Please state a reason why you chose SMF over the others. Let me start. I choose SMF because it is powerful, easy to manage, simple to use user interface, elegant and comes with lots of free modifications and themes. Even though SMF lacks some features, it still stand out from the rest. And the best of all, its price is FREE.
Well, I used SMF almost a year and a half ago, I only used it until I could find someone to sponsor my vBulletin license. The script was okay, but it didn't cover what I needed in terms of features. I'd admit, the forum software does load fast.
I chose SMF because Mybb is not appealing or attractive to me and lacked features(for example a worthwhile portal) that i wanted. SMF has some excellent mods and beautiful premium styles. the other option was phpbb and that software is crappy to me. SMF is awesome as a free software.
SMF has proven to be a safer software than other free options... PhpBB is a spam software lol and it lacks modern features... MyBB well I have been hacked after having that forum and their website got hacked so I question their security methods... SMF does everything I need and I am supporting free software by using it
I can't agree with you on this. SMF has consistently produced "CRITICAL SECURITY" issues. Now this problem is directly related to poor quality control and the low skill level of the programers IMO. One would think that if it takes the reported 3 to 4 years to release a new version that all "CRITICAL SECURITY" issues would have been address before release and only bug issues would need further fixing? and that year after year after year there would not be "CRITICAL SECURITY" updates.
I started using SMF 10+ years ago because it was FREE. Lots of great themes with very creative designs and very useful mods. Now however since 2.0 went gold the software is a piece of crap, themes look like pages ripped out of a kids coloring book and the mods and or updates are few and far between. None of it is quality anymore.
I had SMF for about 1 year and i thought its really good the way it ran and how fast it was, features were excellent, free themes are poor but honestly i didn't mind it was good enough for me anyway.
its free, back in 2009, I use phpBB and cant stand with their mods installation methods. SMF more simple, really love it
I chose SMF because it meets all my requirements for a couple of my forums. The fact that it rarely gets upgraded is actually a big bonus because they are heavily modified and major updates could involve a lot of work. I also like that it's incredibly fast. My million post plus forum runs on shared hosting and renders most pages in less than 1 second.
What version are you running? Anything post 2 gold is buggy and insecure. And in the last few years many of the really good moders and themers have left.
I'm running 2.0.5 on both forums. We use virtually no third party mods on either forum, we write our own and the same goes for the forum themes. As for bugs, we fix them as we find them , the majority that we've encountered are centred around browser dependences or just silly coding omissions. Because of the nature of the forums, they are both officially linked to service providers, they are far more secure than your average forum. Although they both run on shared servers, the server is not shared outside of the service provider's domain. In short the security of the servers and the installations that reside on them is managed to quite high level and nothing has been compromised in ten years so far.
I'm using SMF on one of my forums since I like it alot better then mybb and phpbb3. Both of those are lacking in the ease of installing mods and themes. Smf to me is much more user friendly.
When running free forum softwares on forums I have always used SMF. I have always used SMF mainly because the simplicity, it is very easy to run. Ive never felt the need to try phpbb or mybb.
SMF says it all in the name, it's really simple and easy setup a forum and start running a community within minutes. I like MyBB but the latest version is more complex to set than the previous and does not really encourage me to keep using it, while phpBB is a forum software that has never liked me at all, but that become more confusing starting with version 3. However SMF, keeps preserving the original concept it was created for.
I have been playing around with 2.1 and i have to say it's nice. I like how the theme is now all css. Makes customizing alot easier.
Have you checked out the forks of SMF? Their development seems to be light years ahead of SMF. The difference is that many of the current smf devs are new and are just learning the system whereas the forks are done by professional ex smf devs. I'd put my money on the forks having a stable release long before smf.
