General Questions & Recommendations for SMF?

[pols1337]

Hello all,

I am looking to potentially convert back to SMF from Invision Power, especially with the release of SMF 2.1.  I started my website out with SMF, and it was the SMF community that taught me a lot about becoming a community administrator.  As such, I will always have a special place in my heart for the software and both great admiration and appreciation for the SMF developers. 

I am hoping for some general answers or recommendations to my questions:
1. Is it recommended to start with SMF 2.1, or is is still in beta?

2. Any recommendations for top SMF skinners (paid or unpaid)?  I am looking for responsive modern designs.

3.  Any recommendations for top SMF developers with extensive mods?  I am already familiar with SMF Packs and SMF Hacks.  I am looking for an improved attachment handler, one with multi-selection and drag-and-drop capabilities; downloads directory; links directory; and an advanced gallery system that supports multi-tags. 

4.  Any recommendations for a portal or article management system?  I remember Tiny Portal, but I thought there were others.  Do you have any recommendations on which one is more advanced, more stable, or better supported? 

5.  Any recommendations for someone who can help me with a paid migration from IPS to SMF?

Thank you for all of your insight and help!   

Joel

[Arantor]

1. 2.1 is still in beta.

2. Usual recommendation is Dzinerstudio.com

3. I am currently working on a gallery mod which can also handle downloads (and much larger ones than other gallery scripts, without changing PHP limits), it does do drag and drop too, and it should be released in the next week. Doing the other stuff with at attachments is doable, I know Nibogo has a mod for it but I have never used it and have not heard much good about any of his mods.

4. SimplePortal might do what you need.

5. There aren't many people around who know IPS stuff, it has been a while since I looked at it

[pols1337]

Is Nibogo considered a reliable and well-respected member of the community? 

[Arantor]

Nibogo, who runs SMF Packs... just let me suggest looking at the last page of comments on one of his free mods: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=455524.80 and draw your own conclusions.

[pols1337]

Nibogo, who runs SMF Packs... just let me suggest looking at the last page of comments on one of his free mods: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=455524.80 and draw your own conclusions.

Do you recommend SMF Hacks or ADK then? 

[Arantor]

I definitely do not recommend ADK after the way they left here because they didn't like the way the policies for mod reviews were being carried out, as though the rules do not apply to them.

vbgamer (SMF Hacks)... I've had issues with in the past but they were mostly personal rather than professional. My experience is that his stuff generally works but it's not especially pretty. He does offer better support than Nibogo.

Let's just say there was a reason why I went away and built my own gallery from scratch - which I'm going to start selling very soon - rather than beat anyone else's into shape.

[Colin]

Arantor's recommendations and reviews certainly are valid, but keep in mind that they are his experiences and yours might be different. I'd encourage you to look around and do your own research before making a decision on which modification vendor to use.

[pols1337]

Arantor's recommendations and reviews certainly are valid, but keep in mind that they are his experiences and yours might be different. I'd encourage you to look around and do your own research before making a decision on which modification vendor to use.

Thanks.  Although I can and will certainly do my own research with first-hand interaction with the different mods and developers, I also appreciate the thoughtful advice from those who with much more experience and depth in the community.

[radu81]

2. Dzinerstudio templates are not responsive. There are a few responsive templates here at sm.org from bloc

[Arantor]

Oh, yes, I forgot that.

Thing is, even if the theme is responsive, most of the mods the OP is interested in aren't.

[radu81]

Yep, that's why I didn't install a responsive theme on 2.0.9

[Arantor]

Dragooon's mobile theme is pretty good like that but again, support for mods is a bit limited (because it basically needs to be built per mod, which reminds me I should test my gallery in it and add support in v1.1 if it's not an insane amount of work)

[radu81]

I also prefer the mobile theme from smf-media.com but is not working with all mods. Imo is still better than a responsive template.

[Arantor]

They both have their pros and cons, but my experience is that the further you go from a standard forum (and start putting in things like galleries and so on) that not much is going to help you anyway theme-wise simply because the format of what you're adding doesn't really suit a mobile environment and even if it does, mod authors generally haven't built it to work on mobile, though this will improve with 2.1, I think.

[pols1337]

So even though the base framework for 2.1 will be responsive, the mods themselves won't be?

Also, do you think the mods for 2.0.x will be forward-compatible with 2.1? 

Any other recommendations on good developers with high-quality mods?  I absolutely don't mind if the mods are paid, as long as they work and they're well-supported.

[Arantor]

Of course not, it relies on the mod developer actually making use of the tools available and doing some of the work themselves on it.

Some 2.0 mods will work fine on 2.1, some won't. Depends on how extensive they are. Anything that makes theme edits may or may not work (and if it does, it's unlikely to look good), anything that uses the post editor probably won't work properly, anything that displays membergroup icons definitely won't work properly due to changes in 2.1. Some menu-related mods won't work properly either due to some menu changes.

There aren't many modders left that can do large-scale work and do it well, unfortunately. Besides vbgamer and Nibogo that you already know about (SMFHacks and SMF Packs respectively), with DzinerStudio for themes, there's a few modding sites out there that I don't know about their quality to any great degree - ADK has been questionable quality-wise, SMF Simple I don't know anything about but their support is Spanish-first and I've not heard anything particularly either good or bad.

Failing that, there's Dragooon and me who sometimes do development on demand, and I'm currently working on paid products - my gallery should be out this week and I have a list of mods to do after that.

[Gwenwyfar]

There are sadly many mods (and themes...) that are made using table designs, and those aren't really as easily turned responsive as a normal layout, unless you rewrite all the HTML, besides being just overall bad to work with.

I wish we'd have a topic about this somewhere, its... I thought SMF community would do better things than this in general with regards to HTML/CSS :/

I will probably start making things and custom themes for SMF, but not until next year, once I have settled everything I need for my forum.

[Antes]

There are sadly many mods (and themes...) that are made using table designs, and those aren't really as easily turned responsive as a normal layout, unless you rewrite all the HTML, besides being just overall bad to work with.

I wish we'd have a topic about this somewhere, its... I thought SMF community would do better things than this in general with regards to HTML/CSS :/

I will probably start making things and custom themes for SMF, but not until next year, once I have settled everything I need for my forum.

You can always open topic about SMF 2.1 Beta, I'll gladly help you to upgrade/learn new CSS/HTML style inside Curve2.

[Gwenwyfar]

I still have too much to do on my own forum first. Will probably take at least another month or two to finish everything. Also learning C now. Once I'm done with that I'll get started helping out around here with mods and later on in development though

[live627]

* live627 quietly drops a link from an isolated corner of the web

http://livemods.net/index.php