My opinion on SMF

[Harzem]

i love PHPBB to be honest and i also like vBulliten

I also like MyBB, PunBB, XennoBB, IPB, etc...

What is the point of stating that here?

[nitins60]

SMF s the best. Myself, i tested more than 25 forums(medium/big), before going to start a stable forum. Finally, i am completly satisfied with it.
We should discuss about dark side also(will help you to improve SMF, don't mind), i am not digesting a fact about attachments download. But i am sure, This team is going to solve problem one by one Cheers

[SaltedWeb]

 My Opinion on Th etop Three.

Yabb, old school and seems not to have graduated with teh class. Its classic and stable. easy enough newbie like it. But it lacks raw power.

PHPBB. Great program well developed, but in 3 years its the same old things. Its like looking at windows 95- ME looks and acts the same jjust a different name.
Php has great mods and a very high end curve to learn. Unless you do little with it.
If you are coder the kind of guy that writes HTML from pure scratch in Note pade then this is for you.

SMF, the new kid on the block lacking in options that have been around for years. The program seems like google in constant beta mode. The stable versions as old school technology and noy MYSQL friendly, but the beta  are Mysql friendly.
SMF will someday be worthy of a pay version if was ever availanble as once it crosses a leve of quality it stays there and never looks back. the other two come out with new versions and then patches to fix the new version.

Over view:

Yabb, is a Pizza boxed forum set for those that want a forum in 30 minutes or less and its free.

PHpbb is good, support is sub par to SMF and Yabb. But is built well once all patches are finally applied.
There have been more security patches needed on Phpbb then any other noted foru,m.

SMF, is like the Win2000 NT version of MS. Solid, works well, the options it has are perfect. But the options are limited to this new kid. for now. I say for now for with each version it become not only better then the others. It passes them in the areas of new interest.
SMF has teh best admin of all three.


Ratings  1- 10

Yabb 4
PhpBB 6
SMF   7.5

[Gobo]

i recently had a look at vB enhanced and their ported over gallery + arcade system....

man it was really good...

but still nothing beats smf lol

[NotNice]

I tried several forums, I have used YaBB for several years and the only reason I turned to SMF is because YaBB did not go too well with Joomla. I tried to transfer all members and topics and so on from YaBB to SMF and failed miserably. My members were slighly upset because I simply told them that if they did not like it they should start their own forum sp they lost all their gossip. For your info: I have a forum because it helps me to keep my phone-bill small, so mainly my friends spent too much time gossiping on my forum and we have a lot of non-serious fun in general

Now that they are used to SMF they are actually happy that I 'stole' the old YaBB forum, because they like the SMF a lot better. We also frequently visit another forum which is phpBB and my friends told me that they like my SMF forum even better that the phpBB, or other forums for that matter.

I think that my opinion about the forum is irrelevant, when the members are happy and visit the forum a lot I will have achieved my goals: create a (small) community where people can have contact with eachother. Sure, a nice admin-center is cool, but what good is that if your members run away screaming?

I think SMF is great, simply because my forum-members love it

[madfiddler]

The idea of open source is simple and sweet; it is not an idea of communism or socialism like its critics sometimes say.


..etc.etc..

I guess this isn't unlike the old Amiga demo scene which I used to be heavily involved in. Whist I was also composing and sound designing as a career and earning cash, I was also writing lots of tunes which were given away free within the demo scene for use in the demos. The more you did, the more market share, the more well known you became.. I guess...

m (TDK in the Amiga scene if anyone remembers that).

[madfiddler]

BTW - I think SMF is great as a forum. The best I've looked at.. I just wish, since I'm trying to grow my site from a forum into a community that more of the other PHP type programs supported and integrated SMF rather than Vbulletin etc.

[Gobo]

I believe SMF is the forum for TRUE webmasters who actually know or at least learn along the way to know what they are doing

For me I started off with 0 knowledge of PHP - just using smf for 1 year and now I can actually handle simple level php with ease and also able to actually sit read and understand a php file to a large extent.

So this forum system is not just about the looks and functionailty but it is a complete learning system too where you experience so many things which teach you about really being a webmaster

[*yasin*]

site nasıl oluyor

[madfiddler]

It's been a heck of a learning curve for me. I can't figure out php though, but I knew nothing about hosting, and servers etc etc 4 years ago.. I still don't really haha but can at least find my way around.

Turkish post above methinks.

[simonben]

Yes, definately. I have no idea what anything said above means as I am so far out of my depth it's a joke. But I felt the need to get a word in here to make myself look as if I know what the hell I'm talking about.

One thing I will say though - Bloody great software, and it's free. Well done chaps, and thanks



P.S. I'm not drunk you know!

[青山 素子]

SMF, the new kid on the block lacking in options that have been around for years. The program seems like google in constant beta mode. The stable versions as old school technology and noy MYSQL friendly, but the beta  are Mysql friendly.
SMF will someday be worthy of a pay version if was ever availanble as once it crosses a leve of quality it stays there and never looks back. the other two come out with new versions and then patches to fix the new version.

As far as I know, no one in the SMF team is looking at turning SMF into pay-ware.

I don't know that you could say SMF is in constant beta mode. If you stay on the development versions it will seem that way, but 1.0 is the real release currently. You could make the same comment on PHPbb, with version 3 being in beta for years. I am not fully sure what you mean by SMF not being MySQL friendly though.

[Gobo]

I used to think that it was annoying that new releases were really slow and used to complain

but actually its good to have less 'new releases' all the time - this way a person actually gets to enjoy their forum instead of upgrading every 2nd month and all that

SMF has the correct forumla I think by keeping the base straight forward and all the 'jazz' comes via the mods - and also by keeping the new releases at a slow pace

[septor]

I just learned about SMF today through a forum post on the e107 site. I like the fact that this all feels like vBulletin, but it's a whole lot better. I like the idea of how easy it is to install mods. It's like the developers knew they'd not get everything in that people wanted so they built in a way for mods to be installed easily for the user.

This is all speculation, since I haven't done a lot of research, but damn. I'm overwhelmed with how advanced this forum system is.. and it's free.

Edit: I'd like to note that I've tried a few forum systems; vBulletin, phpBB, XMB. miniBB, WordPress' forum system, Ikonboard, and I'm sure a few others. Out of all those I liked XMB the best (vBulletin is nice, but I refuse to pay money for something that I can easily get somewhere else for free) so far, however, I see no reason to not use SMF over these for any future plans I may need a forum system for.

[GiNi3D]

...I see no reason to not use SMF over these for any future plans I may need a forum system for.

Exactly, there are no reasons not to use SMF, especially if you have security in mind.

Comparing similar powerful boards at Secunia:
SMF = 4 Secunia advisories
phpBB 2 = 36 Secunia advisories
vBulletin3 =  12 Secunia advisories
XMB = 10 Secunia advisories
IPB 2 = 19 Secunia advisories
Woltlab 2 = 8 Secunia advisories

And let's not forget that some have low advisories numbers due to the fact that they are not widespread; like Woltlab. SMF started to be highly deployed and tweaked from all sides and manners; I think SMF is doing above reproach in this field, especially against the big ones like vB and IPB. So why use something and wait for the next security surprise, when you can use something now that will make you feel more at ease. And even if something will come up with SMF sooner or later, hey! don't you think it's still above reproach since the beginning.

And one thing I find sickening about vBulletin, is that you pay quite a bit for it, yet, it's one of the worst in security. I say that if you want to use something that must be paid, for one reason or another, at least go get Ideal BB, even if they are only for windows platform, at least you get a board with only 1 known vulnerability to date, compare that to vBulletin! As for phpBB, they seem to be unable to get rid of their bad habits. And IPB, I just hate their day to day bugs and the security issues.

There are reasons why not to use others boards thought! 

[青山 素子]

That isn't a valid comparison, you just did a Microsoft.

Comparing raw bug data is not helpful at all unless it slants your particular way (Linux had more bugs than Windows!). As much as I am happy that the data favors SMF, it is not helpful unless the bugs are broken down by severity, since 20 very minor bugs are still better than 10 highly critical ones.

My terms:
1 box = ultra low
2 box = low
3 box = moderate
4 box = high

• SMF 1.x - 4 total. 1 ultra low, 1 low, 2 moderate
  
• phpBB 2.x - 36 total. 4 ultra low, 17 low, 12 moderate, 3 high
  
• vB 3.x - 12 total. 6 low, 5 moderate, 1 high
  
• XMB 1.x - 10 total. 5 low, 5 moderate
  
• IPB 2.x - 19 total. 1 ultra low, 9 low, 7 moderate, 2 high
  
• wBB 2.x - 8 total. 3 low, 5 moderate
  

Of course, this also leaves out other info such as unpatched security issues (Check Secunia pages for that), time between notification and patching, etc.

As an example, if we eliminate all boards with high security issues, we find out that wBB has 2 / 25% of reported security issues unpatched, and XMB has 6 / 60% unpatched (both with moderate as the highest ranking). SMF has been fully patched for all reported issues. Of course, sometimes Secunia is a bit off, so it would be wise to check the unpatched issues reported and see if there is a patch out for any of them.

Of course, if you are concerned enough like this, you should do your own research using the metrics that you find most useful to you.

[GiNi3D]

^^ I understand your point, well done too, but at the end my point still stands, no matter how you try to dissect the terms and classify it, SMF since the beginning his still the best of them all regarding security issues, you made it even more clear now.

[Shaman666]

vBulletin > Despise.
phpBB > Dislike.
IPB > Like.
SMF > Love.

My favorite part of SMF, hands down, is that it's fully customizable--from CSS right down to the core HTML.  Keep up the good work!

I agree 100%. SMF is the best. I mailed one of the developers last month saying that I love them

[freebrowsers]

This forum is going great. I discovered it only yesterday..and I'm surprised by it's popularity and usefulness. The developers and moderators are really working their best, giving it proper attention. It shows. Way to go people.

[yelegen]

when I decided to set up my own forum I happened to see the link at the bottom of a forum I am a member of, it was SMF...
So my first ever forum experience was SMF and I loaded as started to get familiar I started to mess with joomla, Tp, MK but then I started to think hey there has gotta be others out there and so I discovered PHPBB, Nuke, and whole bunch of others and tried almos all of them and I could not belive how lucky I was to discover SMF the first time around.

I consider myself now a tried and true SMF er there is just simply no other forum software out there that can even come close as far as I am concerned.

Great work guys thank you all..