When it comes to forums, (free forums) people think of features. The most popular ones are probably phpBB and SMF. Now I know there is more, but this post is about phpBB and SMF. Which is better?
Well, that’s all in your opinion. phpBB is a simple forum, SMF isn’t hard but it is very nice and feature packed. Lets go over a few key features. A Big one is spam protection, so lets go over that, phpBB has horrible spam protection, many people refer to phpBB as a spam magnet. I had a phpBB forum once, not many people went to it because it was like a backup forum. It was a spam magnet, I don’t know how phpBB manages to allow such a thing, but they do. But that is phpBB2, now I can’t really say a whole lot about phpBB3 as I haven’t much used it. Now lets go over SMF, SMF is well, A lot less prone to spam. I don’t know how they do it. It doesn’t seem as they do much different then they do phpBB, although I can see a difference between phpBB’s and SMF’s CAPTCHA although bots still can’t read it.
Now Permissions and Groups. How about what are they…? Well Permissions are self explanitory. You can setup who is and isn’t allowed to do or have access to some specified place, board, post, feature or whatever it may be. Then there are Groups, referred to as Member Groups. You put members in groups and you can assign that certain group once again permissions. Such as making someone a moderator, you allow them to take care of a board or forum, Global Moderators are sort of like that but they can do it on every single board post and so on on that forum. Then there are administrators. They can change settings on the forum, and pretty much anything else and more. Now of course you can make member groups of your own, assigning each one certain permissions.
Okay, now that I have explained it, lets go over how SMF and phpBB handles it. Now SMF’s Permissions are straight forward, you simply go into the Admin Center, go into Permissions, hit Modify next to the Member Group you would like to modify Permissions for and simply check and uncheck a certain permission and hit save and its done! Now phpBB, to this VERY day, I have not been able to figure out permissions. They are so complicated, I have only found out how to setup permissions per individual person. It is HORRIBLE!I mean its as if phpBB strives to make there forums so hard and complicated to use. Now before you get all angry, this is just my thoughts, you can go ahead and think all you want about how “great” phpBB is but that is your opinion.
Now features! One of the other if not the biggest thing everyone wants is features. Now Im not talking about mods, as those can be added yourself. I am talking right out of the box features there you don’t have to make a second thought about. Now phpBB is horribly lacking, there user managment is poor, permissions are poor (Of course its a feature :P) there is no way to upload themes within the admin center, you cannot upload mods through the admin center, nothing fancy it is a very simple forum. SMF is a different story. It is feature packed! You can upload and install themes through the Admin Center, you can upload apply, unapply delete mods in the admin center, optimize your database, have it auto optimize, download a backup (Yes phpBB does this, forgot to mention, phpBB can also backup a forum if you upload an SQL File) forum maintenance, its nothing like phpBB. In order to get phpBB to do a fraction of what SMF does you would need to apply so many mods, with SMF its already there, yes of course you can apply mods easily to your SMF forum to suit your style.
So in my opinion, SMF is the way to go! phpBB is not, unless you want a simple forum, phpBB would be good for you, but if you want a decent forum you will just love, SMF is great! I forgot to mention! SMF has something most other forums don’t have! Cool pre made SSI, you can intergrate your site with your forum in so many ways. I will talk more about that at a later time 
