From phpBB to SMF in early 2006 - then to vBulletin around July for my Psychlinks forum. I still run or admin a couple of small boards with SMF, though. I can't see ever going back to phpBB for any reason whatsoever. That became a nightmare.
I know its old but I really liked a style it had and...I really didn't like the admin cp in SMF or the way it was set up or looked at all!! I think I did pretty good with it: http://infotipper.com/forum/phpBB2/ Why was phpbb a nightmare for you minstrel?
People here are of the opinion that vBulletin is for large boards but smf is good enough for comparatively smaller boards. However this site here has over 46K members and is on SMF. Here is the stats page..
In my opinion (from a programmer's perspective), phpBB is rather crappily built in regards to the actual code. When I saw the source code, I'm deathly shocked that phpBB is that popular. The best built forum software is IPB (prices are a bit steep) in regards to code.
If your into something free, go to smf.... But if your planning into really something big, prefer vbulletin.
Seems like there are a lot of SMF lovers here! I'm also one! Running to 2 forums (1 is dead though) with SMF. First one together with MKPortal, the other one with Tinyportal. And there are quit a few very nice themes for SMF though! Think SMF has even more themes then MYBB, but I'm not really sure about it. Just take a look on the SMF or the Tinyportal sites. It's also pretty easy to create one yourself.
Yes. Anything you can do with phpBB you can do with SMF and more. Email, PMs, even rudimentary newsletters.
Go to the admin panel --> News and newsletters --> Newsletters Then you can choose to which membergroups you want to send it.
No, I meant for anyone to use the actual forum board to send emails. In phpbb, it has an option to be able to use the board for emails when you click the email by a members name instead of sending you to outlook express, which personlly, I've never liked.
Yes. If the member chooses to display their email address, there is a small envelope icon listed in the "postbit" below the member name - click on that to send an email to the member.
phpBB is seriously the way to go, mod installs are a snap with Easymod, all you need to do is to upload the files and click on install! That's it...if you're on a template that's a spin-off from the default subSilver(meaning, it shares the stylesheets and general placement of components), Easymod will handle the template edits perfectly too. I run quite a few forums and I have EM installed in all of them, never have I experienced any problem with it. The only trouble is, you could get seriously lazy when you get used to how easy it is to install mods with EM! Forgot one thing, wait till they launch Olympus and you will be blown away!