Comments on: phpBB vs. SMF

By: Stated cleanly

Stated cleanly — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 04:25:25 +0000

QUOTE “but let me just mention that vBulletin is and always will be the best and preferred forum software.” UNQUOTE

…for you maybe, but that is just your personal choice. It does not represent what is the best and preferred forum software for the mass populace. You really should be very careful about how you phrase your statements and keep things in context. It would be all too easy for the non-iniatated to come across this article and assume you are stating accumulated statistics, which you are not. vBulletin is NOT the best and preferred forum software globally.

By: Baz Web Development: Ajax, FastCGI, Joomla » SMF 1.1 RC 2 Is Out!

Baz Web Development: Ajax, FastCGI, Joomla » SMF 1.1 RC 2 Is Out! — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:31:14 +0000

[...] I just made a comment in a previous post about phpBB vs. SMF where a user mentioned the pains that we all go through when upgrading phpBB. I commneted that I cannot actually compare upgrade procedures between the two packages because from the first install of SMF a new version hasn’t come out. [...]

By: Baz L

Baz L — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 22:02:18 +0000

Yes, that’s the thing with phpBB. And security updates come out soooo very often that this is a regular thing now. You can, however, use EasyMOD to apply the patches for the upgrades, but depending on which MODs and how they’ve been implemented, and on the template, they just don’t work well and then you need to go in and do things manually.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve moved to SMF. Honestly, I can’t say what it’s like to install an update for SMF because since I’ve done my switch a new version hasn’t come out yet. The MODs are nice and clean.

Unless phpBB cleans up how they do things, they are going to be phased out, no question.

By: Markowitch

Markowitch — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 08:39:11 +0000

My biggest issue with phpBB is that code needs to be modified when applying hacks and mods. It’s just an uggly solution that makes security patching harder than it should be!

The templates of phpBB also needs to be changed when applying mods so that content supplied by the mod is shown to the user. So what happens if you want to use a new template? Well, you have to mod that too – to bad that your templates has been modded by numerous hacks – thoose have to be reapplied to the new template – this is just a recipe for a maintainence nightmare… The end result is that the template system isn’t used that often…

So phpBB violates the open/closed principle of leaving code open to extension but closing it to modification, which is why i just love that vBulletin has a plug-in system.