I just started a new website, I Hate the Home Team!, a forum for folks to gripe about having relocated somewhere far away from their beloved favorite teams, and who are now forced to deal with local media and fans of teams which they likely don't care about.
Anyhoo, I decided to give SMF (Simple Machines Forum) a try. The open-source product is absolutely amazing! I recommend anyone out there starting/running a forum to give them a try.
Not only does it install painlessly (with shell access, anyway, my preferred way of doing business), but the platform is absolutely loaded with add-on modules written by the community.
There are hundreds of themes to choose from. I settled on the Black Phoenix look, simply because I didn't have hours to peruse every example. I was looking for a lean, mean, clean look, and Black Phoenix worked perfectly.
It's in the modules themselves where SMF shines like a beacon.
For example, I was able to quickly and painlessly add a plethora of avatars and smileys, important features to forums. Additionally, I added buddy list functionality, an ability to ignore users, an IP tracker (I'm anticipating spam issues with more popularity of the site), and a whole bunch more little niceties which make the difference between an average forum and a fun one.
The add-ons install easily, just upload a zip file through the forum's control panel, it handles the rest.
More mods are on the way, as I have time to experiment and evaluate.
So if you're looking for great forum software, I heartily recommend SMF!
Comments (1)
You may love "Simple Machines Forum" software, but if you ever try to register on one of their pages, and all you can get is an error message that says, "An Error Occurred!", you won't love it so much.
I spent the better part of an hour this evening, trying to register on irememberjfk, before I gave up in disgust.
Their website forum is full of other people that have the same problem.
BTW, your website doesn't have a link to the webmaster, so there is no way to contact you to tell you that your site is broken. That is why I'm writing to you in this blog.
Posted by Paul (Tranman) | June 17, 2010 10:57 PM
Posted on June 17, 2010 22:57