SMF vs phpBB Forum application comparison
Table of Contents
phpBB and SMF are two of the most popular free bulletin board applications. If you are looking for a free forum application, you will most probably end up using one of the two.
Here we will discuss the pros and cons of each one.
SMF Forum Application
Pros:
- the installation/uninstallation of additional mods is done through an automatic package manager;
- supports multiple languages at once;
- option to display the query count per page;
- full or partial word censoring;
- cookie and session based authentication;
- spell checker.
Cons:
- does not support custom BBCode buttons;
- no custom profile fields;
- no user rating;
- no search flood control;
- no customizable private message filters.
phpBB Forum Application
Pros:
- has a lot of free mods/plugins/templates;
- supports MySQL, MSSQL and PostgreSQL database engines;
- search flood control;
- password protected forums;
- sorting of posts;
- private message filters which can be customized.
Cons:
- no automatic mod installer;
- the installation of some of the additional mods may require more advanced programming skills;
- no HTML in posts;
- no user rating;
- no RSS.
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