  This review of bosonic string field theory is concentrated on two main
subjects. In the first part we revisit the construction of the three string
vertex and rederive the relevant Neumann coefficients both for the matter and
the ghost part following a conformal field theory approach. We use this
formulation to solve the VSFT equation of motion for the ghost sector. This
part of the paper is based on a new method which allows us to derive known
results in a simpler way. In the second part we concentrate on the solution of
the VSFT equation of motion for the matter part. We describe the construction
of the three strings vertex in the presence of a background B field. We
determine a large family of lump solutions, illustrate their interpretation as
D-branes and study the low energy limit. We show that in this limit the lump
solutions flow toward the so-called GMS solitons.
