miniBB vs. phpBB vs. bbPress vs. MyBB vs. Vanilla

General miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
Version
2.4
3.0.8
0.9.0.4
1.6.3
2.6.4
Release Date
2008-08-17 (15 years ago)
2010-11-19 (13 years ago)
2009-01-02 (15 years ago)
2011-04-16 (12 years ago)
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
Last Update here
2009-09-02 (14 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2009-03-11 (15 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
Author
miniBB Team
The phpBB Group
bbpress.org
MyBB Group
Vanilla Forums Inc
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
GPL
General Public License
GPL2
Custom
GPL
License cost
Free
0.00
0
US$0
0
Main View
Both, can be configured
Thread-Type
Flat
Flat
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Flat
Setup miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
manual
wizard with manual interactions
wizard
wizard
manual
Hosting available
No
No
No
No
Yes
Technology miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
Programming Language
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
PHP
UTF-8 Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Data Storage
1
MySQL Database
6
Firebird Database, Microsoft SQL Database, MySQL Database, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
1
MySQL Database
3
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
1
MySQL Database
Other Storage
Source Code Repo
Issue Tracker
Posts miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
BBCode
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
HTML
Optional
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Emoticons
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Formatting Toolbar
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
WYSIWYG Editor
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
Plugin
Quoting
Single
Nested
Nested
Nested
Single
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Attachments
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Multiple files
Tags
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Mark as solved
A particular post can highlighted as accepted answer
Forums miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Subforums
one level
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
Last Post
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Redirect Forums
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Trashcan Forum
Yes
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Anti-Spam and Security miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
CAPTCHA
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Groups
No
Multiple groups
One group only
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Flood Control
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACLs
Plugin
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Blacklist
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Warnings
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Suspension
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Bans
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
IP-Block
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Audit Logging
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
User Reports
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Other
Plugin-based CAPTCHA system, Newly Registered Users permissions
Akismet plugin available.
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Notification miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
RSS/ATOM
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Instant Messaging
0
Jabber
Plugin
Bookmarks
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Community miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
Avatars
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
User Ranks
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Rating/Karma System
Plugin
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Signatures
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Users Online List
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Private Messaging
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Custom profile fields
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Moderation miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
Moderators
global and forums
global and forums
global
global and forums
global, forums and threads
Move Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Split Threads
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Close Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Shadow Topics
Plugin
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Sticky Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Important Threads
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Search miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
Full-text search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Author search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Advanced search
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Unread Topics
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Customization miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
Languages
0
0
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
Mobile View
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Templates
global
global and forum specific
global
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
Custom BBCodes
Patch
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Skin-Editor
Plugin
Yes
No
Yes
Plugin
Smiley Packs
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
Statistics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Polls
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Calendar
Plugin
No
No
Yes
Plugin
Friendly URLs
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Data Management miniBB phpBB bbPress MyBB Vanilla
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Archiving
Plugin
No
Plugin
No
Yes
Export Formats
Users' logins/emails can be exported in CSV or TXT
SQL Dumps in .sql, sql.gz, and .sql.bz2
BBXF
Proprietary or MySQLDump
Export private messages
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Lo-Fi View
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
remove miniBB remove phpBB remove bbPress remove MyBB remove Vanilla