PhpBB or SMF?

[Traveler]

I finally have a site with lots of traffic (not the site in my sig, still have lots of work to do on that one) and I am thinking about adding a forum. I am not sure of what I should use, either phpBB or SMF. Between the two, which would you recommend and why? I should ad that vBulletin is not an option for me, I only use open source.

 

[weblord]

stable - smf
fast and easy to deploy - phpbb

 

[Traveler]

stable - smf
fast and easy to deploy - phpbb

That pretty much echos my thoughts on the two. Has anyone tried the latest versionof phpBB?

 

[shockie]

phpbb might have more themes and has a different look/feel to it. its community is also seems bigger which might be important to you. if you will be running phpbb, then make sure you have things in place to fight those signup bots / spammers.

 

[sb225]

I suggest to you go with smf because it is more stable and hardly to customize while compare to phpbb
Phpbb looks very clean and easy placement ads etc that attract to use but it easy for spammers to post

 

[Accurate]

well basically

smf is best out of the box, easy and simple to set up with great security features. Also smf is alot younger than phpbb, I think maybe only a couple years old.

phpbb requires alot mroe time and effort, alot older but you need to mod it alot more to get up to what smf provides out of the box.

I hope this helps

 

[dezinerite]

I like phpBB3. Before phpBB3 came out, I'd have definitely advise you to go for SMF because it's a great forum software. But phpBB3 is a whole lot tidier than SMF (IMO) and straight to the point. If you're looking for something elaborate, choose SMF. If you're looking for something simple, go for phpBB3.

As for phpBB2...I don't know if that's still available but I didn't like it much (can't remember why).

You might want to consider myBB, it does have a vBulletin 'feel' to it. It's also my favourite free forum software.

 

[Traveler]

Thanks everyone for all the great input. Rep has been added!

 

[Accurate]

sure no probs

I use smf for all the forums I currently run, if your interested in paying VBulletin and IP Board are an option.

 

[DomainReseller]

I'm not a fan of the SMF template system. PhpBB3 is more advanced than the prior versions. One of the nice features included in phpBB3 is the user role management and permissions.