A lot of people I see are using phpBB2 or phpBB3 while others such as Byteact Hosting use SMF, is there any particular benefits to using one over the other? I mean, I know everyone has a preference but I was just wondering why you prefer one over the other.

Quite some time ago I used to swear by YaBB SE which required CGI-BIN but then had to switch to phpBB because most hosts I used didn't offer a Private CGI-BIN (or even a public one) but they offered PHP support.

Sometime after several security issues and sub-sequent patching I decided I'd had enough of phpBB and started playing with SMF which at the time was still in an early beta release pre-1.x I believe. Given it's basis on YaBB SE (basically a rewrite of YaBB SE in PHP) I found myself more comfortable using it, its feature-set, modularity (though its Mod system is in need of improvement) and of course, security.

Personally, I recommend and use SMF (just look at the forum here) but I also recommend that if you want to find which is best for you, that you try not only phpBB2, phpBB3 and SMF but also MyBB and more to determine which is more comfortable for you.

SMF. Easy, Customizable, Awesome.

But really i pick MyBB, I love it!