Nowadays is a fast-evolving era of web technologies. But forums are remaining a serious competitor. So it comes to choosing the discussion board in order to add interactivity to a personal or corporate webpage. As a result, you would probably end up deciding: MyBB vs phpBB. There are dozens of discussion boards available at the web market. But they both have established themselves as the top popular and beloved software solutions. So let’s dive deeply and try to outline those prominent privileges. Why users are gravitating towards one forum board or the other? Let’s start.
MyBB review
The MyBB (originally: MyBulletinBoard) offers basic functions for a professional forum operation and is available to users free of charge under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
The basic features of the software include administration and moderation functions, private messages, a reputation system, calendar, and events as well as a template editor. Also, you can manage administrative tasks in the background via a task scheduling system. A warning system is punishing unwanted user behavior.
The core software shows weak points in the areas of mobile and SEO. However, various resources for extending the open-source system are available to forum operators directly via the project website.
The PHP-based forum software MyBB supports MySQL, the free DBMS PostgreSQL, and SQLite.
MyBB 1.8 and the Merge System 1.8 have a few minimum system requirements:
- PHP >= 5.2
- MySQL >= 5.0, PostgreSQL >= 8.1 or SQLite >= 3
- Apache, nginx, lighttpd or IIS webserver
The following PHP extensions are also needed:
- SimpleXML
- mbstring
- gd
- The respective vendor specific database PHP extension
Recommendations
- PHP 7.3
- PostgreSQL 10.0 or MySQL 8.0
Where myBB certainly shines:
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Simple to use
You don’t have to train to start and run the forum properly. MyBB offers an extensive range of features in an intuitive interface. MyBB’s Administration Control Panel has been built from the ground up to be as easy to use as possible while still giving you complete control over the forum.
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Extendable
MyBB has a few hundred different plugins that you can utilize in order to add some new functionality to the forum. It makes it pretty easy for users to customize the look and feel of their forums with their revolutionary theme system and advanced template editor. These tools give you complete control over how your forum will look so that it will fit in perfectly with the rest of your website.
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Features just-as-needed
If you need any assistance or simply have a query, you can either consult MyBB’s Documentations. It includes solutions to common problems, as well as a full list of all features and how to use them. Or their Community Forums, where you can ask questions regarding your problem.
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Pricing
Unlike other forum software in the market, MyBB is completely free to use. This is an open-source project, which means that there are absolutely no fees or subscription plans associated with this particular platform.
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Multilanguage
There is a large number of official MyBB translations, which are produced by the community, for visitors who don’t speak English. The language packs include Vietnamese, Hindi, Estonian, Albanian, Serbian, French, Danish, and many more. What’s more, they also have language packs for right-to-left languages.
MyBBs disadvantages:
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Not optimizable for search engines
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Not optimized for mobile devices
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Support only via the community
Let’s take a look at the phpBB
The forum software phpBB is a free forum system whose ever-growing feature set can compete with even high-priced proprietary solutions such as vBulletin. The open-source software is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and boasts a large user community worldwide.
The current version phpBB 3.2.8 has a modular design and can be adapted to the respective needs of the user by various extensions. The community offers a large selection of free styles. Themes and templates also can be individual.
Even in the areas of administration, moderation, and rights management, phpBB is in no way inferior to other forum systems. Just like MyBB, phpBB because of open-source software does not offer SEO features such as search engine friendly URLs.
Technically, phpBB is characterized by broad support of common database management systems.
System requirements:
- PHP 5.4+
- MySQL 3.23+, MySQLi, PostgreSQL 8.3+, SQLite 2.8.2+, SQLite 3.6.15+, Oracle, MS SQL Server 2000+, or MariaDB 5.1+
- PHP extensions: json
So, there are phpbb advantages over mybb:
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- Has a lot of free mods/plugins/templates,
- Optimized for mobile devices
- Supports MySQL, MSSQL and PostgreSQL database engines,
- Search flood control,
- Password-protected forums,
- Sorting of posts,
- Private message filters that can be customized.
Overall, phpBB provides many more bells and whistles compared to myBB. Therefore, it is an excellent platform for online interaction for millions of users all over the globe.
Which forum software is right for you depends on what your planned community project requires. If you only want to run a hobby or lifestyle forum to share your interests with like-minded people, free open source solutions are perfect. Without major investments, forum systems such as phpBB or MyBB can be used to build fully functional communities with all the necessary features. If the demands on the project grow or the number of members increases, you can switch to another product and move the forum.
In case, on the other hand, you are planning a professional community project, for example, to provide an additional contact channel for the customers of your web store, you should rely on a professional hosting basis and complete support right from the start.
If you decided to take your current myBB discussion board to the next level with phpBB. Whatever platform you decided to choose – you can migrate to it very easily and quickly using aisite! We are always here to help you!
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