Discussion Board Platform - phpBB or SMF?

yes. SMF!!! Its really almost as good as vbulletin.

You asked for an URL:

http://www.1up-seo.com/forums/

Not very much of a choice you have there. Between those 2, I recommend smf. But if you can get mybb installed, go with that over smf.

Over the years I have seen too many phpbb forums hacked to recommend it for anything. SMF on the other hand, they tend to stay on top of the security updates.

The bad things about smf, the project is in some kind of limbo. Version 2 has been in development for years, maybe 4 or 5 years if memory serves me right. And it has no signs of being finished anytime soon. Last I heard, there was even a court battle to see who has the right to lead the SMF project. The whole thing is a big mess. I have also heard that a lot of the original programmers have left the smf project to do other stuff. As a result, the code has become difficult to deal with, and rather bloated.

In my opnion, phpBB is more advanced and has more modifications then SMF. phpBB is very simple to use and since its popular, there are many different modifications such as themes, plugins and etc as compared to SMF.

SMF is also great, but If I was having the option between these two then it would definately had been phpBB.

I use smf for one of my boards and I'm happy with it. Although I have been looking at mybb - it just seems there is a better and more dedicated team behind that project.

SMF is really cool and simple to use, if it is your first forum then it is a good grounding base for you.

I see a lot of people suggesting SMF,,, which is fine. But there are some things that are not being discussed.

The version of captcha that SMF uses, its is just about useless against spammers. When you setup an SMF forum, your going to need to install the ReCaptcha modification to stop the flood of spam.

Some modifications require the forum theme to be rest back to default. If there are template edits that need to be made, sometimes those changes are only made to the default theme. So if your using a custom theme, you might have to make the template edits yourself. And because of the way the SMF templates are coded, this can be a real pain. Lets just say that if you want to edit the navbar to add a link, unless your a coder, its going to be VERY confusing.

The support forums are hit-and-miss. I have posted support request, and never received a reply.

The permissions system can be confusing.

There have not been any real updates to SMF in 4+ years. This has caused the project to fall behind other forum software. While VBulletin has added a content management system, tags, customized profiles, members blog,,,,,, SMF has not released any updates - except security fixes.

There are a lot of big forums out there running SMF, there are tons of themes, modifications,,,,, all kinds of stuff. But the overall project is lagging behind the times when it comes to updates and added features.

I also prefer SMF.

If you have budget go for vbulletin...