The SMF site. How is it all stitched together?

[neil h]

My website, an IPB-based forum, was recently wiped out when the hosting company owner decided to stage a disappearing act. In the time the site has been offline, I've had time to reflect and think about moving to another board software package.

I like SMF. I like this website. SMF seems a great app and the forum here seems to be populated with helpful people.

Best of all, I love the way all the sections of this site this site integrates. Is the portal here part of a standard SMF installation, or something you've developed exclusively for this site? I love the way you can flip from forum to home page, news, FAQs, themes sections, etc and still be logged into the forum.

I've been using Joomla recently and was starting to get the hang of it. I considered using Joomla!as the portal, but read that there's no longer the possibility of combining J! with SMF. That's a pity. However, this site seems to be doing just fine without J!, so perhaps I should look at sticking with SMF alone.

So, my question is; would I be able to build a site that resembles this for simplicity and will allow me to run a forum, with a front page consisting of news, latest topics in the forum, links to articles and a log-in all from the one SMF installion, (possibly with the help of mods/hacks), or would I need to learn a whole load of coding to come up with something with comparable functions and ease of use as found on this site?

Thanks,

Neil

[Aaron]

Have a look at Simple Machines Website-Forum Integration.

[Dragooon]

This site uses SMF's power itself, it is not a public portal but it is not a hard to accomplish.(But of course making some things like the theme site and mod site can be a task),

A Very good portal for SMF is Tiny Portal. Best part is it is specifically designed for SMF and is very easy to install with SMF.

Also read
Simple Machines Website-Forum Integration

Edit : Aaron Beat me to it[/url]

[neil h]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the pointers! I think all the .php is beyond my ability at the moment, but it's impressive to see how good the SMF software is. At the moment I'm struggling with restoring my old board in order to convert to SMF. I don't know if I'll be able to get past that part as I'm not sure if I've been backing up the SQL files. It might be I'll be starting from scratch again.

[Kindred]

In addition...  if you were looking at Joomla (and need the power of a full CMS rather than just a portal) then you should take a look at Mambo (which does still have a bridge to SMF)

[nick09]

For my site i use mkportal:
http://www.mkportal.it/index.php?ind=home

Also MKPortal displays many things like news and it is one of the fastest loading portals out there.

If you need a demo of the latest(download able) mkportal you can check out my site.
http://nick09.free-web-hosting.biz/index.php

[TheWrath!]

personally i hate mkportal. the systems like tinyportal and mambo, etc are better. they might be a little harder to configure but they have more potential i think

[DHC]

personally i hate mkportal. the systems like tinyportal and mambo, etc are better. they might be a little harder to configure but they have more potential i think

What are the specific issues you "hate" about Mkportal? And why do you think TinyPortal has "more potential"?

Mambo is a fee-based CMS, and both Mambo and Joomla are certainly more powerful, however, I found them less intuitive that MKP or TP. The costs in fees and time necessary to manage an SMF forum with Mambo and Joomla proved prohibitive, in my case - BUT - I think some of that is because I make extensive use of SMF's modifications, and Joomla/Mambo don't always play nice with the modifications.

[Kindred]

What do you mean, Mammbo is a fee-based CMS?

Mambo is Open Source GPL...   there are no costs to run mambo (although there may be specific componennts that are commercial)

[Eddy Matthews]

What does the SMF mods site use for it's downloads section?

I need something similar to handle downloads on my forum - Easy to use, and have the ability to enter files via FTP (Admin only!) so I can get round the silly 4Mb upload limit my host restricts us to....

Regards
Eddy

[dschwab9]

The mod and theme sites use the attachment functions in SMF to handle the downloads.

[Eddy Matthews]

Thankyou Derek, would it be possible to see the code that is used to achieve that please?

Regards
Eddy

[Kindred]

no. The mod site code is not released to the public.

However, there is an SMF downloads mod available in the mod section.

[tX]

There is a mod for a download section in SMF, and also if you use TinyPortal it includes a download section/page

[nick09]

There is a mod for a download section in SMF, and also if you use TinyPortal it includes a download section/page

That goes for MKPortal too.

[DHC]

What do you mean, Mammbo is a fee-based CMS?

Mambo is Open Source GPL...   there are no costs to run mambo (although there may be specific componennts that are commercial)

My mistake. I had understood that one of the things which caused Joomla to break away from the Mambo project was that Mambo wanted to commercialize their offering.

Anyway, I have no interest in getting into any of that political mess, as I now understand SMF got caught up in a dispute with Joomla over licensing terms. So be it. All that stuff is beyond me. My interests are simple. Run discussion fora using a friendly and capable CMS.

From what I know of TinyPortal, it seems like an excellent choice. I make extensive use of Mkportal, and have found it quite capable as well. I have also used Joomla extensively, and found it to be overkill for my needs - and as I said, some of the SMF modifications do not function properly when applied to a SMF board inside Joomla.

FWIW

[Douglas]

Mambo underwent a pretty major shakeup.  I've discussed this with Orstio and one of the key people (now) involved with Mambo.  As far as I am aware, they aren't going paid, at all.

[WillyP]

I think all the .php is beyond my ability at the moment, ...

Neil, when I first started my website a couple of years ago, I didn't even know what php was. But I was determined to learn, and am still learning, but installing SMF is easy. I learned a lot from reading and tinkering with my sites. I tried a number of different forum packages but settled on SMF because it works best.

[neil h]

Hi Willy,

Yep, I've taken the plunge and installed an SMF-driven forum. Working my way around it now!