What it does
Simple Machines Forum is free software for a community on your own hosting. It manages member groups and board permissions, with a Moderation Center for reports and pending posts. Approval rules can distinguish topics, replies and attachments.
Enable post moderation before expecting Unapproved Posts and Unapproved Attachments to appear in the Moderation Center. Its Posts area separates topics, replies and attachments awaiting a decision, allowing moderators to approve or delete them.
Posting permissions can allow a new topic, an own-topic reply, another reply or an attachment directly, require approval or disallow it. A group could therefore reply to existing discussions while its new topics wait for review. Board permission profiles let selected boards share that policy.
Moderation Center access alone does not grant the powers to perform its actions. Staff need both access to the relevant views and the underlying moderation permissions.
SMF is free under a BSD three-clause licence. Use an official release package for a normal installation. A repository checkout needs its dependencies installed with Composer and maintained when the code changes.
Strengths
- Approval controls distinguish new topics, replies and attachments
- Board permission profiles apply a shared policy across selected boards
Watch out for
- Moderation Center access alone does not grant action permissions
Best for
- Forum administrators managing different posting and approval rules across member groups and boards
Sources
- SMF2.1:Permissions - Online Manual (Oct 26, 2026)
- Copyright © 2026 Simple Machines. All rights reserved. (Oct 26, 2026)
- Simple Machines Forum Official Repository (Oct 27, 2026)
- SMF Moderation Center (Oct 27, 2026)