Which Forum System should I use?

[evkl]

Looking for a forum system to handle a small to midsize amount of users, one that can be fantastico-installed preferably. That means either phpBB2 or SMF.

Which is more reliable and powerful?

 

[Doctor Oak]

PHPBB is evil. A pain to customise and filled with enough bugs and security holes to keep you picking over it constantly.

 

[Koroku]

Forget both of them, and go with MyBB.

 

[Jshadias]

phpbb blows, mybb looks great

 

[atomic1fire]

screw mybb or phpbb
go with smf

 

[Archaic]

Invision is supposed to be fairly good, from what I've heard.

 

[Koroku]

Invision is pay now, and really ugly~

 

[OkashiraShinomori]

Try invisionfree. It's what I use for my Mahou Sensei Negima web site, and it's a wonderful system. And, as the name suggests, it's free. ^_^

http://www.invisionfree.com/

 

[Doctor Oak]

I dunno how relevant it is any more but last week I changed over from PHPBB to SMF and it's one of the best things i've ever done.

SMF appears to be based on the core of YaBB, but has a lot more user-friendly features for both admin and users. Installing MODs for it is also a piece of cake as it's done automatically through the admin centre.

It's also a lot easier to skin and edit manually and is efficiently put together at the same time.

Definitely one of the best free ones available now.

 

[Marill]

I'd avoid phpbb, it's too late for me to escape unless I want to start fresh yet again. You always have to update to newer versions cos if something goes wrong and you ask for support on the phpbb's site you always get told to do it cos [sarcasm]updating is the solution to every problem with phpbb[/sarcasm] and leave you to suffer really. I do like my forums now but now I can't vote in polls, use pms.. it's really quite a mess now.

 

[Doctor Oak]

I'd avoid phpbb, it's too late for me to escape unless I want to start fresh yet again. You always have to update to newer versions cos if something goes wrong and you ask for support on the phpbb's site you always get told to do it cos [sarcasm]updating is the solution to every problem with phpbb[/sarcasm] and leave you to suffer really. I do like my forums now but now I can't vote in polls, use pms.. it's really quite a mess now.

You could always just convert from phpbb to something else. MySQL driven forums are quite easy to do this with and larger board systems like SMF, VB etc would all have converters from other large systems. phpbb would definitely be covered. We converted from phpbb to SMF afterall and kept everything bar the bitch of phpbb itself. ^^

 

[Koroku]

The MyBB converter works like a charm.

 

[Marill]

I've just spent well, a loong time making a new template and adding new mods.. I don't think those could be easily moved to a different forum system, though I'm probably wrong.