Looking to possibly start a forum

[a.cullen]

Hi,

I'm new to all this, but I'm looking to start possibly a forum and came across this product.  Another product that kind of peaked my interest was a program called NING.  It would be a small community focusing on comics and video games.  What would you guys say are the best features of this software and do you feel that anything is lacking?


Thanks

[Eudemon]

simple but powerful with all forum features you need plus tons of mods and themes to customize it
also very easy to integrate with other platforms, great support and free etc etc...

[a.cullen]

Have you tried any other products such as Ning? 

[Eudemon]

if you're talking about forum/social network software, no i have no experience with others
i only have tried few gallery software

i just did a search about ning, looks like they cost some nice bucks

[Oldiesmann]

I've never really used Ning, and while it's difficult to compare it with SMF (SMF is a forum system, while Ning is more of a "build your own social network" thing), I believe that SMF gives you a lot more flexibility, mainly because you host it yourself, so you have full access to the code, allowing you to modify/tweak things to your liking. We also have dozens of free addons, as well as quite a few paid addons, allowing you to add additional features to meet the needs of your specific community.

[a.cullen]

Yea, lol kind of a downside to them.  I also searched and looked at another forum called vBulletin.  Besides the price it seems like it may have a lot of features have you used them before?  If so what was your experience?

[Matthew K.]

I've used vBulletin as a user before, and I can definitely say that I prefer SMF, this may seem a little bit bias coming from me, since I'm on the team here, but it's exactly the reason I'm on the team here. Because I honestly feel SMF is the best forum software out there, especially for free.

SMF by itself is powerful, but it's also fairly light-weight, and the Customization Site is intended to balance that, so that you CAN have things you want, but they're not on the base install for everyone, when some people might not use certain things.

There are modifications for practically everything you would want, and if there aren't, many mod authors are willing to write new ones specifically on request, and if not, there are some authors who would write bigger mods for a small cost, which wouldn't go near the cost of a vBulletin license.

[Kindred]

SMF is just that - Simple.

This is a good thing. We don't try to cram every single feature that anyone could possibly ever want into the core software. This makes the base installation simple, straight forward and light weight (in terms of server space and usage)

However, there are mods (add-ons) which can be applied to add many features.
The package manager (which is how you apply mods) is one of the most powerful things about SMF -- packaged mods can do many things, from installing their own templates and source to directly altering the core code. Of course, this is also a double-edged sword...  applying changes to the core code with one mod may lead to eventual problems when trying to install future mods, since the target code form the core product might have been already altered by a previous mod.

On the other hand...  I have a test forum with 160+ mods installed, which only needed minimal manual effort to work around conflicting edits.
(and, of course, most mod authors are willing to help you get the mod installed)

One thing that I will note: with ANY forum product -- you should learn some basic HTML, CSS and PHP

[a.cullen]

Thank you for the great information.  One key aspect in software that I'm looking for is support, security, and stability.  I know that with a lot of open source programs it's kind of like here is the software as is the rest is up to you to get it to work and make sure its secure.  How do you feel the support community and security is for SMF compared to other community programs?

[Matthew K.]

The support community is absolutely brilliant around here. I'll tell you...I've become spoiled when having to wait 24 hours for a reply on other software or with a company's response. Many knowledgeable people spend hours daily hovering the support boards to answer any questions you may have very quickly. In most scenarios, you'll get replies within an hour of posting, although we ask that authors wait at least 24 hours before bumping a topic as we all are volunteers and some times it does take us time, but even 24-48 hours for a reply (odd around here) isn't that bad considering the slow speed of most other software support.

Security isn't something you need to worry about with SMF.

[青山 素子]

Security isn't something you need to worry about with SMF.

To expand on this, Simple Machines takes the security of the software they provide seriously. They generally try to provide patches for security issues as quickly as possible. In the past, there have been very few security issues with the SMF software itself. Of the issues I've seen, over 90% were a result of a hosting provider having an insecure setup, a security issue with other software installed on the same site, or stolen/cracked passwords.

As always, past performance is not an indicator of future results, but the software has a fairly good reputation. Also, security is not an excuse for ignoring backups. Plenty of other issues can cause data loss or corruption, so keep regular backups of both the forum files and database data; especially keep backups of the database data.