Are phBB and SMF free?

They are both free but i personally like phpBB

 

Yeah phpbb ranks over any free board. phpbb3 will be the next thing to any free version board.

 

Why does everyone say SMF. I would say go for phpBB, version 3 progress is looking very good, and their software is lightning fast.

 

SMF is horrible. It looks ugly.

 

Yeah that's right ... I support phpbb ... Its better than anything free online.

SMF is not only ugly.. it also sux at many things like Mods, templates and SEO ...

 

I also like phpBB. Its probably my favirote forum software so far. I reackon it would be worth buying also if it was a paid forum software.

 

An odd sentiment fromt the last few posters. Phpbb version 3 - I actually remember that being touted and championed over a year ago I believe and it still isn't in official release.
PHPBB is a nice forum and it was my choice for forum software until I got hacked, twice and had a growing site die as a result. I personally have moved on to SMF and havn't looked back.

Even with all the security updates etc, PHPBB is still found wanting security-wise - a sad search to do on google is - "hacked by" phpbb While not reflective of all current versions, it is a sad to go to some of those dead sites.

In regards to SMF, I am not sure if you are joking in regards to the mods and templates - Some of SMF's mods are very powerful and useful - http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/

Looks for a forum depend on the theme being used and there are many fine ones created for SMF . Please do have a look at http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/ for some examples.

 

lolz ... Its not phpbb's fault if you got hacked. There are flaws in SMF too. Not patching your forum software is your cost of getting hacked.

And phpbb has tons of themes. SMF is a child standing in a Mall named phpbb.

 

Actually the 2nd time my PHPbb forum was hacked, it had just been patched a week before. I came back from vacation to find it hacked which was a pity as a nice community was growing for that site at the time.

As already mentined, SMF does have some good themes, and it does allow different themes to be used for different boards.

 

There are many of us who dont know that installing new mods opens your site to attacks... I remember reading on a site about a list of Mods on phpbb which were open to attacks. Maybe that was the case with you.

Also talking about smF I dont see it as good seoed as phpbb... Plus editing the themes in phpbb is simple...

 

In all honesty I do not remember If I had installed any mods at the time.

The good thing about SMF is that all the mods listed on its site are actually looked at by the developers before being listed. It does help weed out the incomplete/dangerous mods which can lead to security issues or break other things inside SMF.

SEO in SMF is quite good actually. Here is an example of a link in a post in a SMF board -

It is as good as you require SEOwise from a forum I believe.

A Vbulletin forum's format with vbSEo is like

 

I agree. I prefer phpBB anyday.

 

In case you missed all the posts above your comment, here is a link to some themes for SMF - http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/

A forum looks as good as how its theme is setup and used.

 

Yes, I own a phpbb forum.

 

Come on Claudek not many like SMF ... phpbb rocks

 

I would disagree with the part that not many like SMF. As an example, Joomla is one of the favoured CMS currently on the web. The Forum of choice for the majority of Joomla is SMF. You may verify this by going to Joomla's forums or going to the Joomla Bridge section of the SMF forum to see how much in demand it is.

 

Good job it's easy to skin then, besides, looks are just a matter of opinion.

 

You can't just compare SEO on SMF and on phpBB. There are way to many factors involved (domain name, content, age, ...).
But from experience I can say that SMF has no problems in being indexed.
And the SEO4SMF mod is great!

It's true that SMF doesn't have so many mods as phpBB.
But you also have to keep another thing in mind:
Lot's of mods for phpBB are default features for SMF.
And phpBB is a lot older then SMF as well.

Also true that SMF doesn't have as many themes and is more complicated to theme then phpBB.
But on the other hand it's much more powerfull.
This is just an SMF theme: http://docs.simplemachines.org/

And SMF is definatly more secure then phpBB.

 

Yes, but the new phpBB looks really great with new features.

 

Yeah and also read this post:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=2912904&postcount=64