miniBB vs. bbPress vs. Vanilla vs. MyBB vs. SMF

General miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
Version
2.4
0.9.0.4
2.6.4
1.6.3
2.0.6
Release Date
2008-08-17 (15 years ago)
2009-01-02 (15 years ago)
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
2011-04-16 (12 years ago)
2013-10-21 (10 years ago)
Last Update here
2009-09-02 (14 years ago)
2009-03-11 (15 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2013-10-25 (10 years ago)
Author
miniBB Team
bbpress.org
Vanilla Forums Inc
MyBB Group
Simple Machines
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
GPL
GPL2
GPL
Custom
BSD
License cost
Free
0
0
US$0
0
Main View
Both, can be configured
Thread-Type
Flat
Flat
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Flat
Setup miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
manual
wizard
manual
wizard
wizard
Hosting available
No
No
Yes
No
No
Technology miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
Programming Language
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
UTF-8 Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Data Storage
1
MySQL Database
1
MySQL Database
1
MySQL Database
3
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
3
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
Other Storage
Source Code Repo
Issue Tracker
Posts miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
BBCode
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
HTML
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Emoticons
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Formatting Toolbar
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
WYSIWYG Editor
Plugin
No
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Single
Nested
Single
Nested
Nested
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Attachments
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Tags
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Mark as solved
A particular post can highlighted as accepted answer
Forums miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Subforums
one level
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
Last Post
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Redirect Forums
No
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trashcan Forum
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Anti-Spam and Security miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
CAPTCHA
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Groups
No
One group only
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Flood Control
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACLs
Plugin
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Blacklist
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Warnings
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Suspension
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Bans
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
IP-Block
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Audit Logging
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
User Reports
No
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Other
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Akismet plugin available.
An Akismet mod is available
Notification miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
RSS/ATOM
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Instant Messaging
0
Plugin
Bookmarks
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Community miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
Avatars
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
User Ranks
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Rating/Karma System
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Signatures
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Users Online List
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Private Messaging
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom profile fields
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Moderation miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
Moderators
global and forums
global
global, forums and threads
global and forums
global, forums and threads
Move Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Split Threads
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Close Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Shadow Topics
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Sticky Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Important Threads
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Search miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
Full-text search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Author search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Advanced search
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unread Topics
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Customization miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
Languages
0
0
141
Afar, Abkhazian, Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Assamese, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Bihari, Bislama, Bengali; Bangla, Tibetan, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Czech, Welsh, Danish, German, Bhutani, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Estonian, Basque, Persian, Finnish, Fiji, Faroese, French, Frisian, Irish, Scots Gaelic, Galician, Guarani, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Armenian, Interlingua, Indonesian, Interlingue, Inupiak, Icelandic, Italian, Inuktitut, Japanese, Javanese, Georgian, Kazakh, Greenlandic, Cambodian, Kannada, Korean, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Kirghiz, Latin, Lingala, Laothian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Malagasy, Maori, Macedonian, Malayalam, Mongolian, Moldavian, Marathi, Malay, Maltese, Burmese, Nauru, Nepali, Dutch, Norwegian, Occitan, Oromo, Oriya, Punjabi, Polish, Pashto, Pushto, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Quechua, Rhaeto-Romance, Kirundi, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Sangho, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Samoan, Shona, Somali, Albanian, Serbian, Siswati, Sesotho, Sundanese, Swedish, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Tajik, Thai, Tigrinya, Turkmen, Tagalog, Setswana, Tonga, Turkish, Tsonga, Tatar, Twi, Uighur, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Volapuk, Wolof, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zhuang, Chinese, Chinese Traditional, Zulu
0
0
Mobile View
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Templates
global
global
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
Custom BBCodes
Patch
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Skin-Editor
Plugin
No
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Smiley Packs
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
Statistics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Polls
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Calendar
Plugin
No
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Friendly URLs
Optional
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Data Management miniBB bbPress Vanilla MyBB SMF
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Archiving
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
No
Plugin
Export Formats
Users' logins/emails can be exported in CSV or TXT
BBXF
Proprietary or MySQLDump
WAP(2), IMode
Export private messages
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Lo-Fi View
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
remove miniBB remove bbPress remove Vanilla remove MyBB remove SMF