SEO Perpective: phpBB vs. SMF vs. myBB

So I’m about to start a new forum, and it took me a while for me to decide which free php forum software to use. It took me a while to come to a conclusion, so I thought I’d post my thoughts in case someone else finds it handy.

I’ve been running an SMF forum for quite a while and it’s been a joy to run. I tend to tinker a lot with the forum code, and SMF is really written well and laid out nicely. A few years ago when I started that forum, I was trying to decide between phpBB2 and SMF. SMF won in my case because of its templating system. It was the easiest for me to tweak and customize quickly.

But after running that first forum for a while, I’ve come to realize how important SEO comes into play when running a forum. With other things, I feel I can just customize and improve things as time progresses, but with SEO, it has to be right from the beginning. Making a change later can really muck things up if you’re not careful.

Apparently I didn’t learn my lesson with my SMF forum, since I would have put more thought into SEO for this blog (which sucks), but it’s too late now to make any changes.

So this time when deciding what forum platform to use, I went with a purely SEO perspective. It quickly became clear that, at this time, the choices for a free php forum come down to SMF, myBB or phpBB. I thought that I’d put some weight into which platform had the better themes, but it seems like there are enough themes out there for all three of them that you can find what you’re looking for.

Hmm, this post is getting long, so I’m going to split this up.

Next Up, Checking Out SMF