Ok, I have tried a ton of different forum software and SMF is BY FAR the best! Before I get to my question, I just wanted to say thanks for an awesome product and service!
Now on to my problem/question...
My site is going to be rather large with TONS of features, services, pages etc... I want to make the forums a huge part of the site but don't want to have one giant forum with an overload of topics because it just won't work out right. Is there an easy way to have multiple forums WITHOUT users having to sign up for each one individually? I want a user to be able to sign up once, only have to create 1 single profile and be able to access any forum on my site.
Obviously people aren't going to want to sign up for multiple accounts and profiles on one site just to use different forums. I'm more of the "idea" guy and really know nothing when it comes to development, so if this is something that can be done BUT is very involved than I would be more than happy to pay someone to do this job!
Take a look at this post (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=245380.msg1585095#msg1585095).
Thanks for the feedback as well! I also love SMF and have been using it for over a year now! :D
Possibly a better question is how many boards are you planning on and how closely related are they?
There are ways to contain 2+ 'forums' inside a single forum installation - if you're clever about it.
I want to have something for everyone, so literally a lot of forums. Some examples are...
News
Sports
Entertainment
Human Interest
Q&A
Finance
Conspiracy
Business
Services - Section where we help people in various fields, like business, legal and ways to survive today's economy etc...
It'd be cool if I could just put up a menu on the front page that would take the user right to a specific section and am surprised that you can't do that. We're really aiming at having something for everyone BUT we also have some niche areas that we want to use to help people etc...
The basis of the site will be a portal to the web and then we'll have our forums, blogs, galleries and some other very original content/features that we're extremely excited about introducing. Personally I LOVE forums and I believe there is a huge market/benefit from having them, especially now with all the BS and stuff going on around the world.
I've been told I'd be way better off just focusing on a niche but I don't agree. Why not offer something for everyone?
The reason behind not offering something for everyone is that your focus will become diluted; there is some weight to the argument of 'jack of all trades, master of none'. Pick a niche that you can really specialise in.
Unless you have enough time to actively start discussions on EACH of those areas, or you can get people to actively discuss those areas with a reasonable degree of knowledge, you will likely find yourself spreading yourself too thin.
I completely understand what you're saying and I do have a lot of people ready to contribute. Since other areas of the site will provide current event stories (news, sports, entertainment etc...), I figure that it would be able to flow mostly on its own, since those are pretty much general discussion areas. I completely agree with keeping the niche stuff separate hence the original question about using multiple forums etc...
It's a tough call. I mean even with the 'general topics', current event type stuff, I think it would be better to have them separated. Me thinks the launch date is going to be pushed back a few days lol. I've got so many plans and really got lucky (IMHO) on the site name, that it just opens up lots of avenues. I considered using a very in-depth blog for the niche topics but I just can't sell myself on that route. I'm not a huge fan of blogs and feel the users would benefit more in an open style discussion, although the blog route (if done properly) may come across more professional. The stuff on the site now, is going to be all taken down as the real forum/site is being designed on a private server/domain. I was just messing around with different ideas and looks with this one. Feel free to check it out, but please note that this is nothing like the actual project that's going to be launched! It's coolchimp.com - that's not even the logo we're going to use (actually the real logo is really cool).
Well, whatever you're doing, you're going to be grouping by categories, and housing it under one domain as far as I can tell.
What you would probably be best doing is coming up with a completely custom board index that diverts to the other boards, and perhaps a custom theme for each of those boards, depending how far apart you want them to be.
There's a world of difference between making it physically separate forums, and making it appear to the user to be that way. So in place of the normal board index, have a launching off point to the different boards, which you can make it look more like a portal than a board index if you like.
You end up doing less work than integrating multiple forums, since there's no code changes; the only changes are the themes if you want to do that (but it isn't necessary as such), in which case you'd have the same work as if you were customising multiple forums anyway.