Some thoughts about the site

[loudog]

I think SMF is the greatest thing. You guys are awesome, and open source is awesome. So I want others to feel as good about this as I do.

I have some concerns as I look at this site

1. The mods are very confusing.....

Its very hard to sort out what is compatible with current version of SMF. There is 1.00 1.01, 1.02,  and then add in the fact that some of the people who make mods have there own version numbers which could be something like 1.06.  Also add in that some older mods are on the first mod page on the message board, and then newer ones get bumped back, and so on. I think this confusion, leads to more install problems, and questions that just flood the board. Is it possible to have an "Compatible Old version" and then a "Compatible Current version____" mod boards or something similar. Or even a separate mod forum to promote more mod development. Something similar to http://www.boardmod.org/

2. Themes

Themes run into the same confusion level as mods.  Different theme versions, bumped to different pages, questions move theme topics up and down the board like a yo yo. I really like the interface that you see in the choose themes section of the admin center, where you can see an thumb of the theme and a short description. You could have a page set up where the themes are broken down into version compatibility, as 1.0, 1.01, 1.02, with an interface similar to the one I mention. This way you just click on the link for your board version, and there you have it.

3. Support

You guys have great support here, however I find myself wondering which board topic is best suited for my question. I also think you guys have an endless supply of good help topics posted already, but they get spread out all over the site. This is another case, where some how combining these easy help guides, how to's, or help topics, that are already written in to one webpage in organized titles might be better served, for both your moderators, and members.

I know the idea is to promote use of the forum, but I think as the center for everything SMF, its very tough to do all these things with a forum alone. It would seem in some case better served to use either separate forums, or maybe even web pages with some type of PHP data driven functions to blend in with the site.

This is not a complaint, just suggestions. I could be completely off base, but these are things that have effected me