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why move from phpbb to smf?

Started by hkirsman, June 30, 2011, 03:52:47 AM

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hkirsman

Just asking. I've used both but SMF for short time now.

I moved to SMF because there was no other converter from YABB. I would have moved to PHPBB.

Now I see SMF is pretty great! First thing I admired was the builtin utf-8 converter, automatic plugin installation.

It lacks translations for my language but I thought maby I could write the translations. Anybody hasn't answered me yet though.

More reasons why dump PHPBB?

Burridge

Well, PHPBB IMHO is..bloated, and tbh I also think it's over-complicated. SimpleMachines is...well simplistic, stylish, and has a great community. (majority anyway). I feel the SMF team is more in touch with the community than PHPBB, or some other forum software. Now 2.0 is out as well, with a new license etc, it's much easier to help develop, add to, mod etc.

Also I think why YABB is still supported by SMF is that SMF is based(?) of it.

I know this would be classed as a bump, sorry. Just wanted to add my opinion.

hkirsman

Permissions are confusing for me in PHPBB.

Antechinus

If you want to write translations that'd be great. It's a lot of work though. What language?

hkirsman

I would want to translate estonian language as soon as possible.

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

Estonian language pack for 2.0 is about 66% translated - If you wish to join the effort in getting it completed,
you might want to contact Relyana ;)
Slava
Ukraini!


"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

hkirsman

Thank you! I PM'd her. Hope she can help me out.

sviridovt

Quote from: k6 on July 07, 2011, 02:29:54 PM
Permissions are confusing for me in PHPBB.

I think permissions in SMF are a little too simple :/

anyways, about a week ago I considered switching from SMF to phpBB (due to spam on my forum and lack of anti-spam mods for SMF), however I found that while I found phpBB to have a fairly easy UI (for both user and admin), installing mods takes a long time and could be considered complex (I think its easy but I am a big mod user and it takes really long to install them and to make it equal to my current SMF forum with all mods would take extremely long and is time that I am not willing to waste (I use waste instead of spend for a reason) so thats the selling point for me. I also really do like the way that SMF is designed back-stage wise (which was the reason why I chose SMF over MyBB (which is what I used before) in the first place)

IchBin™

Lack of anti-spam mods? I could name 10 off the top of my head. Not to mention the ones already built in.
IchBin™        TinyPortal

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

Permissions are too simple?
You really have not gotten to know them well then.
The SMF permission system is one of the most powerful parts of SMF...

You can just simply give basic permissions forum wide through the regular members group, and then add permissions by specific membergroups and be done with it - if you want simple.

But you can also do much much more...

You can give permissions by membergroup or post counts,
you can deny already given permissions by membergroup or post counts,
you can do both of these forum wide, or by each board specifically...

You can really build very complex setups using those options.

For example, I have a board that can only be seen by guests and users with less than 100 posts.
On that board everyone able to see it, can do pretty much everything SMF offers. It's a testing area.
On all other boards these newbie users have very restricted permissions, and they gain more access to different functions the more their post count rises. On top of that, I have forum wide moderators with moderating permissions on all boards, local board mooderators with moderating permissions on their own boards only, and VIP users who have donated to help us pay our server costs that get access to  a hidden area on the forum, and some extras like more space in their PM inbox etc...

I wouldn't go calling the permissions system simple :P
Slava
Ukraini!


"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

L.Reperio

I use my forum for my family to communicate. That's about 20 members. Just before I converted, I deleted another 2,000 or so members created by spambots every couple of months.

On a forum I converted a couple of years ago so far, I've had maybe 10 get through.

dosenpfand

We've used phpBB for some time now and had almost the entire time problems with it.

We then switched from phpBB to SMF 2 (just yesterday!) and we will never ever go back! SMF is so awesome. <3

Just the theme editoring is so simple and well-thought-out...

Imho, SMF is the best free forum there is. <3

thecoo1est

I moved from phpbb3 after a week, and all I can say is its alot easier to manage, way cooler mods and much more support it seems like, phpbb has a huge community and lots of stuff but I had a lot of little problems from it, I actually have had more trouble out of smf only because I wasnt paying attention, but after a few times of messing up and reinstalling lol, I have it worked out and Im loving the results, mostly the smfpacks shout is what got my attention its the best shoutbox available for smf in my opinion and better than any available at the time for phpbb3 when i used it.

Matt G

To be honest, I don't want to bash any forum software. However, if I must say, when I first went with phpbb, it took 10 minutes before I was fed up. However, it may just not be for me. All I know, is as soon as I went with SMF, I was happy with it. I used to run a smf forum, and and thus is why I went back to SMF. SMF Is great and should work for everyone. The nice thing is that it is very easy to use and easy to navigate around the admin area.
Linux Nation - Linux Discussion Forums. [nofollow]CodingNation [nofollow]

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
Mark Twain

[Crash_Override]

Quote from: Burridge on July 05, 2011, 03:59:12 AM
Well, PHPBB IMHO is..bloated, and tbh I also think it's over-complicated. SimpleMachines is...well simplistic, stylish, and has a great community. (majority anyway). I feel the SMF team is more in touch with the community than PHPBB, or some other forum software. Now

I agree, I started my forum with PHPbb and it lasted about 3 days.

PHPbb, has way too much overhead with all of its extra features and the permission system is a nightmare to figure out.  Not only that but the most recent version makes modification installations so difficult at times that it scares away novice users.  Not to mention the major difference between SMF and PHPbb is the mod/package installation.  PHPbb you actually have to download and edit the coded pages and hope you didn't screw up, where as SMF you just upload the archive hit install and bam you're done.

SMF, has a much easier and in depth permission system from any other forum software I have ever seen.  What BBS allows you to hide boards from the global mods, but not the admins or other members? None as far as I know.  That and the abundant amount of mods/tweaks/add-ons/themes that are available and easy to implement, make SMF what it is SIMPLE and very effective in my book

AllanD

I have to agree with the alot others here.PHPBB acp is horrible and confusing and the permissions will give you nightmares.
Check out this great sites.
KnD Hosting

markh

PhpBB is horrible to use. Modifications are tough to impliment and forum permissions are complex.

However, I would NOT try to convert to SMF. If you get stuck at any point in the process you won't get any help or support.

Fortunately, I got stuck before the conversion process began, so getting no help wasn't too damaging. If you are part way through conversion though, you could lose everything.

DrZux

I'm an admin on my friends PHPBB gaming site and had no issues with PHPBB even though the ACP and adding mods can be pain. I then decided to start my own forum which I did using PHPBB, I use another forum a lot that was SMF based and got into a conversation with the admin on it, too cut a long story short, I took his advice and gave SMF a try using the PHPBB to SMF converter and have never looked back since.

SMF just rocks, the permissions are easy to understand and implement and the installation of mods is so easy.

cebu

I have 2 forum sites. I already moved the smaller forum to SMF while the bigger forum, im still carefully studying on converting from phpbb3 to smf if it would not be hard specially that it has around 130k post and lots of mods on it.

I love how easy to install mods here in SMF and there are lots of mods to choose from specially the ones that could protect you from spambots.
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Biology Forums

Quote from: Burridge on July 05, 2011, 03:59:12 AM
Well, PHPBB IMHO is..bloated, and tbh I also think it's over-complicated. SimpleMachines is...well simplistic, stylish, and has a great community. (majority anyway). I feel the SMF team is more in touch with the community than PHPBB, or some other forum software. Now 2.0 is out as well, with a new license etc, it's much easier to help develop, add to, mod etc.

Also I think why YABB is still supported by SMF is that SMF is based(?) of it.

I know this would be classed as a bump, sorry. Just wanted to add my opinion.

Put it this way, I learned more PHP working on SMF than you would in 2 years at college. It's very simple and easy to learn and customize.

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