SMF vs IPB 2.0

[fastforum]

Hey SMF team... what can your sa about the IPB 2.0 PDR4 and the upcoming IPB 2.0

What can you say about the ff:

Speed
Average No. of Database Queries
Server Utilization
Templates
Easy Upgrades
Portal Feature
Photo Gallery

I´m more concerned about speed of the forum.
Thanks SMF Team!

[Oldiesmann]

Hi. I've been testing out the IPB PDR versions for a few months now...

Speed - SMF is just as fast as IPB2 PDR4 (if not faster)
Not sure about database queries or server utilization
Templates - SMF's template system is much easier to use and nowhere near as complex or confusing as the one in IPB2
Easy Upgrades - SMF's upgrade is much simpler and easy to use (I have yet to get an IPB2 upgrade thing working)
Portal Feature - There are several portal/CMS systems in the works that will work with SMF.
Photo Gallery - There is a very simple mod that will integrate SMF with Coppermine Gallery - it will allow users to login to the gallery using their SMF username and password, and even have personal galleries if you want.

Hope this helps.

[David]

IPB 2.0 is no longer free, but rather a free trial while you evaluate their software.  SMF is free!

[Oldiesmann]

Yeah. In terms of licensing options, SMF blows IPB away. Why pay for spell check and chat when you can get both with SMF for free? (Chat is a mod, but it's still free. Spellcheck requires an additional PHP library, but any good host should install it if you ask them to).

[Skoen]

Not forgetting that all themes and skins works perfectly with SMF even after upgrades. With IPB you have to wait until someone creates a skin and then you have to make 4 steps to get i uploaded and installet. With SMF you have a very good and simple Theme manager that even enables you to install a copy of your existing theme, with only a few modifications.

[klumy]

IMO IPB2.0 has the better search interface and the better IM management.
But SMF has more charme and a more friendly developer team

[Skoen]

Hehe, that's true, we are all dedicated to do what's best for ourselves and the main forum, plus of course, the members

[Ben_S]

A non bias opinion you will not get on a "competitors"(used in the loosest of terms since SMF isn't technically competing with IPB)

The read thread system sported by YaBB YaBBSE and SMF is what has kept me here over time, the features SMF now has will keep me here too, AFAIK no other board on the market (free or paid) YaBB and YaBB SE excepted keep track of topics that you have read correctly...

[Grudge]

Also - bear in mind SMF is still working towards it's first RC and already has a huge amount of great features. I think IPB has too much stuff and it's so hard to find a feature you want, and that is integrated SIMPLY into the forum (I've used it a lot writing converters and the like!). Everything seems to be so complicated!

As for database queries you can't really compare! SMF uses quite a lot of queries but they are very well designed to be cacheable. SMF could probably use half as many queries (even less?!) but they would be slow and not handled well.

As for portal/gallery. These things come with time but as someone said already there is a coppermine bridge (And coppermine support now uses SMF as their forum!), and portal bridges are coming over time.

[Elijah Bliss]

Also - bear in mind SMF is still working towards it's first RC and already has a huge amount of great features. I think IPB has too much stuff and it's so hard to find a feature you want, and that is integrated SIMPLY into the forum (I've used it a lot writing converters and the like!). Everything seems to be so complicated!

As for database queries you can't really compare! SMF uses quite a lot of queries but they are very well designed to be cacheable. SMF could probably use half as many queries (even less?!) but they would be slow and not handled well.

As for portal/gallery. These things come with time but as someone said already there is a coppermine bridge (And coppermine support now uses SMF as their forum!), and portal bridges are coming over time.

The IPB board is a very nice piece of eye candy but a lot of people tend to forget the 2 most important purposes for logging on to a message boards: reading and posting. Eye candy, stuff moving around, too many features can be a huge distraction and turn users off. For whatever reason, SMFs space/design/font relationship works very well for users as opposed to the IPB and vbulletin boards I've seen go under within the past 6 months. Your first obligation as an admin is to make sure your poster can easily read and post on your board, if they can't do that with ease then your board will fail.

[Double-Trinity]

I've used both IPB and SMF

Call me crazy but I actually prefer the IPB 2 template system (probably becasue I was familiar with that one and was having problems with SMF templates less than an hour ago...). I particularly like the macro feature in IPB that allowed me to just plug "tags" in my custom templates, and then swap those out for bits of HTML code, if used wisely it makes for pretty clean templates.

Howeevr, I dislike actually importing and exporting IPB templates, but for small edits, I prefer IPB. They're pretty hard to compare totally. I also like the logic used in laying out the templates too, this is really just developors' style more than anything, but I found it was structured in ways that fit with my design styles, if that makes any sense. For example, IPB uses a single bar with user info like personal messaging as standard in the templates, while SMF uses the boxes at the top. It took me considerable extra time to convert the "box" format into the "bar" format, this really all depends on what design you have in mind for your finished site, though.

Modifications though I've found easier on SMF though becasue straight PHP is easier to mod than a complex somewhat counter-intuitive template script.

[fastforum]

SMF also have a classic skin that you can modify very quicky. Go to admin panel and choose classic skin in one of your forums then modify it.... VERY EASY to modify...like plugging tags (remove tags that you don´t like to display) and use a single bar too... you can create multiple directories of the classic skin with different designs for every categories or topics you have... SMF rocks!

[SERT27]

does anybody know the performance issue between 
IPB 2.2.1 and  SMF 1.1.1 ?

which of them require more queries?

[babjusi]

SMF beats phpBB any time. To me SMF is the best forum software that excists today, I have seen phpBB, VBulletin and they are nothing compared to SMF in every way, shape and form

[Grudge]

Sert,

Query count is (relatively) meaningless. By this I mean if SMF used 15 queries to generate a page and IPB took 14 it wouldn't be a sensible comparison. There are actually many times in SMF where we do things in two queries that could be done in just one as the two separate ones are actually faster.

Sadly it's extremely hard to get a real benchmark between different web software as there are so many variables. You basically need to find two similar spec servers with forums of a comparable size and activeness and see which "feels" faster. Personally I suspect there is very little between SMF and IPB speed wise.

[SERT27]

Hi Grudge


thank you for your answer...

my Problem is, I'm working with IPB 1.3.1  the site creation time and query count of this forum  is great, I've changes the hoster and the new Hoster has php5 problem is , this forum is not working with php5/MySQL 5 and many security holes

First I thougt to update to IPB 2.2.1 before buying the licence I'v downloaded the DGT nulled version of IPB 2.2.1 and compared the performace between IPB 1.3.1 and IPB 2.2.1 is not as fast as IPB 1.3.1
Then I found SMF
Many hacker forums are based on SMF because its secure this a great + for SMF I've downloaded SMF 1.1.1 and wanted to install it but doesn't SMF have an caching function?  couldn't see a cache folder

[Grudge]

SMF 1.1.1 only caches if the server has an accelerator installed. Unless your forum is extremeley active I don't think caching would be a big concern.