PhpBB Forum Script Review

This article is ideal for webmasters who wish to start up a community on their website. There are many different forum scripts available. Today we will cover phpBB.

phpBB is one of the most commonly used communities as it is open source, powerful, and customizable. The security is one of the most impressive I have seen on any forum, offering strong encryption and a powerful and extensive authorisation system .

phpBB allows for the standard post formatting that you would expect like bold, underline, italics as well as quoting, code display, image posting and automatic URL linking. It also boasts polls, emoticons and topic subscription.

The administration panel is excellent, I have heard that some people find it laid out poorly, but for someone who has just started out with a forum, it is ideal for you. You have total control over every element of your forum. Here’s a controllable demo of the admin panel. You can change the appearance of your forum too, by downloading a premade skin, and applying it in your admin panel. This really allows you to distinguish your forum, and there’s a large amount of styles and mods available on the official site. That being said, you can’t directly customize your board on the server.

phpBB incorporates versatile user groups and forum permissions, which means you can control forums so only certain groups can access a section. This is commonly used to allow people of certain ranks to earn their way into elite areas. It is also used for management boards, which can also be hidden from the sight of regular members, should it contain important information. Unlike some past forum scripts, you can create an unlimited number of forums organised into categories that you specify.

The official phpBB site has a completely free support system if you are experiencing any problems with installation or general forum related problems. Due to the simplicity of the script, it is unlikely that you will encounter issues.

You can see the phpBB forum script in action here.

Many have said that phpBB has been going downhill recently, and that there are other free forum scripts that do what phpBB does and more, which is why I have begun this series of blog entries, to clarify. In the next entry I will be covering phpBB’s rival, IPB (Invision Power Board)

If you’re new to the world of forum scripts, then I would definitely suggest giving phpBB a look as your first forum. If you have tried other forum scripts like IPB or Snitz then base your decision on what you have just read.

Price: Free
Rating: 8/10
Download: Official Site