Update on Official SMF Add-On

[partypageusa]

Whats the latest news on the Portal addon? Is it going to happen or is the portal add on not being done?

[Room11]

I have no Idea... but is this a good question to ask...

[packman]

Why might it not be a good question to ask 

[Room11]

kevin might not be happy - thats all I'm saying...

[AmphetaMarinE]

meh.... i have wasted four months wating for this addon.... and 2 months waiting for even a snippet of news....

* AmphetaMarinE thinks its time to give up and go grab mambo.

Thanks for the thought guys... but I believe the addons time has come and gone....

Good luck if you have decided to continue the add-on... if not then thanks for trying it anyways....

Cheers,
Amph.

[packman]

kevin might not be happy - thats all I'm saying...

Kevin might not be happy, but it's still a reasonable question to ask.

Months ago someone (not Kevin) decided to announce to the SMF community that the add-on was under development and, perhaps incorrectly, gave the impression that it was nearing completion. As there are very few options for integrating a decent CMS/portal with a decent forum it should have been fairly obvious that making such an announcement would set a very high level of expectation amongst the community.

It's gone pretty quiet since the announcement. I can't help feel that the announcement was made far too soon and I'm not sure why the announcement was made when it was.

I've given up waiting. I've got a few issues to resolve with migrating my existing forum to SMF. If the add-on has appeared when I'm ready to jump to SMF I'll take a look at it, but otherwise I'm going with Mambo.

[Herman's Mixen]

It's a total rewrite so you can be better patient on this one
when it's final you hear it bout here 

[Kevin_MIP]

You are correct in saying that I am unhappy.

No need for Google searches anymore. Here's a link to the site I set up with my current SMF version of my portal, http://smf.yauws.com/

My original site that housed MyiBPortal was at www.yauws.com which was for Invision Powerboard. That site has been moved for the reasons mentioned below. And that 404 error page (not really a 404) does have a link to my site. Sad to say, I have also moved all the work I have provided for the past two years. The current site is nothing more than a personal site now.

The SMF version involved a lot of recoding but not to get it integrated. The recoding was done to enhance it beyond a typical portal. I tend to think of it more of a CMS type. This part has been done but outside testing has been very slow. People do have lives to live too. I just did not get enough feedback yet on the beta testing to let this get released in it's current form.

So why am I mad?

I put ALOT of work into my portal over the past two years. I am the only coder for it and that takes it toll over time. I can not keep up with this myself. I also provided support and "blocks" for it for all these years.

I just can't take doing this anymore. An offer to past this to Lewis Media did not go over very well, so for the time being I am taking a much needed break from it.

But what REALLY put me over the top is the fact that someone, whom received the SMF beta in good faith, is now exploiting it by claiming it as his own.

I have all the proof I need on this. This person was exposed not too long ago on this. After he was informed as to how I know this is my code, he removed MY portal from his site, putting nuke in it's place.

But now this person is back to his old tricks.  Changes were made by him to further hide the fact that it still is my portal. Little does he know, I can still prove that the current one he has on his site, posing MY portal as his own, is MyiBPortal.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. I can just walk away from the table and live my life without having to support this portal anymore

or I can give up my life, supporting this for the rest of my life

or I can just release this thing with no support just to stop this punk from exploiting MY work.

You make the call.

[David]

Months ago someone (not Kevin) decided to announce to the SMF community that the add-on was under development and, perhaps incorrectly, gave the impression that it was nearing completion.

While Kevin did not bring up the idea of posting an announcement, the text of it was approved by him.  We often announce things before they are near completion; it was close to a year between the first public announcement of the SMF project and our first public release.  It was never intended for the announcement to infer a time-frame for a release.

As there are very few options for integrating a decent CMS/portal with a decent forum it should have been fairly obvious that making such an announcement would set a very high level of expectation amongst the community.

From what we had seen on Kevin's work already, the portal was beyond even our expectations.

You make the call.

As some people know, we went through basically the same thing with YaBB SE.  It sucked and really hurt our team both as a whole and each of us individually.  We were however able to work through it, took months, and with each other's support have gotten back on track and where we are today.

[Kevin_MIP]

Thank you David, Joseph, Jeff, [Unknown] and everyone else that I may have left out.

I got the nudge I needed and released it on smf.yauws.com

Good luck to the SMF team, Lewis Media and the SMF community.

[Kris]

Kevin, any chance you stay active if we get the chance to donate to yauws for you input and intellectual property?
[give us a paypal button so we can get some $ together to sue some people]

[packman]

We often announce things before they are near completion; it was close to a year between the first public announcement of the SMF project and our first public release.  It was never intended for the announcement to infer a time-frame for a release.

Announcing things very early is OK, as long as you keep up the communications and give some idea of progress. I know that release dates are a pain, because everyone wants you to stick to (or beat) them! But an update every few weeks to let people know that the project is still underway and on track against an unpublished plan helps the potential users to decide whether to keep on watching. Whilst SMF may have taken a long time to go from announcement to first public release, was there no communication from the developers about it for that entire 12 months?

From what we had seen on Kevin's work already, the portal was beyond even our expectations.

Sorry for any misunderstanding...I wasn't suggesting that the code/feature set wasn't up to what people expected from it. I meant that once it had been announced in such a way as to make it sound like a world-beating product (which I'm sure it is), so many people wanted it immediately that there was bound to be a lot of pressure to get it finished and loads of questions asked about a release date. The lack of communication just increases the mystery and made people ask even more questions! A bit of regular communication might have helped set some realistic expectations of when we might see it.

You make the call.

I wasn't aware of the issues that Kevin has recently faced with the 'add-on'. Perhaps these have been aired before, but if they were, I (and I suspect a lot of others) missed it. Having now heard from Kevin I understand far better why the add-on hasn't appeared yet and how p*ssed off Kevin must feel. Maybe there were reasons why the story couldn't be told sooner, but now that it has been told, I think a lot of people will understand his position and the status of the add-on.

I really, really, really would like to see a fully featured CMS/portal (or even better dozens of them!) with a strong integration to SMF (or even better dozens of other forums!) There may be reasons why Kevin wants to develop his software on his own, and of course that's his choice. However, now that the story has been told, perhaps some people might be able to offer their services to help out with coding, testing, block writing, etc, very much like the SMF community does for SMF.

I'm a late-comer to the SMF community. 3-4 months ago I'd never heard of SMF, but now that I've found it and have joined in with the community spirit, I've already been asked to help out with some mods to the phBB2 converter (and have started to implement some of the ideas). That's the positive side of a community...perhaps the SMF community can help Kevin with some of the add-on work...but only if that's what he wants. Even if he doesn't want any help, the other positive thing the community can do is to make him feel wanted/valued and encourage him to carry on developing the product that appears to be well received by users of another forum.

You are correct in saying that I am unhappy.

I can now see why you're unhappy, but I also now see that the unhappiness isn't with the question asking about progress...it's a more deep seated unhappiness about how you've been treated. Perhaps asking the question and your response will prove to be a turning point towards a more positive future?

[Room11]

these posts now make everything a lot clearer

I really hope that you can continue (much more positively perhaps)

EDIT:
*lost for words*

[Protoss]

Now I get some closure. It was so sudden, but now I find out what escalated to the decision.


Hope you get your life back to normal Kevin!

[CapriSkye]

i was actually really looking forward to it, too bad this doesnt work out for you kevin

[AmphetaMarinE]

Well, at least now people understand what's going on.
I gotta say Kevin.
That sucks man (the cms theft) and I sincerely hope all works out for you.

But as far as stopping portal development......
I didn't quite understand throughout your couple of posts in this thread if you were stopping, continuing, releasing the cms on Yauws, or just forgetting about it forever.

If you are stopping development, what's the chance of a release so that development could be picked up by other parties (in the spirit of open source).

And if you are continuing but need more help... just ask buddy... this community is full of well-intentioned, helpful, extremely talented people.

Don't let one black-hearted, moronic thief give you a bad impression of the rest of us mate.

Either way... I will probably be moving to mambo, and working out integration through a bridge.
But if your CMS does become publicly available I will still probably give it a try hehe

Cheers,
Amph.

[Kevin_MIP]

I did make it publically available a several hours ago today.

You are welcome to download it if you'd like.

The main reason why it's available now for everyone is to remove any doubt that this portal is in fact the same portal that someone is claiming to be their own.

I will be changing the frontpage yet again to point to the location of this distribution as I can see now how some might not have noticed it's location.

[andrea]

To publish the product was the best you could do to protect your rights.

I doubt that the guy who ripped your program off is a serious competitor. He is well known and banned from here so hasn't access to the newest SMF pre releases. A couple of days ago I have seen that he seeems even be banned from lunabyte, I found namely a post there which looks like he has done a similar thing over there and at least he has guest status over there. At least it looks like he is well known in the portal scene for rip off's.

[Springer]

Sorry to hear Kevin.

Under bad situations sometimes its a good thing to step back and take a break.  Even if it turns out to be longer than a break.

[A.M.A]

I'm sorry to hear that Kevin.

... I'm a late-comer to the SMF community. 3-4 months ago I'd never heard of SMF, but now that I've found it and have joined in with the community spirit, I've already been asked to help out with some mods to the phBB2 converter (and have started to implement some of the ideas). That's the positive side of a community...perhaps the SMF community can help Kevin with some of the add-on work...but only if that's what he wants. Even if he doesn't want any help, the other positive thing the community can do is to make him feel wanted/valued and encourage him to carry on developing the product that appears to be well received by users of another forum.

being two years now with Yabbse/SMF and I can assure that and please Kevin if there is anything the community can do to help just ask.