I've decided to convert to SMF, for now.

Started by eclipsenow, January 23, 2009, 10:48:41 PM

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eclipsenow

But as my blogpost indicates, it is more about my needs and limitations as a newbie administrator than anything to do with the "potential" inherit in each software package. Other bb's might end up with more attractive themes, but only IF you are an experienced web-hacker. I'm not, and found a theme I can work with (for now).

http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/2009/01/smf-beats-phpbb3-wordpress-beats-joomla.html

I also indicate in this post that it's to do with choosing a package that many people already know. We are a group of activists for a certain political dialogue occurring in Australia, and because of my (current) limitations as a web developer, I'll be looking for admin support down the track. SMF is popular, and so I'm more likely to gain admin support than if I'd chosen a more obscure package.
* Please don't PM me for help, I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ANYWAY!
* Please tick your thread as "resolved" when after you have implemented solutions to your problem

Eclipse Now predicts...
2015: Airlines bankrupt, freight routes collapse, agricultural crisis and the "Greater Depression" begins. Welcome to the end of the oil age!  (We had better leave oil before it leaves us!)

Deaks

tbh out of the other free alternatives I find the theming easiest with SMF, its easy to know what does what and unlike a paid service like vbulletin there are not hundreds of files for the themes, all that really is required is basic html knowledge.
~~~~
Former SMF Project Manager
Former SMF Customizer

"For as lang as hunner o us is in life, in nae wey
will we thole the Soothron tae owergang us. In truth it isna for glory, or wealth, or
honours that we fecht, but for freedom alane, that nae honest cheil gies up but wi life
itsel."

eclipsenow

To be honest, I gave up before I started when I read the DOCS saying one needed to know some php.
* Please don't PM me for help, I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ANYWAY!
* Please tick your thread as "resolved" when after you have implemented solutions to your problem

Eclipse Now predicts...
2015: Airlines bankrupt, freight routes collapse, agricultural crisis and the "Greater Depression" begins. Welcome to the end of the oil age!  (We had better leave oil before it leaves us!)

青山 素子

You need to know enough PHP to know to not mess with it.

You also need to know enough to understand a few things like needing to put a backslash (\) in front of any apostrophe (') in the text you type in the code. Basically, everything you need to know on the PHP can be learned in about five minutes. That's a shorter time than you would need to pick up most "template" languages.

Oh, and you only need to know that much if you are making wholesale changes on the template code itself.
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


eclipsenow

Thank you. I'll look into it down the track.
* Please don't PM me for help, I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ANYWAY!
* Please tick your thread as "resolved" when after you have implemented solutions to your problem

Eclipse Now predicts...
2015: Airlines bankrupt, freight routes collapse, agricultural crisis and the "Greater Depression" begins. Welcome to the end of the oil age!  (We had better leave oil before it leaves us!)

eclipsenow

I'm tempted by mybb though. I really appreciate SMF and the work that has gone into it, and this comment comes from a relatively 'web newbie' but:-


  • mybb has forum subscription for email notification every time there's a new post on a particular forum, SMF doesn't
. This could be a major feature that the authors I deal with require to monitor their particular legal interests and constitutional subjects.
  • From what I have seen mybb has very clean looking templates and clean smilies, SMF's 3d smilies look a bit "clunky"
  • It is designed to just edit the HTML and CSS if necessary
  • However, whatever I decide this is down to margins of 5% this way, 6% that... and if I did switch to one or the other, please understand I hold you volunteer coders in the highest regard.
  • Who knows? If I did leave one year, who's to say that with forum evolution, I might not be back the next when I hear rave reviews about the next upgrade? I have not made up my mind
  • The final decision is not mine anyway, as I have a fellow-web dev to consult. He might hate the fact that mybb has a smaller community and developer base.
* Please don't PM me for help, I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ANYWAY!
* Please tick your thread as "resolved" when after you have implemented solutions to your problem

Eclipse Now predicts...
2015: Airlines bankrupt, freight routes collapse, agricultural crisis and the "Greater Depression" begins. Welcome to the end of the oil age!  (We had better leave oil before it leaves us!)

Dragooon

SMF does has forum subscriptions...better than what you described. There is always a Notify link on boards and topics.

SMF does has nice themes, have a look around theme site. You can find some great themes at http://tinyportal.net and http://dzinerstudio.com

eclipsenow

So if I click "Notify" at any point of viewing forums or categories or even just a particular thread, that does the same job as "subscription?" It's just a different word?

Well, that makes me look a bit  :P :-[ :-X >:( loopy doesn't it?! So I've clicked notify on this forum, and any time someone posts to SMF feedback I'll get an email?

WIKID!

OK, I'm leaning back this way again.

Only thing is, I'm terrified of editing your themes because I don't know php, and could hardly understand the wiki here. (Which basically scared me off saying I had to know php). I'm having enough trouble working through HTML & CSS on Lynda.com.

Any way to use Dreamweaver to edit themes here? if there was some easy way to do that, I'd probably get hooked and donate a few themes. My wife is a graphic designer, so she'd supervise the "look" if I could just figure out the backend!

Last thing that sometimes teeters me one way or another.... is auto-backup on the cards for SMF 2? :D

* Please don't PM me for help, I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ANYWAY!
* Please tick your thread as "resolved" when after you have implemented solutions to your problem

Eclipse Now predicts...
2015: Airlines bankrupt, freight routes collapse, agricultural crisis and the "Greater Depression" begins. Welcome to the end of the oil age!  (We had better leave oil before it leaves us!)

Dragooon

Yes Notify is same as subcriptions..You can view your current subscriptions in your profile area as well(Atleast in SMF 2).

Themes have very little PHP, they're mostly HTML/CSS/JS. PHP is only used to carry the data and post, rest is HTML/CSS and even JS. If you know HTML and CSS you can edit the templates quite easily, all you need to know is extremely basic PHP(Which you should anyway know).

eclipsenow

OK, thanks for that. You've helped me "keep the faith" another week or so at least. Maybe I'll get hooked.  ;D

So... off to read a dozen or so pages on templates.... catch ya.

PS: Do you site gurus take it in turns to be "on duty"? I imagine monitoring these boards for us neewbs would get quite exhausting. I'm so amazed at the open source movement that I've posted a thread on it called "What keeps the moderators and developers going?"

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=289103.0

Cheers. I'll no doubt be back with 20 more questions after I've broken my templates/themes/whatever styling involves. ;D
* Please don't PM me for help, I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ANYWAY!
* Please tick your thread as "resolved" when after you have implemented solutions to your problem

Eclipse Now predicts...
2015: Airlines bankrupt, freight routes collapse, agricultural crisis and the "Greater Depression" begins. Welcome to the end of the oil age!  (We had better leave oil before it leaves us!)

Dragooon

We just try to help as volunteers whenever we have time, the same goes for the team.

青山 素子

Quote from: eclipsenow on January 29, 2009, 06:23:09 AM
So... off to read a dozen or so pages on templates.... catch ya.

To expand, we use PHP to break things up. For example, the top of the page is in a PHP function as is the bottom, etc. You generally don't need to worry about those particular things if you are doing minor edits. You will need to know a small bit of PHP, basically the echo statement and things like needing to add a backslash (\) in front of any apostrophes in text. If you are fairly sharp (and you seem to be), it's maybe five minutes of effort.

If you find any pages in our online manual to need work, please let us know. Our documentation team is dedicated to making sure that anything that could be confusing is fixed.


Quote from: eclipsenow on January 29, 2009, 06:23:09 AM
PS: Do you site gurus take it in turns to be "on duty"? I imagine monitoring these boards for us neewbs would get quite exhausting. I'm so amazed at the open source movement that I've posted a thread on it called "What keeps the moderators and developers going?"

Something like that. Since our volunteers are all over the world, we generally have some team online all the time.



Quote from: eclipsenow on January 29, 2009, 06:23:09 AM
Cheers. I'll no doubt be back with 20 more questions after I've broken my templates/themes/whatever styling involves. ;D

Hey, no problem. Sometimes the best learning is done when you break something and see how it doesn't work.
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


Fustrate

You mean the team isn't made up of zombies, MC? I've been coding with a shotgun by my side for over a year and you guys AREN'T EVEN ZOMBIES?!

Now to the smilies part. You can find many different sets of smilies in the mod site, specifically here.
Steven Hoffman
Former Team Member, 2009-2012

青山 素子

Quote from: Fustrate on January 29, 2009, 01:06:25 PM
You mean the team isn't made up of zombies, MC? I've been coding with a shotgun by my side for over a year and you guys AREN'T EVEN ZOMBIES?!

No zombies, but I think some members are Cylons.

Also on the smileys, you can use custom ones or non-default sets. It's quite easy to replace them while offering members the ability to select what set they want.
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


eclipsenow

Quote
No zombies, but I think some members are Cylons.

What about Borg — that seems ideal for coding! Seven of Nine was always such a good coder ;D

OK, thanks for all your help guys. Apart from smilies, what are the other widget button thingies called, you know the "quote" buttons and formatting buttons... that's it isn't it? "Formatting buttons". Are there other sets of those to choose from? I find some of them here a bit... clunky looking. (Sorry, I'm such a snob).
* Please don't PM me for help, I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ANYWAY!
* Please tick your thread as "resolved" when after you have implemented solutions to your problem

Eclipse Now predicts...
2015: Airlines bankrupt, freight routes collapse, agricultural crisis and the "Greater Depression" begins. Welcome to the end of the oil age!  (We had better leave oil before it leaves us!)

青山 素子

Quote from: eclipsenow on January 29, 2009, 03:18:05 PM
What about Borg — that seems ideal for coding! Seven of Nine was always such a good coder ;D

And you know that was the whole reason they added her character to the show. They knew males everywhere would be drawn to her coding skills. ;P


Quote from: eclipsenow on January 29, 2009, 03:18:05 PM
OK, thanks for all your help guys. Apart from smilies, what are the other widget button thingies called, you know the "quote" buttons and formatting buttons... that's it isn't it? "Formatting buttons". Are there other sets of those to choose from? I find some of them here a bit... clunky looking. (Sorry, I'm such a snob).

Those are theme-specific, and i don't know that they have a name. Just look around and find something you like that you can use, or hire someone to make a set to your specifications.
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


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