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phpBB and SMF are two of the most popular free bulletin board applications. If you are looking for a free forum application, you will most probably end up using one of the two.
Here we will discuss the pros and cons of each one.
SMF Forum Application
Pros:
- the installation/uninstallation of additional mods is done through an automatic package manager
- supports multiple languages at once
- option to display the query count per page
- full or partial word censoring
- cookie and session based authentication
- spell checker
Cons:
- does not support custom BBCode buttons
- no custom profile fields
- no user rating
- no search flood control
- no customizable private message filters
phpBB Forum Application
Pros:
- has a lot of free mods/plugins/templates
- supports MySQL, MSSQL and PostgreSQL database engines
- search flood control
- password protected forums
- sorting of posts
- private message filters which can be customized
Cons:
- no automatic mod installer
- the installation of some of the additional mods may require more advanced programming skills
- no HTML in posts
- no user rating
- no RSS
XonHost offers the best forum hosting package so that no matter which forum application you choose, your hosting account can handle it without any problems.
