Posted By: Laptop Review on February 26 2012 06:56 am
Hi, i used SMF for my website here ..Laptop Review that's good and easy to control backend, easy to SEO and using low resource
Posted By: Whitney artist on February 10 2012 12:59 am
Great CMS. Very stable and powerful. The MODS are an other story. Better quality control is needed before allowing many of them to be distributed. Many will break the system and require db restore. The better and most popular mods work great. This is an excellent CMS - have used many of the others and this is very easy to use and very powerful at the same time
Posted By: Cruth on January 11 2012 02:39 am
I see very few recent comments for SMF. Overall, SMF seems good. However, there seems to be a significant flaw. The Mod quality control is fairly poor. Too many times I have tried to install a mod, and it breaks the forum. Support says to reinstall from backup, but that sometimes does not work. SMF should have a better way for users to review mods, to protect all users.
Posted By: ol on February 16 2011 11:11 am
liked it a lot at first. BUT 1. trying to install a mod not exactly compatible to YOUR version (and hell, therer are many versions) its probably not working correctly. and many of the mods are not up2date. 2. the user/group management is very lightweight - not many possibilty to giv specific rights. for some lacks there are mods - but see 1.
i tried it but didn't find it useful for my purpose ...
Posted By: Ivaiil on September 16 2010 01:08 pm
Best user and admin friendly.
Also SMF 2.0 RC3 is even better
Posted By: cruth on June 4 2010 02:48 pm
Good software, but be careful. I have used many opensource software programs, drupal, wordpress, mediawiki, etc. This is the only software I have used where merely installing MODS can easily break your website. Be sure to backup before you install each mod.
Posted By: Ari on March 7 2010 10:10 pm
Incredibly user-friendly! I've played with a lot of the demos on this site, for every type of application, and this one is intuitive, and presented in layman's terms, for the most part. I'm off the ground, and it's perfect. I highly recommend this program to anyone who has felt overwhelmed by the complexity and the foreign nature of the language and user-interface of the various php applications represented on this site (and this site rocks, by the way).
Good luck!
Posted By: Ivan on February 21 2010 10:09 pm
Very good forum software. If you want simple forum, just use SMF. It's simply best. If you want more features use phpbb3 or buy VB.
Posted By: Martin Lawrence on February 12 2010 03:39 am
Simple Machines announces the release of SMF 1.1.11, addressing multiple vulnerabilities found in SMF 1.1.10. Also for those still using the SMF 1.0.x branch, an upgrade to 1.0.19 was released. We strongly recommend that all users upgrade as soon as possible.
Upgrade automatically by visiting your administration center, where a notice will be displayed prompting you to upgrade. Click the link, confirm the changes and your forum will be up to date again. Additionally, you can upgrade using the package manager by downloading the attached patch, uploading it to the package manager, and applying it as prompted. For help with this refer to the Package Manager section of the Online Manual.
If you cannot upgrade using the package manager, please follow the instructions posted in the Online Manual about installing and upgrading. If you experience a session verification error when inputting FTP details for updating process, please see this topic.
It may be necessary to apply the upgrade manually if mod conflicts mean that you cannot install the patch through the package manager. Instructions for doing this can be found on manual upgrades page for SMF 1.1.11 and 1.0.19.
Posted By: ranky on February 9 2010 06:25 am
This forum software has a huge inconvenience: It does not support dynamic base URL, i.e. instead of processing the HTML with request URL, it processes solely with the pre-adjusted base URL.
This is not very useful in cases when you have to change the domain of the forum, or when you 'd like to access the forum using two different domains: One from the LAN (such as http://myforum.home, the other from the WAN such as http://www.myforum.com)
In order to override this inconvenience you may have to write modification code, which is unbearable considering that you're using an already-written forum software. Too bad.
Posted By: Cyberraven on November 27 2009 04:39 am
Hello,
SMF is a very good forum.
The only bad thing is, that some themes/designs are addicted from the language.
So you must convert the language into english, to have no errors on the login-site.
Posted By: Tommy on November 21 2009 02:58 pm
Just Awesome!
Posted By: Shinku on September 15 2009 07:58 am
I think from far is the best free bb on net. As stated before with lebisol and MegaBurn the license who is not full GPL license. The community is big and the forum is powerful. Theming is quite simply, if you say not see the Dziner Studiuo themes, simple like the images and the index.template.php with the .css files. Good themes are quite difficult to found, I've only see goot from DzinerStudio and one or two over web, but I think with the new SMF 2 and the new theme will improve that thing. Mod installation is great but it could be impoved something that I missed too much in phpBB. The easier admin and mod panel that I ever seen, clean and simple. Simple Machines Forum. Easy, powerfull, free. Just anyone needs.
Posted By: lebisol on September 3 2009 02:34 pm
I am with MegaBurn.
He posted some VERY VERY important issues that most people overlook. Something you might regret down the line especially if the community grows.
If you have the $ then vBulletin is THE forum script. PERIOD.
If you need free and license flexible enough to implement this script into site then phpBB is the way to go.
SMF+ Tiny Portal is very nice integration but NOT a CMS (even TP crowds states this clearly). Just be prepared to carry around 2-3 Paragraphs of a license attracted to your forum footer.
If re-branding is a must for you then skip this script.
Posted By: Ben on July 6 2009 01:04 pm
Easy to install and nice looks. But had some issues when changing themes, sometimes it doesn't work. And after some time it started to go directly to rss-feeding after logging, I don't know why and can't seem to fix it.
But it's due to the bad lincense I'm letting this forum software leave my site.. Go for GPL software is my advice!
Posted By: Dawood on July 3 2009 03:41 pm
All i have to say is there is no point in wasting your money on a vB. SMF is just as good. Probably the best free forum ever.
Posted By: Denis on June 19 2009 09:11 pm
Great stuff, better than phpbb3 in my opinion, I also like the Tiny Portal addon, it really does turn it into a CMS.
Posted By: SAFAD on April 22 2009 10:22 am
The Best Forum I Ever Seen
Posted By: MegaBurn on April 14 2009 01:12 am
Bad license, good potential wasted. A couple years ago I used SMF for 3 sites along with Joomla and the old Joomlahacks JSMF bridge, at the time it was the best free forum package out there. Then they had a tantrum over licensing and compatibility with tight integration into GPL licensed CMS's. I switched my sites over to phpBB3 along with dozens of other sites in a sort of senseless exodus. Thing is I've always looked back and wondered why... I still check up on SMF every time I setup a new forum in the hopes they've come to their senses and adopted a GPL compatible license. Gives me a sort of empty feeling to see nothing changed...
Posted By: smfpt.net on March 16 2009 04:31 pm
that a link is very good
best free forum
Posted By: mithereal on February 17 2009 02:11 pm
great looking software, the license, wrong!!!! almost every other piece of software is oscommerce (just 1 example) does not force you to put the copyright on your site, i mean do ppl really understand security, half the game is knowing what your dealing with!!!
Posted By: Anonymous on January 27 2009 11:23 pm
Great piece of software, crippled by a stupid license that requires my site to appear as though it's copyright by the SMF team.
Sorry, wrong answer. You copyright the code, not the site being displayed with the code.
Too bad; could've been good.
Posted By: Radni on January 17 2009 01:58 pm
Good
Posted By: nermin on January 9 2009 08:34 am
super
Posted By: Joomlamz on January 8 2009 03:21 pm
That is best software for forum
thanks all
try finder mi google.. smf is good and best smf
Posted By: Josh Catalano on August 10 2008 01:35 pm
I started with phpBB, switched to vBulletin and then discovered SMF... Extremely powerful with functions that vBulletin doesn't even support and it's free, and in terms of ease of use, it's so much easier than both VB and phpBB... phpBB requires a lot of hand editing of php files to 'hack' in a mod which is dangerous, phpBB also has security holes that I've seen many sites be compromised... SMF has push technology to tell users to upgrade and installation of templates and mods is quick and easy and there's no hair pulling! The best board out there in my humble opinion...
Posted By: kevin on May 21 2008 09:16 pm
i was always in deferent to SMF
then i had to go asking for help on their website and WOW
i 'talked' to well informed, quite polite and patient staff members
who stuck with me until all my problems were solved
SMF is a great board, its not really better, but if your tired of 'go read a manual that doesnt have the info you need you effin retarded noob now go die' (phpbb cough) try this out, i was really impressed
Posted By: Chasingu on April 13 2008 11:05 am
I was looking for a cool system to run my site and i found it. SMF 1.1.4. It is so easy to use and great skins for it. It is also very good to have Tinyportal installed. My site uses it not the Forum.
Posted By: Homish Mocmanidan on April 12 2008 09:04 pm
It is too bloated, and NOT XHTML-Strict, just Transitional.
Plus, I don't see the W3C logos on the [/b]new[/u] version. I stay with UseBB thank you.
Posted By: SELECK on April 12 2008 08:01 am
Don't be a fool giving comments about a forum when you have no knowledge about php, websecurity and efficient programming.
smf is one of the best forum you can get free. Of course kiddies, who are habitual playing with boards like PHPBB, can not justify the quality of this forum. I have been gone through all forums available in web and none of them got such well organised and logical programmed forum for free. Even some commercial forums looks bad compare to smf.
Posted By: Deleola on April 4 2008 08:19 am
I do not understand why people continue to rate this smf forum high. It is becoming one of the pain in the a** Is it difficult for the developers to bypass the FTP request useless stuff? Certain features sometimes make you wonders what people are thinking about.
At least they should provide the options of bypassing FTP or choose between dual installation. Even when I set the permissions on the files and folders manually due to another useless restriction it still did not work.
Kudo though.
Posted By: Brett Minnie on February 25 2007 05:16 am
This site of mine was running on phpbb for ages, a very modded phpbb to get the functionality I needed for it. I moved it across to smf recently as I had had enough of constant spambot signups even with the captcha mod and manual account verification was getting to me.
Best move I have ever made, I only needed to install 1 mod to get the same level of functionality, and have been left alone by the spam bots since then. I suggest that if you are looking for a forum, SMF is the way forward
Posted By: Bill on January 14 2007 06:08 am
I have been using SMF forums for about 2 years now. I really appreciate their job ! Although I'm a php beginner, I've been able to make many changes because the code is quite understandable. 1 cons though : url rewritng looks unstable sometimes (maybe due to my hosting ?). Anyway, nice job !
Posted By: Michael Erb on December 6 2006 04:42 am
Although I wanted to like SMF, ultimately it fails on several levels. First of all, the captcha scheme is pretty much impossible to read. I ran it by several other people, who all were mystified by the gibberish displayed.
Next, the interface, in admin and in users area, is just not intuitive. Again, for my users, several of whom I invited to 'beta test' the new installation... they all were stymied by the menus and couldn't easily find out how to do simple things.
No doubt, SMF is powerful and packed with features, but without a useable captcha, and more intuitive structure of menus and features, I'll look elsewhere.
Posted By: risco on November 12 2006 09:17 am
Can you add auto resize for signature dimension, pls. As you already put auto resize in avatar size, manya thanks and great job, can't wait for version 1.1 final release.
Posted By: apachesoul on October 14 2006 06:02 am
Without doubt this the best free opensourced forum system. I used different types of forums but I didn't see any one of them as useful as SMF. Great job! Thanks...
Easy modification, superb themes, everything you needed in a forum system.
Posted By: Danesh Manoharan on September 22 2006 11:18 am
Awesome piece of software. I've been using it and totally agree that's it's the best out there.
Features, Styles, the whole list is there.
AWESOME!!!
Posted By: Mark on September 17 2006 09:21 am
I used this on my technology forum, and it's great! Many features, and easy to use. You can lock/unlock/move topics in seconds! Admin panel is user friendly, and rarely any glitches occur.
Posted By: Matthew Coburn on September 14 2006 09:07 am
I don't like SMF that much, I recommend MyBB myself.
When I installed it, It gave me SQL errors.....
Posted By: Chris Macintosh on August 19 2006 08:57 am
I haven't used it much yet, but the installation was a piece of cake. I had it up and running with the restrictions I wanted in about 20 minutes.
Posted By: Kirant Rai on August 1 2006 12:48 pm
Well the best free forum i have installed till now...
Plus with the latest SEO friendly urls mod, it just is the best one around
Posted By: Sebastyne on July 13 2006 03:57 am
I love this forum. I used to use Invision Power Board, but since it got commercial I had to find a new one. I have to say I like SMF better, and integrated with TinyPortal it is very useful for a lot of basic interactive sites. I don't understand why PhpBB is so much more popular, as PhpBB is like driving a truck without power steering compared to SMF. I am forced to use PhpBB in some of my sites as it is integrated to a lot of CMS systems, but I sooo wish SMF would become a popular option. (I like it so much, that I keep inventin new site ideas just to be able to use it! :D )
Posted By: Chinfo on June 28 2006 10:21 am
Great package, and a very logical, well-thought out framework. Its plug-in and theme system offer a fresh and effective approach. Although for the most part it's easy and manageable even for a newbie, advanced configuration and customization still requires at least intermediate knowledge of web programming (PHP, CSS, HTML etc.) which I believe is a good thing here.
I would say the best alternative to IPB and vBulletin.
Posted By: Kozuch on May 19 2006 08:10 am
SMF is still pretty easy to manage while it is boasted with features. The patching and modding from within the admin panel is so comfortable.
Posted By: krl on April 10 2006 05:22 am
I really like SMF, but now i found out there's no way of a global email notification of posts, so every member has to click on each thread to be notified via email about new posts to the specific thread. But how would one know about a new thread, if you don't log in on a regular basis? I hope someone makes a mod for this.
Posted By: Redas on April 7 2006 11:32 am
SMF supports utf-8. But language files must be saved in UTF-8, not in ASCII. This work can be done with UltraEdit (menu command 'FileConversionsASCII to UTF-8 (Unicode Editing)').
Posted By: Jon on March 8 2006 09:26 am
I have a couple sites running with SMF and I must say this is the best software that I have used yet. Unlike phpBB, this software works great and is more secure. Modding the site could not be easier (has its own install package program) and customizing it is nice and flexable (such as on my site). Deff worth a try!
Posted By: HAOUILI Nabil on March 6 2006 10:46 am
The forum of my website uses SMF :
Installation, configuration and upgrades were quite easy for the beginner I am. Features are very interesting (friendly urls are very easy to configurate : just an option to select).
Cons : the French community remains quite smalll (compared to others like phpbb's), execution speed may be slow sometimes (perhaps because I share hosting with other websites ?).
Posted By: gv on March 3 2006 06:37 am
Great forum but until it supports utf-8, I can not use it. Utf-8 should be a default encoding.
Posted By: gil on February 9 2006 09:34 am
a great forum system, includes everything that i need. thanks guys.
Posted By: netkid91 on February 4 2006 09:29 am
I LOVE SMF, whenever I need some good and powerful forum software that Just Works and is secure(unlike phpBB) I use SMF. The mod system is a excellent addition and it's admin interface is the best I have ever seen.
Posted By: Bert on February 1 2006 06:36 am
Has the same look as every other generic forum out there. Nothing special. Shouldn't even be here seen as you can't redistribute it, which kills the point of Open Source
Posted By: Richter on January 25 2006 09:07 am
This is the most feature-packed, easily implemented open source forum out there. I've spent a lot of time looking for a replace for phpBB, and this nailed it. It's EXACTLY what I needed. And the switch to phpBB took less than 5 minutes. It's so easy. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this software.
Posted By: vnjug on January 20 2006 08:57 am
SMF 1.1 RC2 has a serious problem with Unicode making it a very bad choice for international forums
Posted By: Mike on December 26 2005 12:45 pm
Tank - why is an OSI license so important? Our license already gives you the ability to release mods and modify the code however you want. We just don't want you removing to copyright or re-distributing the code in any way. If you want to release a modified version of the system, you just create a mod that will re-create these changes, then release the mod...
Posted By: Tank on December 15 2005 01:25 am
I think it's a GREAT software. I only have to say I would like it on an OSI license. It's the only thing stopping me from using it...
Posted By: Frost on December 12 2005 03:37 am
Well, shopping around, and getting nowhere with phpBB after my last attempt, I decided to give SMF a try. What sold me was the fact that it is literally what it says it is...a very streamlined, simple forum interface that is intuitive in customization (thanks to a sweet package manager). Currently on version 1.1RC1, although 1.1RC2 is already in the pipeline, soon to debut. It is fast, efficient, and resource light. USE it!
Posted By: Joe on December 2 2005 09:13 am
I am using it on my site I am very pleased with it. It is easy to install and manage. There are lot of MODS & skins available.
Posted By: sysmod on July 11 2005 04:24 am
it just runs quick and stable! No hassles so far. The update function is straight forward.
Posted By: CDK on July 10 2005 04:29 am
Well i finally came back to SMF. I still wish it had RSS importing but phpbb is just not the answer. Its to buggy/unsecure to use. I had to hack the hell out of it to get it where i wanted. Then i thought why not use SMF it already has the features i want installed!
Posted By: Edward on July 3 2005 06:08 am
I don't see why it's here, as technically it isn't Open Source in that you can't redistribute it, which kills the whole point. But nice forum. But of a challenge adding google ads (but the support is excellent at the SMF forums) as it didn't accept raw google code like phpBB did, but has some very useful features put in that phpBB dosen't, and easier on the eyes than vBulletin (Actually anything is ;)). Haven't moved phpBB to it though, however am considering it
Posted By: recntec on June 30 2005 04:53 am
Very cute and impressive. After checking out the different BBs here I will try and run this one live.
Posted By: Sam on June 25 2005 06:36 am
SMF is the best imo. The Package Manager makes it easy to upgrade/add mods.
OSCMS is now two versions behind as the latest is 1.0.5 and they show the latest as 1.0.3. :-/
Posted By: MrTorrance on June 10 2005 10:35 am
WOW...SMF has come a long way. I will deffinatly be switching my phpBB board over to SMF. What a great forum.
Posted By: subnet_rx on June 9 2005 11:09 am
I agree with the RSS feed import, but SMF has a lot of features that you have to mod phpBB to do. The package manager is excellent, and I hear will be even better with the 1.1 release. It's one of the best free boards on the internet right now in my opinion.
Posted By: CDK on May 29 2005 03:57 am
i love SMF but i cant use it until it supports RSS feed import. vBulletin, IPB and phpbb all suport this now and i think SMF should step up to this challenge too. i think it is the best forum out there except for this one feature which make it not a choive for me
Posted By: Mykal on May 17 2005 01:01 am
Ive been using SMF for about 2 years now and I love it. I will never switch to another. I run 4 sites and ues it on all four.
Posted By: Shield on May 12 2005 06:44 am
I used phpbb in combination with cpgnuke, boy am I glad I switched to SMF!
The forum is much faster, the code generated is xhtml compliant, it feels/looks better...
Posted By: Steven Wilson on May 6 2005 01:09 am
Wow. I'm glad I switched from XMB.
Posted By: Ben Scott on May 5 2005 02:28 am
In responce to the comment saying that SMF doesnt have the horse power to keep up with vB or phpBB, I wonder if that user has ever tried SMF. For info I am currently running it on a board with 1 million posts and a most online record of 1014 in a 30 min period. Board saw no slow downs with that number online.
Posted By: Jared on May 4 2005 10:30 am
I've been building sites for a long time with WebX until I decided to go out on my own. SMF is nice but does not have the Horse Power to keep up with vBulliten or phpBB. Kinda a panty waist.
Posted By: Roj Niyogi on April 17 2005 04:23 am
We use SMF for our Customer Support Forums and I just can't say enough good things about this software. I'm glad I discovered it since we were about to roll out phpBB beforehand. It's a fast and nifty piece of software I must say!
Posted By: Michael on April 11 2005 10:45 am
Doug - have you even played with SMF much? How can you say phpBB is better when it clearly isn't? (PS - this is the same
Posted By: Wolfe on March 22 2005 06:19 am
I think it was nice, I liked the introduction page the most. Alot of nice features and a nice interface with only one exception: The
Posted By: doug on March 4 2005 01:32 am
Used as forum in VW Circle - excellent community forum but not as good as Phpbb
Posted By: IntnsRed on February 13 2005 09:55 am
Interesting and nice-looking BB, but it has a non-standard license agreement that IMHO barely qualifies it as
Posted By: Markus on February 4 2005 04:10 am
I converted my phpBB installation a while ago to SMF and I didnt ever regret it. SMF has much better and easier administration options than phpBB and has a bunch of features which are only available as do it yourself-hacks for phpBB ;-)
Posted By: Tau Online on January 7 2005 01:16 am
I have been using SMF for a while now, it's really great and is packed with features, yet the loading times are low. The support forums are great and helpful too.
Posted By: Songwut on December 25 2004 06:49 am
I feel better than phpBB, nice interface, fast and easy. Disadvance is calendar not complete function, I had to own edit in MySQL database
Posted By: kkc on December 13 2004 09:46 am
excellent script, good flexibility of editing
Posted By: And1 on December 9 2004 03:08 am
Full ack with Oldiesmann. I've tested many forum systems but simplemachines is the best. If you want a quick forum...take phpbb or something, but if you want a perfect administration and a lot of features and mods take smf ! The themes available so far are not the best, but the system and the community are outstanding
Posted By: Michael on November 29 2004 05:44 am
Glad to see you guys finally got SMF out here. I encourage everyone to play around with SMF. It's a great system and has so many more features than many other systems, including RSS/XML feeds, 3 different wireless mods (wap, wap2 and imode) and more. If you have any questions about this system, let me know and I'll answer them as best as I can.
SMF Website
Download SMF
SMF Docs
SMF Forum
SMF Wiki
SMF Twitter Account
SMF 2.0.2
Hi, i used SMF for my website here ..Laptop Review
that's good and easy to control backend, easy to SEO and using low resource
Great CMS. Very stable and powerful. The MODS are an other story. Better quality control is needed before allowing many of them to be distributed. Many will break the system and require db restore.
The better and most popular mods work great. This is an excellent CMS - have used many of the others and this is very easy to use and very powerful at the same time
I see very few recent comments for SMF. Overall, SMF seems good. However, there seems to be a significant flaw. The Mod quality control is fairly poor. Too many times I have tried to install a mod, and it breaks the forum. Support says to reinstall from backup, but that sometimes does not work. SMF should have a better way for users to review mods, to protect all users.
liked it a lot at first.
BUT
1. trying to install a mod not exactly compatible to YOUR version (and hell, therer are many versions) its probably not working correctly. and many of the mods are not up2date.
2. the user/group management is very lightweight - not many possibilty to giv specific rights. for some lacks there are mods - but see 1.
i tried it but didn't find it useful for my purpose ...
Best user and admin friendly.
Also SMF 2.0 RC3 is even better
Good software, but be careful. I have used many opensource software programs, drupal, wordpress, mediawiki, etc. This is the only software I have used where merely installing MODS can easily break your website. Be sure to backup before you install each mod.
Incredibly user-friendly! I've played with a lot of the demos on this site, for every type of application, and this one is intuitive, and presented in layman's terms, for the most part. I'm off the ground, and it's perfect. I highly recommend this program to anyone who has felt overwhelmed by the complexity and the foreign nature of the language and user-interface of the various php applications represented on this site (and this site rocks, by the way).
Good luck!
Very good forum software. If you want simple forum, just use SMF. It's simply best. If you want more features use phpbb3 or buy VB.
Simple Machines announces the release of SMF 1.1.11, addressing multiple vulnerabilities found in SMF 1.1.10. Also for those still using the SMF 1.0.x branch, an upgrade to 1.0.19 was released. We strongly recommend that all users upgrade as soon as possible.
Upgrade automatically by visiting your administration center, where a notice will be displayed prompting you to upgrade. Click the link, confirm the changes and your forum will be up to date again. Additionally, you can upgrade using the package manager by downloading the attached patch, uploading it to the package manager, and applying it as prompted. For help with this refer to the Package Manager section of the Online Manual.
If you cannot upgrade using the package manager, please follow the instructions posted in the Online Manual about installing and upgrading. If you experience a session verification error when inputting FTP details for updating process, please see this topic.
It may be necessary to apply the upgrade manually if mod conflicts mean that you cannot install the patch through the package manager. Instructions for doing this can be found on manual upgrades page for SMF 1.1.11 and 1.0.19.
This forum software has a huge inconvenience: It does not support dynamic base URL, i.e. instead of processing the HTML with request URL, it processes solely with the pre-adjusted base URL.
This is not very useful in cases when you have to change the domain of the forum, or when you 'd like to access the forum using two different domains: One from the LAN (such as http://myforum.home, the other from the WAN such as http://www.myforum.com)
In order to override this inconvenience you may have to write modification code, which is unbearable considering that you're using an already-written forum software. Too bad.
Hello,
SMF is a very good forum.
The only bad thing is, that some themes/designs are addicted from the language.
So you must convert the language into english, to have no errors on the login-site.
Just Awesome!
I think from far is the best free bb on net. As stated before with lebisol and MegaBurn the license who is not full GPL license. The community is big and the forum is powerful. Theming is quite simply, if you say not see the Dziner Studiuo themes, simple like the images and the index.template.php with the .css files. Good themes are quite difficult to found, I've only see goot from DzinerStudio and one or two over web, but I think with the new SMF 2 and the new theme will improve that thing. Mod installation is great but it could be impoved something that I missed too much in phpBB. The easier admin and mod panel that I ever seen, clean and simple. Simple Machines Forum. Easy, powerfull, free. Just anyone needs.
I am with MegaBurn.
He posted some VERY VERY important issues that most people overlook. Something you might regret down the line especially if the community grows.
If you have the $ then vBulletin is THE forum script. PERIOD.
If you need free and license flexible enough to implement this script into site then phpBB is the way to go.
SMF+ Tiny Portal is very nice integration but NOT a CMS (even TP crowds states this clearly). Just be prepared to carry around 2-3 Paragraphs of a license attracted to your forum footer.
If re-branding is a must for you then skip this script.
Easy to install and nice looks. But had some issues when changing themes, sometimes it doesn't work. And after some time it started to go directly to rss-feeding after logging, I don't know why and can't seem to fix it.
But it's due to the bad lincense I'm letting this forum software leave my site.. Go for GPL software is my advice!
All i have to say is there is no point in wasting your money on a vB. SMF is just as good. Probably the best free forum ever.
Great stuff, better than phpbb3 in my opinion, I also like the Tiny Portal addon, it really does turn it into a CMS.
The Best Forum I Ever Seen
Bad license, good potential wasted. A couple years ago I used SMF for 3 sites along with Joomla and the old Joomlahacks JSMF bridge, at the time it was the best free forum package out there. Then they had a tantrum over licensing and compatibility with tight integration into GPL licensed CMS's. I switched my sites over to phpBB3 along with dozens of other sites in a sort of senseless exodus. Thing is I've always looked back and wondered why... I still check up on SMF every time I setup a new forum in the hopes they've come to their senses and adopted a GPL compatible license. Gives me a sort of empty feeling to see nothing changed...
that a link is very good
best free forum
great looking software, the license, wrong!!!! almost every other piece of software is oscommerce (just 1 example) does not force you to put the copyright on your site, i mean do ppl really understand security, half the game is knowing what your dealing with!!!
Great piece of software, crippled by a stupid license that requires my site to appear as though it's copyright by the SMF team.
Sorry, wrong answer. You copyright the code, not the site being displayed with the code.
Too bad; could've been good.
Good
super
That is best software for forum
thanks all
try finder mi google.. smf is good and best smf
I started with phpBB, switched to vBulletin and then discovered SMF... Extremely powerful with functions that vBulletin doesn't even support and it's free, and in terms of ease of use, it's so much easier than both VB and phpBB... phpBB requires a lot of hand editing of php files to 'hack' in a mod which is dangerous, phpBB also has security holes that I've seen many sites be compromised... SMF has push technology to tell users to upgrade and installation of templates and mods is quick and easy and there's no hair pulling! The best board out there in my humble opinion...
i was always in deferent to SMF then i had to go asking for help on their website and WOW i 'talked' to well informed, quite polite and patient staff members who stuck with me until all my problems were solved SMF is a great board, its not really better, but if your tired of 'go read a manual that doesnt have the info you need you effin retarded noob now go die' (phpbb cough) try this out, i was really impressed
I was looking for a cool system to run my site and i found it. SMF 1.1.4. It is so easy to use and great skins for it. It is also very good to have Tinyportal installed. My site uses it not the Forum.
It is too bloated, and NOT XHTML-Strict, just Transitional. Plus, I don't see the W3C logos on the [/b]new[/u] version. I stay with UseBB thank you.
Don't be a fool giving comments about a forum when you have no knowledge about php, websecurity and efficient programming. smf is one of the best forum you can get free. Of course kiddies, who are habitual playing with boards like PHPBB, can not justify the quality of this forum. I have been gone through all forums available in web and none of them got such well organised and logical programmed forum for free. Even some commercial forums looks bad compare to smf.
I do not understand why people continue to rate this smf forum high. It is becoming one of the pain in the a** Is it difficult for the developers to bypass the FTP request useless stuff? Certain features sometimes make you wonders what people are thinking about. At least they should provide the options of bypassing FTP or choose between dual installation. Even when I set the permissions on the files and folders manually due to another useless restriction it still did not work. Kudo though.
This site of mine was running on phpbb for ages, a very modded phpbb to get the functionality I needed for it. I moved it across to smf recently as I had had enough of constant spambot signups even with the captcha mod and manual account verification was getting to me. Best move I have ever made, I only needed to install 1 mod to get the same level of functionality, and have been left alone by the spam bots since then. I suggest that if you are looking for a forum, SMF is the way forward
I have been using SMF forums for about 2 years now. I really appreciate their job ! Although I'm a php beginner, I've been able to make many changes because the code is quite understandable. 1 cons though : url rewritng looks unstable sometimes (maybe due to my hosting ?). Anyway, nice job !
Although I wanted to like SMF, ultimately it fails on several levels. First of all, the captcha scheme is pretty much impossible to read. I ran it by several other people, who all were mystified by the gibberish displayed. Next, the interface, in admin and in users area, is just not intuitive. Again, for my users, several of whom I invited to 'beta test' the new installation... they all were stymied by the menus and couldn't easily find out how to do simple things. No doubt, SMF is powerful and packed with features, but without a useable captcha, and more intuitive structure of menus and features, I'll look elsewhere.
Can you add auto resize for signature dimension, pls. As you already put auto resize in avatar size, manya thanks and great job, can't wait for version 1.1 final release.
Without doubt this the best free opensourced forum system. I used different types of forums but I didn't see any one of them as useful as SMF. Great job! Thanks... Easy modification, superb themes, everything you needed in a forum system.
Awesome piece of software. I've been using it and totally agree that's it's the best out there. Features, Styles, the whole list is there. AWESOME!!!
I used this on my technology forum, and it's great! Many features, and easy to use. You can lock/unlock/move topics in seconds! Admin panel is user friendly, and rarely any glitches occur.
I don't like SMF that much, I recommend MyBB myself. When I installed it, It gave me SQL errors.....
I haven't used it much yet, but the installation was a piece of cake. I had it up and running with the restrictions I wanted in about 20 minutes.
Well the best free forum i have installed till now... Plus with the latest SEO friendly urls mod, it just is the best one around
I love this forum. I used to use Invision Power Board, but since it got commercial I had to find a new one. I have to say I like SMF better, and integrated with TinyPortal it is very useful for a lot of basic interactive sites. I don't understand why PhpBB is so much more popular, as PhpBB is like driving a truck without power steering compared to SMF. I am forced to use PhpBB in some of my sites as it is integrated to a lot of CMS systems, but I sooo wish SMF would become a popular option. (I like it so much, that I keep inventin new site ideas just to be able to use it! :D )
Great package, and a very logical, well-thought out framework. Its plug-in and theme system offer a fresh and effective approach. Although for the most part it's easy and manageable even for a newbie, advanced configuration and customization still requires at least intermediate knowledge of web programming (PHP, CSS, HTML etc.) which I believe is a good thing here. I would say the best alternative to IPB and vBulletin.
SMF is still pretty easy to manage while it is boasted with features. The patching and modding from within the admin panel is so comfortable.
I really like SMF, but now i found out there's no way of a global email notification of posts, so every member has to click on each thread to be notified via email about new posts to the specific thread. But how would one know about a new thread, if you don't log in on a regular basis? I hope someone makes a mod for this.
SMF supports utf-8. But language files must be saved in UTF-8, not in ASCII. This work can be done with UltraEdit (menu command 'FileConversionsASCII to UTF-8 (Unicode Editing)').
I have a couple sites running with SMF and I must say this is the best software that I have used yet. Unlike phpBB, this software works great and is more secure. Modding the site could not be easier (has its own install package program) and customizing it is nice and flexable (such as on my site). Deff worth a try!
The forum of my website uses SMF : Installation, configuration and upgrades were quite easy for the beginner I am. Features are very interesting (friendly urls are very easy to configurate : just an option to select). Cons : the French community remains quite smalll (compared to others like phpbb's), execution speed may be slow sometimes (perhaps because I share hosting with other websites ?).
Great forum but until it supports utf-8, I can not use it. Utf-8 should be a default encoding.
a great forum system, includes everything that i need. thanks guys.
I LOVE SMF, whenever I need some good and powerful forum software that Just Works and is secure(unlike phpBB) I use SMF. The mod system is a excellent addition and it's admin interface is the best I have ever seen.
Has the same look as every other generic forum out there. Nothing special. Shouldn't even be here seen as you can't redistribute it, which kills the point of Open Source
This is the most feature-packed, easily implemented open source forum out there. I've spent a lot of time looking for a replace for phpBB, and this nailed it. It's EXACTLY what I needed. And the switch to phpBB took less than 5 minutes. It's so easy. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this software.
SMF 1.1 RC2 has a serious problem with Unicode making it a very bad choice for international forums
Tank - why is an OSI license so important? Our license already gives you the ability to release mods and modify the code however you want. We just don't want you removing to copyright or re-distributing the code in any way. If you want to release a modified version of the system, you just create a mod that will re-create these changes, then release the mod...
I think it's a GREAT software. I only have to say I would like it on an OSI license. It's the only thing stopping me from using it...
Well, shopping around, and getting nowhere with phpBB after my last attempt, I decided to give SMF a try. What sold me was the fact that it is literally what it says it is...a very streamlined, simple forum interface that is intuitive in customization (thanks to a sweet package manager). Currently on version 1.1RC1, although 1.1RC2 is already in the pipeline, soon to debut. It is fast, efficient, and resource light. USE it!
I am using it on my site I am very pleased with it. It is easy to install and manage. There are lot of MODS & skins available.
it just runs quick and stable! No hassles so far. The update function is straight forward.
Well i finally came back to SMF. I still wish it had RSS importing but phpbb is just not the answer. Its to buggy/unsecure to use. I had to hack the hell out of it to get it where i wanted. Then i thought why not use SMF it already has the features i want installed!
I don't see why it's here, as technically it isn't Open Source in that you can't redistribute it, which kills the whole point. But nice forum. But of a challenge adding google ads (but the support is excellent at the SMF forums) as it didn't accept raw google code like phpBB did, but has some very useful features put in that phpBB dosen't, and easier on the eyes than vBulletin (Actually anything is ;)). Haven't moved phpBB to it though, however am considering it
Very cute and impressive. After checking out the different BBs here I will try and run this one live.
SMF is the best imo. The Package Manager makes it easy to upgrade/add mods. OSCMS is now two versions behind as the latest is 1.0.5 and they show the latest as 1.0.3. :-/
WOW...SMF has come a long way. I will deffinatly be switching my phpBB board over to SMF. What a great forum.
I agree with the RSS feed import, but SMF has a lot of features that you have to mod phpBB to do. The package manager is excellent, and I hear will be even better with the 1.1 release. It's one of the best free boards on the internet right now in my opinion.
i love SMF but i cant use it until it supports RSS feed import. vBulletin, IPB and phpbb all suport this now and i think SMF should step up to this challenge too. i think it is the best forum out there except for this one feature which make it not a choive for me
Ive been using SMF for about 2 years now and I love it. I will never switch to another. I run 4 sites and ues it on all four.
I used phpbb in combination with cpgnuke, boy am I glad I switched to SMF! The forum is much faster, the code generated is xhtml compliant, it feels/looks better...
Wow. I'm glad I switched from XMB.
In responce to the comment saying that SMF doesnt have the horse power to keep up with vB or phpBB, I wonder if that user has ever tried SMF. For info I am currently running it on a board with 1 million posts and a most online record of 1014 in a 30 min period. Board saw no slow downs with that number online.
I've been building sites for a long time with WebX until I decided to go out on my own. SMF is nice but does not have the Horse Power to keep up with vBulliten or phpBB. Kinda a panty waist.
We use SMF for our Customer Support Forums and I just can't say enough good things about this software. I'm glad I discovered it since we were about to roll out phpBB beforehand. It's a fast and nifty piece of software I must say!
Doug - have you even played with SMF much? How can you say phpBB is better when it clearly isn't? (PS - this is the same
I think it was nice, I liked the introduction page the most. Alot of nice features and a nice interface with only one exception: The
Used as forum in VW Circle - excellent community forum but not as good as Phpbb
Interesting and nice-looking BB, but it has a non-standard license agreement that IMHO barely qualifies it as
I converted my phpBB installation a while ago to SMF and I didnt ever regret it. SMF has much better and easier administration options than phpBB and has a bunch of features which are only available as do it yourself-hacks for phpBB ;-)
I have been using SMF for a while now, it's really great and is packed with features, yet the loading times are low. The support forums are great and helpful too.
I feel better than phpBB, nice interface, fast and easy. Disadvance is calendar not complete function, I had to own edit in MySQL database
excellent script, good flexibility of editing
Full ack with Oldiesmann. I've tested many forum systems but simplemachines is the best. If you want a quick forum...take phpbb or something, but if you want a perfect administration and a lot of features and mods take smf ! The themes available so far are not the best, but the system and the community are outstanding
Glad to see you guys finally got SMF out here. I encourage everyone to play around with SMF. It's a great system and has so many more features than many other systems, including RSS/XML feeds, 3 different wireless mods (wap, wap2 and imode) and more. If you have any questions about this system, let me know and I'll answer them as best as I can.