Hi, everyone.

In this post I’m going to write about the top 5 php scripts that I think everybody should use, these scripts can be used for websites, forum boards, blogs, etc… use your imagination, and of course they are free and open source.

  1. PHPBB: is a popular Internet forum package written in the PHP programming language. The name “phpBB” is an abbreviation of PHP Bulletin Board. Available under the GNU General Public License, phpBB is free software.(in wikipedia). I’ve used this script for some testing a while ago, and it is pretty good, its fast and reliable, has a wide variety of templates and mods, and the support is also a good thing. What I don’t like is seeing these boards getting hacked, I don’t really know if its the script’s problem or if it is for being so popular that hackers keep on hacking phpbb forum boards. PHPBB.
  2. SMF: Simple Machines Forum (abbreviated as SMF) is a freeware Internet forum script. The script is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database backend, although multi-database support is being developed for the next major release. SMF is developed by the Simple Machines development team.(in wikipedia). This is another free script for forum boards, I am recently using it and testing it at the same time and I just love it. You can update your forum board with just 2-4 clicks, its simples, fast easy to use. Has a wide variety of mods, but a shortage of templates. Good thing about it is that I’ve never seen an SMF board hacked, but if you’ve seen one feel free to post a comment with a screenshot of something. SMF.
  3. Joomla: is a free, open source content management system for publishing content. Joomla! includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization. Joomla! is licensed under the GPL, and is the result of a fork of Mambo. It is written with the PHP programming language and uses the MySQL database.(in wikipedia). Had a website running with Joomla a while back, it has a very nice backend, with a lot of useful features. You can get tons of components, pulgins and modules, it has very good support a very large variety of web 2.0 templates. What I don’t like is that its a slow script in my opinion. Don’t have anything else to say about it. Joomla.
  4. Wordpress: is a blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of lead developer Matt Mullenweg.(in wikipedia) I using this script for a while now for blogging and its a pretty good script, although they could really improve the backend design. Wordpress has a wide variety of nice templates, very useful and advanced plugins. The support could be better but I always had my problems solved with time, its a very fast script if you don’t use junk (all those unnecessary plugins which don’t do anything special to you blog). Wordpress.
  5. Mambo Mambo (formerly named Mambo Open Source or MOS) is a free software / open source content management system (CMS) for creating and managing websites through a simple web interface.(in wikipedia). Tested this script, but never really used it for a website, I just wanted to have a look at it and I did. My first impression is that it’s very similar to Joomla or Joomla is very similar to Mambo, the conclusion that I can’t take from it, is that using Mambo or Joomla is apparently the same thing. Can’t write a lot about it because a haven’t really got really deep in to it, but its a good script in my opinion for any kind of websites. Mambo.

I know this is only 5 scripts, and thats why I say I’m really writing here what I think and not who other people think because this was written by me and it’s unique, Right!?! So, when I have some time, I will test some more scripts and do a top 10 or maybe a top 15 of PHP scripts. So stay tunned!!

Know it’s your turn to tell me you opinion, if you don’t agree with something or you don’t agree with anything I wrote, feel free to comment or even better, you can just drop by and say hello I don’t mind :P.