I had been wondering about what forum software to use on my new project. I was not happy with PHPBB v2 and was considering other options.

I installed Simple Machines Forum, looks good but not exactly what I was looking for.

I downloaded and installed PHPBB v3 and I'm very impressed. I'm totally new to this but was able to install it easily in minutes. The whole back end interface is really nice. Very advanced. I have only used the back end of vBulletin once, but this seems to be right up there. Excellent functionality and looks and feels great.

Permissions takes a bit of getting used to but apart form that I really like it..

how spam secure is it?

__________________
Information for Unmarried Parents | blog | bash.org
I gotta gotta get away, get away from the human race
I don't know what I'll see, don't even know what I'll find
I don't know what to pack, never been to a trip at the mind

Seems to have a fairly decent Catchpa built in, which is better than the others... I'll let you know once I get it up and running...

It better be good though, or I'll be P!ssed...

You can't rely on catchpas to keep out spam.
Check out the Challange-Response Authentication plugins for PHPBB3 before you go live.

__________________
blog | Geansaí Gorm - Written entirely in, awful, Irish! | Me on Blue Jumpers
*

I'll check that out, thanks.

Just read that aparantly PHPBB3 is not very Seach Engine Friendly.... Link: phpBB • View topic - Out of the box phpBB 3 is awful for SEO

Hopefully there is a mod that can help.

in this day and age you think that SEO-URLS would be pretty standard. Or at least an option for those people who can take advantage of mod_rewrite

__________________
my sites :

irish poker / irish jobs / seo faq / advertise jobs free / green card / skiing / geansai gorm

I have no doubt that there are plenty of mod-rewrite extensions available for PHPBB.

To be fair to the developers, it's not their main objective to produce an SEO based message board. OS products such as PHPBB rely on the community to improve the core product by making additional features.

True enough, but it is a major priority for most websites, so you think they would at least have one of the mods built in as standard, as an option anyway...

I got someone else to install the Advanced Mod Rewrite - works very well. Not quite as well as the one on this forum (I believe you have to pay for that) but for free its pretty good.

Example:
irishdjforum.com/general-dj-chat-f16/who-here-is-a-digital-dj-t3.html

Now to get a better WYSIWYG, the one as standard isn't great, this one is much better

Just found a great site, has loads of hacks for PHPBB3: http://www.phpbbhacks.com/categories3.php