Alright. I've seen plenty of topics in this forum about which free forum software is the best. I've decided to write a post about it. All views are solely my opinion. I will be debating phpBB, SMF, and MyBB. Later, I will write a post debating vBulletin and IPB. Forum Battle #1: The Best Free Forum Software Feel free to Argue
There is really not that much to argue about. Over the past years I have seen projects come and go. Phpnuke and postnuke were the popular content management systems, along with phpbb as the forum software. Those projects have been replaced with new CMSs and better forum software. I have also seen sites that did not update get hacked and defaced. Some of these communities recovered, while some did not. There were several forums that I used to visit that were taken off line by their owners. One forum was owned by a guy I know personally. After his site was hacked several times he took it down and left it down. Its just a matter of time before that "free forum software" is replaced with something newer and better. Years ago PHPBB was the dominating force in free forum software. But as the security holes surfaced, users left. SMF stepped up and took PHPBBs place. And now MYBB is making waves. In the next few years I look for SMF to lose more of the market share as MYBB gains popularity. In another 4, 5 or 6 years, MYBB will be replaced by something else. Regardless of what is popular "right now", in a few weeks, months or years something else will come along and replace it. One of the problems is the developers moving onto new projects. A lot of these free scripts are written by high school and college kids. When they finish school, get a job and a family, the time they can dedicate to the software development become limited. When you have a project that was launched and supported by a hand full of people, and those people move on, the project dies. In the past 2 years I have seen the popularity of SMF fade. And in the past 5 years PHPBB has lost a major part of the free forum market share.