.

This isn't true of forum software, with the best software being vBulletin IMO (not that others don't come close). It's also the most expensive by far, ridiculous in price.

What do I use?

MyBB, which I think is the best free alternative.

Pros
- supports things like multi-layered sub forums, Portal, RSS, and a few other things from the get-go.

- Advanced plug-in system that uses hooks to insert plug-in code. Makes removing or disabling plugins as easy as clicking "deactivate" or "uninstall". Also, debugging mode.

- The C-Panel is much more powerful than phpBB or any other free forum I've ever seen, and is even comparable to vBullitins.

- Easy yet powerful template and theme editor.

-Open Source

- Much more, but I'll stop here

Cons

-One of the lessor known projects, there could be more mods readily available, that said, there are some amazing mods. This also goes for themes.

- No Gallery plug-in yet.

Heres an example:

http://www.dracojesi.com/Forum

Also, one last thing, you can use easymod to auto-install mods on PhpBB but it's more miss than hit and often leaves you with a mess to clean up, even with the easymod "compatible" mods

 

[CyberFreak]

You do not need a mod for subforums on phpBB3. Might be worthwhile trying it out before putting it down. phpBB3 brought alot of new things. It was completely re-written from scratch and it is secure. There is no known exploits in phpBB3 and if you look at the release notes of phpBB3 compared to SMF you would notice that actually recently phpBB3 is alot more secure.

Don't go by what other people say. In the past phpBB has been very insecure but in recent years it is the complete opposite. People keep calling it unsecure based on years ago and assume that as phpBB2 was bad many years ago that phpBB3 is the same.

 

[DracoJesi]

You do not need a mod for subforums on phpBB3. Might be worthwhile trying it out before putting it down. phpBB3 brought alot of new things. It was completely re-written from scratch and it is secure. There is no known exploits in phpBB3 and if you look at the release notes of phpBB3 compared to SMF you would notice that actually recently phpBB3 is alot more secure.

Don't go by what other people say. In the past phpBB has been very insecure but in recent years it is the complete opposite. People keep calling it unsecure based on years ago and assume that as phpBB2 was bad many years ago that phpBB3 is the same.

I never said anything about security.

I said I've heard, meaning I was unsure. Thanks for clearing that up though.

I did actually try phpBB3 when it first came out and was unaware of the subforum option. To be fair, it was a beta release if I remember correctly. Wasn't comparing it to SMF either as I've never tried SMF.

It's nice to here the phpBB project is still going strong, but I think I'll stick with MyBB.

 

[NBK*Twitch]

You do not need a mod for subforums on phpBB3. Might be worthwhile trying it out before putting it down. phpBB3 brought alot of new things. It was completely re-written from scratch and it is secure. There is no known exploits in phpBB3 and if you look at the release notes of phpBB3 compared to SMF you would notice that actually recently phpBB3 is alot more secure.

Don't go by what other people say. In the past phpBB has been very insecure but in recent years it is the complete opposite. People keep calling it unsecure based on years ago and assume that as phpBB2 was bad many years ago that phpBB3 is the same.

PHPBB3 does have a few exploits known.
It is also still missing quite a few things other forum software already has

As for it being more secure them smf if you mean smf 1 I wouldn't know,but SMF 2.0 is very secure. It is also harder to crack passwords on smf 2.0 do to how they encrypt passwords.

 

[AnAccount]

I'm using SMF currently, and I don't see myself switching anytime soon. I like how it's easy to operate and maintain, like Theezy said. Yes, not all of the themes are the greatest, but at the same time, the posting interface is nice, and the boards look nice and clean, and I would prefer SMF at the moment. They've got some great games for the arcade, too.

 

[Watch Me Sink]

I'm using SMF currently, and I don't see myself switching anytime soon. I like how it's easy to operate and maintain, like Theezy said. Yes, not all of the themes are the greatest, but at the same time, the posting interface is nice, and the boards look nice and clean, and I would prefer SMF at the moment. They've got some great games for the arcade, too.

The SMFforfree themes are pure shit. If you move to advanced hosting you can find some great ones and add them.

 

[NBK*Twitch]

I'm using SMF currently, and I don't see myself switching anytime soon. I like how it's easy to operate and maintain, like Theezy said. Yes, not all of the themes are the greatest, but at the same time, the posting interface is nice, and the boards look nice and clean, and I would prefer SMF at the moment. They've got some great games for the arcade, too.

The SMFforfree themes are pure ****. If you move to advanced hosting you can find some great ones and add them.

I agree with this. I have seen themes for smfforfree and they suck eggs.. Before you say they are smf themes they are not. The css template used on smfforfree is not near as advanced and is basically only css. Where smf themes also include alot of php.

 

[DracoJesi]

I'm using SMF currently, and I don't see myself switching anytime soon. I like how it's easy to operate and maintain, like Theezy said. Yes, not all of the themes are the greatest, but at the same time, the posting interface is nice, and the boards look nice and clean, and I would prefer SMF at the moment. They've got some great games for the arcade, too.

If they are set up the same way as games for phpBB and MyBB, then the SMF games should work on other boards. It was my understanding that the same format was used for the game files because every site I've seen that has games you can use on your arcade mode uses the same format pretty much.

I get allot of games from a site that specializes in this running phpBB, and I can use those games with MyBB.

I don't know about SMF but thought maybe that might be the case here.

 

[NBK*Twitch]

I'm using SMF currently, and I don't see myself switching anytime soon. I like how it's easy to operate and maintain, like Theezy said. Yes, not all of the themes are the greatest, but at the same time, the posting interface is nice, and the boards look nice and clean, and I would prefer SMF at the moment. They've got some great games for the arcade, too.

If they are set up the same way as games for phpBB and MyBB, then the SMF games should work on other boards. It was my understanding that the same format was used for the game files because every site I've seen that has games you can use on your arcade mode uses the same format pretty much.

I get allot of games from a site that specializes in this running phpBB, and I can use those games with MyBB.

I don't know about SMF but thought maybe that might be the case here.

The smf arcade has custom games for it,it also allows phpbb games and ibp games. As for vbulliten games I do not know.

 

[Watch Me Sink]

Yep. With a little custom coding vB games can be put on. I have Hungry Hungry Hippos. 🙂