OvBB vs. XMB vs. phpBB vs. bbPress vs. Vanilla

General OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
Version
0.16a
1.9.11
3.0.8
0.9.0.4
2.6.4
Release Date
2007-04-05 (16 years ago)
Febuary 28, 2009
2010-11-19 (13 years ago)
2009-01-02 (15 years ago)
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
Last Update here
2008-01-21 (16 years ago)
2012-03-02 (12 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2009-03-11 (15 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
Author
Jonathon Freeman & Brian Otto
The XMB Group
The phpBB Group
bbpress.org
Vanilla Forums Inc
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
MIT
General Public License
General Public License
GPL2
GPL
License cost
0
0.00
0.00
0
0
Main View
Both, can be configured
Thread-Type
Flat
Flat
Flat
Flat
Flat
Setup OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
wizard
wizard
wizard with manual interactions
wizard
manual
Hosting available
No
No
No
No
Yes
Technology OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
Programming Language
PHP
php
PHP
PHP
PHP
UTF-8 Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Data Storage
2
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database
1
MySQL Database
6
Firebird Database, Microsoft SQL Database, MySQL Database, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
1
MySQL Database
1
MySQL Database
Other Storage
Source Code Repo
Issue Tracker
Posts OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
BBCode
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
HTML
No
Optional
No
Yes
Yes
Emoticons
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Formatting Toolbar
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
WYSIWYG Editor
No
No
No
No
Plugin
Quoting
Nested
Nested
Nested
Nested
Single
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
No
Yes
Plugin
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 OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Subforums
No
one level
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
Last Post
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Redirect Forums
No
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Trashcan Forum
No
No
No
Yes
Yes
Anti-Spam and Security OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
CAPTCHA
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Groups
One group only
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
One group only
Multiple groups
Flood Control
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACLs
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Blacklist
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Warnings
No
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Suspension
No
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Bans
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
IP-Block
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Audit Logging
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
User Reports
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Other
Plugin-based CAPTCHA system, Newly Registered Users permissions
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Notification OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
RSS/ATOM
No
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Instant Messaging
No
Jabber
Plugin
Bookmarks
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Community OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
Avatars
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
User Ranks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Rating/Karma System
No
Plugin
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Signatures
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Users Online List
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Private Messaging
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Custom profile fields
No
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Moderation OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
Moderators
global
global and forums
global and forums
global
global, forums and threads
Move Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Split Threads
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Close Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Shadow Topics
No
Yes
Yes
Unknown
Plugin
Sticky Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Important Threads
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Search OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
Full-text search
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Author search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Advanced search
Yes
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Unread Topics
Session tracked
Session tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Customization OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress 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 and forum specific
global
global and forum specific
Custom BBCodes
No
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Skin-Editor
No
Yes
Yes
No
Plugin
Smiley Packs
No
Optional
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
Statistics
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Polls
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Calendar
Yes
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
Friendly URLs
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Data Management OvBB XMB phpBB bbPress Vanilla
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Archiving
No
No
No
Plugin
Yes
Export Formats
No
SQL Dumps in .sql, sql.gz, and .sql.bz2
BBXF
Proprietary or MySQLDump
Export private messages
No
No
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Lo-Fi View
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
remove OvBB remove XMB remove phpBB remove bbPress remove Vanilla