Software Alternatives & Reviews

phpBB VS Simple Machines Forum

Compare phpBB VS Simple Machines Forum and see what are their differences

phpBB logo phpBB

Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, credit-card sized computer. The official website uses phpBB for their discussion forums. phpBB is not affiliated with nor responsible for any of the sites listed on the showcase.

Simple Machines Forum logo Simple Machines Forum

Simple Machines offers free open source software such as SMF, the powerful and easy to use community forum written in PHP. Start interesting discussions on your website!
  • phpBB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-23
  • Simple Machines Forum Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-14

phpBB videos

PHPbb for Beginners - Creating a Community Forum

More videos:

  • Review - A SQL injection example using phpBB | Ars Technica

Simple Machines Forum videos

Forum Tutorials - Simple Machines Forums, Tutorial and Overview

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to phpBB and Simple Machines Forum)
Forums And Forum Software
Forums
71 71%
29% 29
Community Platform
72 72%
28% 28
Social Networks
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using phpBB and Simple Machines Forum. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Simple Machines Forum should be more popular than phpBB. It has been mentiond 4 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

phpBB mentions (2)

  • Best way to host a small forum?
    Excellent! Glad we could get you sorted! Hosting can be scary and it's okay to be afraid to touch things or not understand certain settings or terms. Especially if you're new. The key is to read the documentation. For your forum needs, this can be found at https://mybb.com and https://phpbb.com. Source: 5 months ago
  • Looking for resources to learn authentication and security in-depth
    You may find a current, object-oriented version of phpBB to be just the ticket. It will teach you how to structure the database, authenticate users, manage sessions and selectively display content according to user level, group membership, and other policies. Source: almost 3 years ago

Simple Machines Forum mentions (4)

  • Just remember forums exist
    Https://simplemachines.org/ This looks nice. Doesn't look like it has tags/flair though. Lots of questions in regards to how it compares to the other options. Source: 11 months ago
  • Is there a painless way to set up a forum website on a raspberry pi?
    I've always been a fan of SMF. Install is pretty straight forward. Source: over 1 year ago
  • The Platformer #25: High-Impact Hacking
    This project, called YaBB — Yet another Bulletin Board (I’ve always been good at naming things) — is pretty much dead. A few months ago the website was still up, but it appears to be down now. Yes, the project was forked into YaBB SE (a direct PHP port), and ultimately evolved into Simple Machines Forum, which still seems to be under development today (and powers Bitcoin Talk — if you’re still into the crypto thing). - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Integrating Forums in an android app?
    Is it possible to integrate forums like Simple Machines Forum in an app or any other forum? Or is there any package/plugin that makes it easier to develop it and integrate it with firebase/firestore. Source: about 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing phpBB and Simple Machines Forum, you can also consider the following products

Discourse - Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

Flarum - Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.

XenForo - Intuitive. Social. Engaging. Fast. XenForo brings a fresh outlook to forum software.

MyBB - MyBB is a discussion board software that runs on PHP and MySQL

Vanilla Forums - Build an engaging community forum using Vanilla's modern cloud forum software.

NodeBB - NodeBB Forum Software - A better community platform for the modern web. NodeBB is a next generation forum software that's free and easy to use.