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Forum software
June 18, 2009 9:01 AM   RSS feed for this thread Subscribe

Forum software questions. (1) As a user, which type of forum software (vBulletin, phpBB, SMF, other) do you like best from in terms of usability? (2) If you're an admin, which forum software do you like best, having tried at least a few types? (3) Which forum software is considered to be most/least resistant to spambots and spammers?

Insight and anecdotes are appreciated, as are links to resources on choosing between forum packages and perhaps new forum packages outside the vBulletin-phpBB-SMF triad. Feel free to mention any mod kits that tighten a forum against spammers.

My own general experiences:

- Vbulletin is awesome, flexible, and is resistant to spam without mod kits, but it's expensive and puts you on an annual payment treadmill to get upgrades, even if you want to buy it outright. This is why I only operate a couple of forums with vBulletin. I also suspect from past experience that it may be CPU intensive and may not work well on shared hosting.

- phpBB3 seems to attract more spammers than other forum packages, and the out-of-the-box configuration has poor or kludgy spam tools; my experience is that phpBB3 should never be deployed without mod kits or it will get overrun with spam.

- SMF is small and elegant; I like it and am using it for one new forum, but I haven't used it long enough to know if I'm going to have spam problems.
posted by crapmatic to computers & internet (9 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
(1) phpBB.
(2) phpBB. Version 2 was easier to deal with than 3, but 3 is still better than everything else I've tried .
(3) No idea on this, but once I installed the usual anti-spam plugins on phpBB (both 2 and 3) I didn't have much trouble.
posted by likedoomsday at 9:40 AM on June 18


Hearsay is that SMF will be easiest on your CPU and bandwidth.
posted by Niomi at 9:44 AM on June 18


I had been on several message boards that utilized vBulletin, and had quickly gotten used to its UI.

So when I had to create a forum for my University's English Department, I was stumped, because I had no budget whatsoever.

But I stumbled across ProBoards, fully customizeable, similar to vBulletin, and free.
posted by litterateur at 10:15 AM on June 18


I've been running a phpBB forum for a few years now, and I recommend it with no reservations because I've visited it as a admin maybe once in the last two years.

No problems at all, with spam or anything else.
posted by chazlarson at 10:42 AM on June 18


SMF has been very good to me.
posted by unixrat at 10:43 AM on June 18


I currently run Vanilla for a small group of folks. It's decent, straightforward, and not chock full of the "forumness" idioms that plague most current message board software. It's also extremely modular, and can be enhanced with plugins rather than the fleet of patches, manual hacks, and vicious chopping at the code that phpBB requires.
posted by majick at 10:48 AM on June 18


I used phpBB2 when it was a part of phpnuke, and suffered for it - hackers used an exploit within phpBB2's code to screw with my site repeatedly. From what I understand, however, this was the fault of phpnuke for not upgrading / patching their internalized version of phpBB.

I've been using SMF 1.0.X and 1.1.X, and have been happy with it. Easy to administer, simple to load, nice selection of modules, good community, and free. Spam has been a bit of an issue, but not terribly so - I recently blocked any IPs from Russia from accessing the site (since we're a local club in the New York area only, it shouldn't be an issue), and that helped a lot. There may have been other solutions, but this was simple and effective.

My SMF is embedded into a Joomla site using JFusion, so I am holding off on SMF 2 until it's out, stable, and JFusion works with it.
posted by GJSchaller at 11:20 AM on June 18


I recently launched a phpBB3 forum and while the software is inherently good, it is a total pain in the ass if you want to customize it because there aren't very many mods developed for it. It seemed like every time I wanted a piece of functionality, I would find it for phpBB2, but not for 3 and that made me (and my users) sad. That said, I haven't had a problem with spam (but it hasn't been too long--a couple of months) so I don't know if your assertion about that is true. If you want to go that route, I'd check first to see if the functionality you want can be had.
posted by Kimberly at 12:50 PM on June 18


I have installed and run what feels like a billion forums in the last 15 years. I think I've used every incarnation of everything on your list, and a handful of others. Which I point out only to say that I am completely and totally in love with Vanilla.

The whole first week I ran it, I kept getting up and walking out of my office so I could tell my husband once again how great it is. And oh God, how I love the user interface. It's like the "Oh. Duh." revolution I've been waiting for for 15 years without even knowing.

The standard anti-spam plugins are very effective.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:55 PM on June 18


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