Making SMF Easier To Backup By Reducing Necessary Files

[Arantor]

I've lost track of how many I've removed - and I'm still not done. I keep finding images not even in use as far as I can tell.

[Hristo]

What about (very) hot topic. As of now the options are still there, but it does not show/work on message index. These images alone are 30+. Do you plan to bring it back or completely remove it?

P. S. I hope it's the latter

[Arantor]

Huh, when did that break? AFAIK it should still be there and I haven't touched that...

Dunno about removing it, some people like that kind of thing.

[Hristo]

It's that way since 1+ year.

[Arantor]

Really? I didn't exactly follow SMF dev much until September *whistle*

[Hristo]

AFAIK. I remember Emanuele commented that if it's up to him he will leave it as it is. And that was year ago.

Looking in Themes\default\images\topic I see that none of the images with locked and/or sticky in the file name + the hot/very hot ones are not used at message index... as far as I can see. True, but still that was stupid by me

Edit 2: Now I realize that all this is actually not WIP, but a new way the things work. The hot/very hot icons are shown only as message icons at topic page. I wonder if it's worth the ~50 images. Personally I never pay attention on that icon (the message icon on topic page)

[Xarcell]

Personally I don't like hot topics as I think it' a waste space and resources(as I tend to look at views/replies count), but hard core forum user's DO like it. So I wouldn't be so quick to remove them.

Although, I know other popular forum applications don't have them; such as: XenForo, Vanilla, and IPB. There are plenty of popular forum plugins that don't use them either, such as: bbPress for WordPress, Forums for Silverstripe, and Kunena for Joomla. Just to name a few off the top of my head.

I've never really paid attention to or used hot topics(often removing it from my themes), but 50 images do sound like alot. So I reckon that I wouldn't miss them if they were just removed. In fact, if you did, SMF would be alot cleaner, because not only would you be removing images, but other code as well.

I would ask the opinion of some SMF user's here that have had SMF installed for some time with high traffic on their site. See if they think their user's would miss it.

If anything, it could be removed and then made into an official mod for the few that desire it, but that seems like it would be more work than it's worth.

[Arantor]

There are some interesting consequences to removing the hot/very hot thread icon - you then need to put the poll icon somewhere else since that shares the icon column.

That reminds me I also need to fit another icon in there anyway...