Thought: Using SMF for the Transcendence Forums

[Ttech]

I know everyone is busy with Transcendence but I thought it would be interesting to start a discussion on new forum sofotware (preferable SMF).

I was thinking it would be really cool to upgrade to a new forum software and ideally sMF because of the features it provides out of the box:

• * It allows easy import from other forum software
  * easy to install
  * Its clean and easy to use
  * Admin / Mod Interface is powerful and provides ways to add rankings based on user groups instead of manually addiing
  * Mods are easy to install and the software is easily themable
  * provides modern features for forums (rss, etc)

If I forgot anything let me know. [/list]
The several members of the irc group are willing to convert the theme and have setup a test site.


George: If you could give your opinions / input it would be very appricated.
This is just an idea though! Thanks.

[Aury]

Glad to see you got the post made!

I must clarify that SMF 2.0 would be nominal. SMF 1.1.11 is... old, to say the least.

Anyways, I can vouch for how easy to set up it is; installing SMF 2.0 takes only a matter of minutes to set up; the only reason it took my forums 10 minutes to install was because I forgot what my SQL database's password was & had to go find it.

Some more benefits of it:
1. Ability to add in an in-browser-in-browser-irc page (req 1 basic mod)
2. Ability to show & customize usergroup colors (To make a long story short, not having it resulted in me thinking alterecco was a tinkerer for... a full year before it came up in a conversation. It's also caused some other colorful confusion) - (req 1 basic mod)
3. Ability to do fun things with the usergroup images (this way we can show off more of the new ships! ATM, we've got outdated images filling these rolls) - (native functionality)
4. Superior ban control to PHPBB based systems; better ways of blocking bots! - (native functionality)
5. Super-convenient-auto-installer for themes & mods! - (native functionality) [I'd like to see PHPBB based forums do that]
6. I know how to make themes for it (thought it does take some time) - (...my functionality? XD lol)
7. TTech & I are both knowledgeable in its interfaces - (our functionality... XD)
8. Some themes are already pretty close to what we already have; it would not be difficult to modify them to make one that is comparable to the current theme or the main site (who's new theme is... substantially more different from that of the forum's)

[Androgeos]

It will be interesting to see the Transcendence Forums running on SMF. I come from the Hard Light Productions Forum, which runs SMF 1.1.11. It's extremely user-friendly for a normal member like myself, but according to the most active administrator on that forum, SMF is a royal headache to an administrator. His take on SMF came no more than a few hours after another administrator commented on the "Delete user" button being placed right next to one other button that has no relation to deleting a user whatsoever.

[Aury]

SMF 2.0 doesn't do that, but it's not like its very had to change. Just... delete one line of the CSS, and you're done!

[Ttech]

Which would be very nice indeed.

[Aury]

They would provide (much) better support for prophet's idea on usergroups ^^
[see the rank thread]

[BlakeG228]

you,ve got my vote!