XMB vs. phpBB vs. MyBB vs. bbPress vs. Vanilla

General XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress Vanilla
Version
1.9.11
3.0.8
1.6.3
0.9.0.4
2.6.4
Release Date
Febuary 28, 2009
2010-11-19 (13 years ago)
2011-04-16 (12 years ago)
2009-01-02 (15 years ago)
2018-10-28 (5 years ago)
Last Update here
2012-03-02 (12 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2011-06-22 (12 years ago)
2009-03-11 (15 years ago)
2018-11-01 (5 years ago)
Author
The XMB Group
The phpBB Group
MyBB Group
bbpress.org
Vanilla Forums Inc
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
General Public License
General Public License
Custom
GPL2
GPL
License cost
0.00
0.00
US$0
0
0
Main View
Both, can be configured
Thread-Type
Flat
Flat
Threaded or Flat
Flat
Flat
Setup XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress Vanilla
Installation method
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
wizard
Upgrade method
wizard
wizard with manual interactions
wizard
wizard
manual
Hosting available
No
No
No
No
Yes
Technology XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress 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
3
MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database, SQLite File Database
1
MySQL Database
1
MySQL Database
Other Storage
Source Code Repo
Issue Tracker
Posts XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress Vanilla
BBCode
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
HTML
Optional
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Emoticons
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Formatting Toolbar
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
WYSIWYG Editor
No
No
Plugin
No
Plugin
Quoting
Nested
Nested
Nested
Nested
Single
Syntax Highlighting
No
Yes
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 XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress Vanilla
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Subforums
one level
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
unlimited
Last Post
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Redirect Forums
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Trashcan Forum
No
No
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Anti-Spam and Security XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress Vanilla
CAPTCHA
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
Multiple groups
One group only
Multiple groups
Flood Control
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACLs
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Blacklist
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Warnings
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Suspension
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Bans
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
IP-Block
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Audit Logging
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
User Reports
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Other
Plugin-based CAPTCHA system, Newly Registered Users permissions
Akismet plugin available.
Community Curation & SPAM removal
Notification XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress Vanilla
RSS/ATOM
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
E-Mail
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Instant Messaging
Jabber
Plugin
Bookmarks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Community XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress Vanilla
Avatars
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
User Ranks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Rating/Karma System
Plugin
Patch
Yes
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
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Moderation XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress Vanilla
Moderators
global and forums
global and forums
global and forums
global
global, forums and threads
Move Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Split Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Close Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Shadow Topics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unknown
Plugin
Sticky Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Important Threads
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Search XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress Vanilla
Full-text search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Author search
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Advanced search
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Unread Topics
Session tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Database tracked
Customization XMB phpBB MyBB 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 and forum specific
global and forum specific
global and forum specific
global
global and forum specific
Custom BBCodes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Skin-Editor
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Plugin
Smiley Packs
Optional
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress Vanilla
Statistics
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Polls
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Calendar
Plugin
No
Yes
No
Plugin
Friendly URLs
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Data Management XMB phpBB MyBB bbPress Vanilla
Available Importers
All platforms use: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core
Pruning
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Archiving
No
No
No
Plugin
Yes
Export Formats
SQL Dumps in .sql, sql.gz, and .sql.bz2
BBXF
Proprietary or MySQLDump
Export private messages
No
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Lo-Fi View
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
remove XMB remove phpBB remove MyBB remove bbPress remove Vanilla