I am looking to open up a forum but i have no cash. So my best choice will be a free forum software like phpBB and SMF..but are they any good??i mean most of the forums i saw have vBulletin.. Can i move my forum from phpBB/SMF to vBulletin if i get some cash without losing the members and threads of my forum???
SMF is great. No complaints. And yes, I believe there are converters available that will take SMF/phpBB databases and convert them to vBulletin.
There may problems with PhpBb2 but PhpBB3 is very much better than PhpBb3! But the only negative side with PhpBb is that you have to install some MODS like Advanced SEO MOD to make it better! Have a look at PhpBb3. It really pretty good. Tons of features...
This question was asked several weeks ago by yours truely. Read the previous thread (including a poll) here. It's strange to find that no one voted for vBulletin, which was by far the most popular forum script in my thread. Aren't there many differences after all?
hehe..too much mixed reactions I am getting..but do i have to face problems when migrating from SMF/phpBB to vBulletin??
Just look around some SMF forums and some PhpBB3 forums also try both of them by your own. You'll get an idea to select the one for you! It will not be much hard to migrate from PhpBB to VB compared to SMF to VB!
smf - security and usability phpbb - nice looks, being the most popular free forum softwareit has a generous variety of themes to choose from! you can convert them to vb using plugin named impex!
Not only that...but I've never understood the mentality, of placing one's crown jewels (your site content) in the hands of proprietary software. SMF or vB could change license terms tomorrow, holding anyone using their product hostage. Sure, converters exist...but they are far from perfect, particularly when one starts in with mods. No thanks...if ever there were a case for GPL software, it's with CMS and forum software. No way I'll store my years of valuable data elsewhere...
I prefer phpbb3, it is probably the software I come across the most often online besides vBulletin, of course.
I am a fan of SMF but when I used PHPBB3, I switched. And it is GPL while SMF uses SMF License. Converters exists SMF->PHPBB3->VB and vice versa. like interfx said, PHPBB3 is already catching up with vB. Actually before PHPBB3 I did try myBB which is a copycat of VB but since myBB license is also not GPL, I ended up with PHPBB3. But nevertheless, myBB is also a good choice.
I prefer phpBB a LOT more than SMF, I have used it a couple of times and just can't bring myself to enjoy using it. The main reason is that I just find SMF annoying to work with and really don't like the way it works in general. Obviously I would choose vBulletin over everything else though