peterdouglas - 4:24 pm on Sep 17, 2010 (gmt 0)

londrum, thanks for the info on phpbb. I've always liked phpbb, though I have more experience with it as a site visitor. I used to frequent a forum that used phpbb2 back in the day.

I'm not much of a programmer though, so any mods or hacks would have to be easy (like if I could find a tutorial online), or outsource it if the cost wouldn't be too prohibitive.

SMF seems better out of the box and seems to have a lot of praise from people who have used it. I also get the impression that it might be more user-friendly for me, as the admin, to set up and use.

But, everything has a learning curve, and no product is perfect. I've narrowed it down to either SMF or phpbb. But I'm still on the fence with this. Both seem to have just as many positives outweighed by potential negatives that (for me, anyways), it's such a close tie. Had I not researched, I'd have just gone with phpbb, since I'm more familiar with it (more as a forum member). But I hear SMF may be more secure. I've set up both an SMF forum and a phpbb forum and both got badly spammed. Neither is live anymore.

I'm going to try to make a decision today. With the click of a mouse I can have either one set up through Fantastico via Cpanel.