Hi all...
i've using smf since 1.1rc2 for my forum... this is the most perfect bulletin board software i've ever seen (the free one). well, the technical support is good, supporting on MOD & Themes also great.
but, there is only 1 thing tah never change since year ago... the interface... well, i wonder that SMF team might want to re-desing the interface for the default themes to be more interesting and beauty rather than current interface.
i hope upcoming version will include new gfx interface.
thanks...
Good themes take a lot of time to develop, and the familiarity you gain by using a good default theme would be lost if we constantly changed it. You can always install new themes yourself of course.
But hey, you never know ;)
We have had a member of the team here admit the indexing problem may be down to the default theme so although I agree it shouldn't constantly be changed it would be an idea for this one to be
Quote from: Defiant on March 12, 2007, 11:32:28 AM
We have had a member of the team here admit the indexing problem may be down to the default theme so although I agree it shouldn't constantly be changed it would be an idea for this one to be
Can you please link to this post?
QuoteWell the default theme is very unsemantical, so compared to a semantical theme it would suffer
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=127715.120
QuoteIts widely known that the current default theme has no semantical meaning. It would probably help quite a bit if it was. Then the spiders could use the page structure to find new pages, and they would understand the content more too.
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=127715.45
Last I heard and saw, I wouldn't hold your breath...
Not if you're looking for a decently coded, semantical lay-out at least. That will no doubt always remain one of the weaknesses of SMF.
So it's up to someone from the outside to make something I guess...
Not being funny or anything but that doesn't sound good!
Defiant,
That is not our intention with the next version of SMF - we are actively working to make SMF more semantic although I'm sure you'll appreciate that it's quite a mammoth task attacking the amount of templates within SMF. Currently we are attempting to rationalise the number of templates within SMF (Unifying the look and reducing duplication), break as much javascript as possible out of the templates and tidy up language indexes - once this is complete we will work through the templates.
Rest assured the team here knows the HTML for SMF is out of date (Lots of it still harping back to YaBB) and we will be doing something about this.
Grudge
well, i really appreciate waht all you guys doing in development of SMF... yes, of course the interface is not too important (but it might be used for promotional of SMF right)... well, perhaps that there are still have a room for the development team to develope new layout for SMF.
of course, i can choose the best of themes from the huge collection of themes here, but 3rd party themes is not supported by most of MOD... that the main problem... on my board, i used almost 9 MOD and all work fine in default themes. but when i install 3rd party themes, there is very large modification (manually) need to be done and sometimes the error goes out...
that y i wonder that development team of SMF will considure about new interface and layout of next version of SMF... for all happiness...
Anyway, Thanks a lot guys. You do a great job!...
Grudge, while I appreciate the efforts put in. Last I heard and saw, it fell a long way short of being good, decent code and from what I know from my stint, I don't see how that will change.
With due respect:
<strong><a href="Url">A link</a></strong>
isn't exactly:
- Semantical
- Correct use of the html tags
It requires more then just saying, we plan to change it. It requires a new way of thinking about it, and with due respect to the people in charge of creating it, they don't have that mindset. I think the little piece of code above shows that...
If you're doing a template redesign then for the love of God; please do add rel="nofollow" to the generic pages, I honestly don't need my memberlist indexed by google. I'd say anything but the actual posts should be rel="nofollowed" also the links to individual messages to avoid duplicate content.
rel="nofollow" doesn't stop something from being indexed.
Indirectly it does, any important search engine spider won't follow a link with rel="nofollow" thus preventing the page from being indexed unless linked to elsewhere, you could of course just provide a default robot.txt file for people to use.
read here (http://www.seobook.com/archives/002022.shtml) and here (http://www.seobook.com/archives/002021.shtml) to see why having EVERYTHING indexed is just plain stupid.
nofollow still indexes the pages but doesn't give them any weight, ie, your site isn't associated with the page the link is pointing to.
My point still stands though, only a default robot.txt page would be needed, or a meta tag should be set if a page is determined to be duplicate of something else such as single post pages, latest posts etc.
There already is a meta tag on duplicate pages, but a good robots.txt file should be used too.
Oh, I never noticed the meta tag was applied, so that's excellent, only a few pages are missing such as action=recent. Even if that page managed to rank in a search engine the content would have changed long before the user even got to click the result. :)
Personally, I think SMF's default theme is the best out there. Even commerical software can't compare.
But if your unhappy with it... Bloc and others have designed some amazing themes on the theme site (I recommend Helios or however it's spelt)
That's great, but we're talking about the HTML and CSS behind it and not how it looks ;)
Quote from: sqasi on March 12, 2007, 08:29:49 PM
of course, i can choose the best of themes from the huge collection of themes here, but 3rd party themes is not supported by most of MOD... that the main problem... on my board, i used almost 9 MOD and all work fine in default themes. but when i install 3rd party themes, there is very large modification (manually) need to be done and sometimes the error goes out...
This is something that the next version of SMF (DE) will at least attempt to do, it will try to install the mod on custom themes (if you request it to do so) as well as the default, but on some of them, there are bound to be failures which will need to be installed manually.
Still, it'll reduce the amount of work you'll need to do. ;)
-AwwLilMaggie
Quote from: Tim on March 13, 2007, 04:03:36 AM
Grudge, while I appreciate the efforts put in. Last I heard and saw, it fell a long way short of being good, decent code and from what I know from my stint, I don't see how that will change.
--- snip ---
It requires more then just saying, we plan to change it. It requires a new way of thinking about it, and with due respect to the people in charge of creating it, they don't have that mindset. I think the little piece of code above shows that...
Not to be completely rude, but you are not actively on the team here. You are not involved in the project anymore. While you may be able to speak with some authority on how things were handled, you certainly cannot speak on the current state or efforts of SMF as you have no knowledge of what is being done on the development edition.
Being able to deliver good code when we can is one of the major things we are working on for DE, and much work is being done in this regard to reduce the number of items that need to be worried about when displaying. Once done, it should lessen the effort needed to produce a good theme.
--- mini-rant ---
Seriously, with all this new interest in "semantic coding" I wonder how we ever got along for over 8 years without it. It must have been so difficult, not being semantic. Heck, look at search engines. If they do so well with semantic code, how did they ever manage AT ALL with FrontPage-induced crap and the braindumps of bad coders? It must have been impossible!
Seriously though, semantic coding is a good idea, but it isn't a new thing and it isn't "The One True Solution" to search engine rankings. Nothing ever is, and if you hear someone trying to market their idea as that, run. Proper solutions to complex problems usually involve more than one thing. Many people manage quite fine with the default theme, others not so well (and they are the ones who complain). There are more factors involved than code and the forum system you run.
Of course, that doesn't mean things can't be improved. They certainly will be in the Development Edition when it is released, and probably that will continue to happen even after.
--- end mini-rant ---
Oh, but I have seen some of the efforts that were put in and they fall a long way's short of what it should be. I'm not completely in the dark ;)
And your "mini rant" says to me that you have no interest in lifting the standards of the HTML and CSS code. Semantical code shouldn't be done because it is in, or because of the search engines, it should be done because that's the way it is supposed to be done. The very fact that you don't consider it to be important says a lot about how little interest there is in the team to do things the right way.
And that is a sad, sad thing because SMF has always been a Ferrari engine stuck in a 2HP chassis. So, do rant on, the fact that you did so only underscores the fact that it is not going to change unless you're forced to.
So I will continue to push you, I will haunt you, I will track you down to the ends of the world and I will not rest untill this team improves an area of this program that is seriously lacking. Because it needs to be done someday. There's absolutely no arguement to be made why it shouldn't be done.
Semantic markup isn't something new. People using it and being adamant about it is. Especially with all of the new technologies coming out. Using better code only allows the web to achieve its true power. Using the standards makes it easier to adjust code. It makes it more usable. It makes it smaller (usually). It makes it parse faster. SEO is just another thing on that list.
Do you really think what we are moving to now isn't better than the Frontpage crap that we've dealt with for years?
And it isn't that dificult or hard or even impossible, in fact, I'm staring at it in another tab ;)
Quote from: Tim on March 13, 2007, 07:25:19 PM
And your "mini rant" says to me that you have no interest in lifting the standards of the HTML and CSS code. Semantical code shouldn't be done because it is in, or because of the search engines, it should be done because that's the way it is supposed to be done. The very fact that you don't consider it to be important says a lot about how little interest there is in the team to do things the right way.
Oh, I'm not saying I have no interest. I am simply saying that I dislike the hype around it. Everyone is concerned with this now because it is the "in thing" and "cool". It might be indeed, but what will happen once the hype dies down? Building clean, correct HTML should be done because it is a good practice. The fact that you didn't see what I was saying just tells me you didn't read my words. The fact that you say I am unconcerned about standardizing HTML and CSS (all my new sites that I code are pure-CSS layouts in XHTML
with proper MIME-type) when I say in my little rant that it is a good thing just shows me you are being a troll right now.
Quote from: Tim on March 13, 2007, 07:25:19 PM
So I will continue to push you, I will haunt you, I will track you down to the ends of the world and I will not rest untill this team improves an area of this program that is seriously lacking. Because it needs to be done someday. There's absolutely no arguement to be made why it shouldn't be done.
Wow. That sounds like a tiring job, but don't worry, it is being improved, and not because of you pushing. It is because it has been on the list for some time and there is
finally time to do it right.
I didn't know that there was any hype about semantical html, except, perhaps, that more people are finally realising that it actually works.
Motoko-chan, hasn't there always been time?
perhaps its time for all this staff/friend/ex-staff infighting to go private? Not a very appealing thing for anyone wandering in from the outside to walk into.
Quote from: NEMINI on March 13, 2007, 09:06:05 PM
perhaps its time for all this staff/friend/ex-staff infighting to go private? Not a very appealing thing for anyone wandering in from the outside to walk into.
I tend to agree.
So let me wrap this up by readdressing the OP's concerns:
Quotebut, there is only 1 thing tah never change since year ago... the interface... well, i wonder that SMF team might want to re-desing the interface for the default themes to be more interesting and beauty rather than current interface.
We are taking steps to improve the interface. This includes the actual look, the html code, the css code, and even the PHP code. Now as far as "beauty" is concerned I'd like to use the old adage "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." While we are taking steps to "modernize" the look, we also realize that not everyone will end up liking it. As such one of our main concerns, when making these changes, is making sure that theme authors can easily change them to fit with what they want to do.
Will the next version of SMF be the end all be all? I can safely say, nope. However it will be a step in the right direction.
Quote from: NEMINI on March 13, 2007, 09:06:05 PM
perhaps its time for all this staff/friend/ex-staff infighting to go private? Not a very appealing thing for anyone wandering in from the outside to walk into.
Thank you NEMINI.