theadminzone - SMF vs. vB

[osirisjem]

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21798 [nofollow]

What are the differences ?

[Grudge]

Ah - the infamous software vs software argument in which you never get a clear answer cause everyone is bias

Personally - I do actually like vB - it's used on a lot of forums I frequent and is, IMHO, the best forum software out there (Excluding SMF which I can't comment on due to my clear bias). vB does however have a rep for being server heavy and is clearly quite bloated in many respects. I hate the theme system with a passion but it's a very hard thing to get right (I still don't think SMF has it as good as it should be TBH). vB is also of course paid.

There are some things which SMF does lack compared to vB - post moderation is a major one for some forum users. However - I think on base functionality SMF matches vB pound for pound - is probably lighter on the server - and of course is free. As with all these things it come down to what you want out of the forum. Clearly if you want to run a political forum where moderation is key then maybe SMF is slightly below par against vB in this respect - but if you want to run a user intensive forum - and integrate it easily into your site - then maybe SMF is a good choice. It's all apples and oranges at the end of the day - that's my pretty unbiased opinion really.

[SusanTN]

Ah - the infamous software vs software argument in which you never get a clear answer cause everyone is bias

Personally - I do actually like vB - it's used on a lot of forums I frequent and is, IMHO, the best forum software out there (Excluding SMF which I can't comment on due to my clear bias). vB does however have a rep for being server heavy and is clearly quite bloated in many respects. I hate the theme system with a passion but it's a very hard thing to get right (I still don't think SMF has it as good as it should be TBH). vB is also of course paid.

There are some things which SMF does lack compared to vB - post moderation is a major one for some forum users. However - I think on base functionality SMF matches vB pound for pound - is probably lighter on the server - and of course is free. As with all these things it come down to what you want out of the forum. Clearly if you want to run a political forum where moderation is key then maybe SMF is slightly below par against vB in this respect - but if you want to run a user intensive forum - and integrate it easily into your site - then maybe SMF is a good choice. It's all apples and oranges at the end of the day - that's my pretty unbiased opinion really.

It seems like post moderation could be handled very easily by a mod. Of course the devs would be free to integrate it into the code base.

You need a post status field, The display template would have to know not to show unapproved messages to non-admin, some way for admin reading a forum to see unapproved messages and approve them, and possibly a admin interface which shows all unapproved posts for your forum with the ablity to mass approve (checkboxes). One other nice feature is a new post email with a link to click which would approve the post. But all of these are not hard features to implement.

[Grudge]

bl968,

Post Moderation will be a feature in the next version of SMF after 1.1. Infact most of what you say is already implemented in CVS and has been for some time. My comment was just that we don't have it *yet*.

Grudge