which portal do you use, why?

[khoking]

Which portal do you use for your SMF? Joomla, MKPortal, TinyPortal...etc., why?

Please share your experience and the advantage/lacking in those softwares that you find.

[Jen Smith]

I'm using several on various sites that I've done.. it really depends on what I'm doing.

For ease of use, I definitely recommend either TinyPortal or MKPortal. 

TinyPortal's nice because it's a mod for SMF itself. which makes it ultra-easy to install.  The support is excellent, and the community is very active with code hacks/blocks and whatnot.  Plus, the author is a professional theme designer, which never hurts. (TinyPortal uses specially modified SMF themes, but there's quite a few of them available. Bloc and the TP community has put out a very nice selection.)

MKPortal is a bit more advanced than TinyPortal, but it does have more features.  Not a lot of themes for it, but it can use your existing SMF theme and automatically skin itself to match... very slick. Installation is very easy as long as you follow the installation guidelines.  (Just need to make sure its installed in the directory structure that they show you.. after that it's cake to install.) Feature wise it's a bit stronger than TinyPortal at the moment.  My only complaint is that it feels a bit "Nuke-ish", but you can get around that with proper design.

Joomla is a big CMS, and it's not one you'll just install a few things and go.  SMF does not by default work with Joomla, but there are two very nice bridges that'll merge the two together.  (Recommend using Ostio's myself) The "problem" with Joomla is getting your SMF and Joomla templates to work nicely together (and even more so if you want XHTML validation to pass) It takes a bit of work.  But, once you got that worked out, Joomla is a very capable CMS.  There's a ton of addons available for it, more themes than you can shake a stick at, and the administration console is very well done.

A friend of mine bought a copy of SubDreamer, and I toyed around with it.  I wasn't impressed by it for a commercial product however.. but that's just my opinion.

Your best bet is to just play with them and get a feel for what suits you.  Personally, for a smaller site and/or you just want ease of install and use, I'd recommend either TinyPortal or MKPortal.  Both installations take near zero time, and there's no fooling around with CSS files to get a theme going (until you want to customize them that is). Joomla is (in my opinion) the best of the bunch, but you'll be spending a lot of time getting it set up how you like it. If you're not scared of messing with the guts of the themes and software I'd recommend it.

If you're running Windows, and want a fast way to play around before you move to a production site, I'd recommend downloading XAMPP Lite.  The Lite version lets you run Apache (with PHP support) and MySQL, all without installing any sort of services or drivers.  (There is no install, you can even put it on a USB storage card and it'll run on any Windows machine right off the bat)   Install the CMS's and get a feel for which suits you best.   TinyPortal, MKPortal and Joomla all have an active support forum, so which ever one you decide on you'll be able to get help with it if needed.

[khoking]

Jen Smith,

Thank you very much for the lengthy and detail reply!

[ladynada]

Jen Smith,

Thank you very much for the lengthy and detail reply!

I second that, thank you!
nada

[babjusi]

Tp all the way. Why, cause simply it''s the best

[dpmcalister]

I agree with Jen Smith - it depends on what you'll be using it for. I have two TinyPortal sites (well, one live, the other in development) and two Joomla/SMF sites (again, one live, the other in development).

On the template side (for Joomla/SMF) I really enjoy getting stuck into the CSS so have no fear there

[ladynada]

I use ultiportal. You can download it here:  http://heartdaughter.com/ultiportal.php

I am about to release an update with a new skin/theme called ultimate2 which you can see on my site. Also another new theme called seemer which you can try by using the theme changer at the bottom of the screen.

I am still waiting for ultiportal to be approved here:

http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/index.php?lemma=252



With ultiportal you can edit your own themes to work with the website's homepage; the instructions are in the zip.

regards,
nada

[Harro]

I'm using both MKPortal and TinyPortal.
Bit difficult to say which one is best, because it depends on what you want to use it for.
Also can't say that MKPortal has more or better features, they're just completly different right now.

I'm using MKP on a general/entertainment forum. And right now I won't install TP for it.
The image gallery, shoutbox, quotes,.. are great features to have on such a general forum.

My other forum is more "serious", it's for forum admins.
MKportal would be useless there with the gallery and so on.
So there I'm using TP.
It's imho better for articles and other modifications.
Also a lot easier to create your own blocks then it is with mkp.

But overall I like TP more then MKP.
And that will definatly be when TP also gets more features (like a gallery).

[Talisman]

I ran my site with LSP's Enigma 2 for years, and was very happy with that system.  Like TP, it's an integrated SMF package and provides many well developed features.  Unfortunately, the developers have yet to release a version compatible with SMF 1.1 (One is apparently in the works, but release date is a big question mark).

I recently switched to a fork of Enigma 2 - Sphinx - and have been very happy with support from the developers.  The current public release is 1.0, and only compatible with SMF 1.0, however the Sphinx 1.1 release (Compatible with SMF 1.1) is available to Premium members for beta testing.  I have been running Sphinx 1.1 on SMF 1.1.2 for a few weeks now, and am more than pleased with the setup.

Jen's post was pretty informative; in my own recent evaluations of a multitude of portals, bridges and options available with SMF, I found each of them lacking in one aspect or another, and usually in one of the aspects I considered "vital".  While Sphinx isn't perfect either (at least, not yet), anybody portal/CMS shopping owes it to themselves to take a look at it.

Take a look at Sphinx here. [nofollow]

Edit:  The SMF 1.1 compatible version of Sphinx is now available for public download.

[Mohamed GadAllah]

I recently switched to a fork of Enigma 2 - Sphinx - and have been very happy with support from the developers.  The current public release is 1.0, and only compatible with SMF 1.0, however the Sphinx 1.1 release (Compatible with SMF 1.1) is available to Premium members for beta testing.  I have been running Sphinx 1.1 on SMF 1.1.2 for a few weeks now, and am more than pleased with the setup.

Jen's post was pretty informative; in my own recent evaluations of a multitude of portals, bridges and options available with SMF, I found each of them lacking in one aspect or another, and usually in one of the aspects I considered "vital".  While Sphinx isn't perfect either (at least, not yet), anybody portal/CMS shopping owes it to themselves to take a look at it.

Take a look at Sphinx here.

Edit:  The SMF 1.1 compatible version of Sphinx is now available for public download.

Any one can tell me more about sphinx?