How vBulletin is better than SMF?

[mirhamxa]

Hello,

I am a school teacher and I am responsible to develop the forum of my school. Currently, I am using SMF on my school's domain because I am already using the same script on one of my personal forum and I am aware of different mods and settings.

A few of my colleagues advised me to migrate the school forum from SMF to vBulletin as they said they are more comfortable with this script and they believe that students will also like this forum.

But I want to know how VBulletin is better than SMF? I mean, just a few things to convince me that it would be good to migrate for both (for forum members and for me as well as it should be easy to manage).

[BirdOPrey5]

There's no easy way to transfer from SMF to vBulletin at this point. The conversion script is no longer officially supported and while 3rd party conversion services exist they are not free.

That said it's been ages since I've used SMF, I just know vBulletin "felt" better to use at the time, and then you grow used to it. If SMF is currently meeting all your needs there may not be a good reason to change. Does SMF have a calendar/events system? If not, that might be beneficial. VB 5.x also has a built in blogging and articles system and responsive design, which means it looks as good on a mobile device as it does on a desktop computer. The style adjusts automatically to whatever screen size is available. It has over a dozen built in themes to choose from if you want a different look for the forum. The most important difference though is the fact it is a commercial product with official, professional, support.