I like SMF forums. I use 1.1.11. I tried phpBB and found it more difficult to use, despite it being the more popular. I have an SMF forum set up and ready to go with a view to having it replace a Yahoo Group. Yahoo Groups are going through some changes, including a hugely vociferous backlash from users (owners and moderators mainly) who objected to the Facebook look. Some have looked elsewhere and I have looked a GroupSpaces, where there is a forum feature. It is nowhere near as good as proper forums though - nowhere near so configurable and customisable as, say SMF is which all its mods.

Thanks Rob.

This sank into obscurity when I went on holiday, and during that time I realised my possible forum site could very easily leave me open to be sued for libel. So it is still on hold while I think what to do.

Worse - I can't for the life of me find where on my computer I was experimenting with SMF !

No problem Bob,

Would your forum be a sort of extension to your website? Although the potential is always there for libel, on the face of it I can't really see where/how you could run into problems. I just read a thread on the SMF Community forum after putting 'libel' into the search box, and it featured someone who ran a medical problem forum. There was naming and shaming of Drs occuring when the owner tried to widen the discussion, rather than trying to forge better links with Drs. They had to issue a change to the rules banning naming/shaming with non-compliance resulting in instant, permanent ban. That was three years ago.

I have a Yahoo Group for a medical condition. It is not for Dr bashing (it does no good to alienate) but to raise awareness. I moderate newbies too. I should say that it gets few visitors, unfortunately, but little flurries of activity every now and then.

Did you install an instance of SMF into a folder on your webspace from CPanel? If so you should be able to find it easily.

Thanks for that as well .

I'm afraid the idea was a little more likely to be defamatory though, if people got too serious rather than light-hearted. It wasn't for robertos website.

I think you are right - it would have been through CPanel.

The question now is on which of my several domains .... [groan]

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 29-Oct-10 18:22:50)

I'd definitely recommend SMF over phpBB.

Having used both as a complete newb to running forums, SMF is by far the easier to setup and maintain. There's something just non-intuitive about the phpBB admin interfaces - although it does have a lot of bells and whistles.

I have mine in a sub-domain of my only domain!

Tsohosts look very reasonable I must say and a god bit more professional than mine. I'd quite like another couple of domains as the name I have is a bit tof a mouthful. If I were to buy one or two more from Tsohosts, do they let me point the domains away to my site, so to speak. Umm I've gone a bit off topic

Also I tried phpBB and found SMF easier to deal with.

I need a bit more info about where your domain and site is hosted and why you wouldn't move it to Tsohost like I did all mine.

Yes you can forward a domain to another, with two or three options which off-hand I forget. I have a couple doing that, with the fact it ends up elsewhere not apparent to the viewer. IIRC it can be set to just transfer and show the existing one instead.

Drop me a PM with more info and I'll check the settings etc. I possibly won't reply tomorrow as we have two furniture deliveries and I will be expected to leave this thing alone!

SMF 2.0 is getting dangerously close to going gold; although the RC1 release was considerably more stable than most software full releases and they are now up to RC4.

If you thought SMF 1.1 is good, 2.0 is a very, very impressive step forward - it's what they are running on their own forums.

Thanks .

It's definitely on the back-burner at the moment though.

FYI:

http://www.forummatrix.org/

Compare features etc.


Also, since I'm giving links to comparatives, have a distro chooser linky:

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php