Using SMF for a completely stripped-down, bare-bones "forum"

[adamone]

Hello,

I'm completely new to SMF and don't have any PHP experience.  I've successfully installed SMF and WOW! I am so impressed at the quality and functionality available in this free package!  And even I was able to get it installed with no problem.

I am looking to create an EXTREMELY simple forum where people can make posts anonymously without registering for an account (though visual verification would be nice).  As an example, I'd like to create a forum that looks and functions a lot like this site: hxxp:isawyou.mit.edu [nonactive]

Would SMF be good fit for something like this? or would it be more trouble than it's worth to strip it down?  I saw another post where someone was asking about removing features and it was said that it would involve commenting out lots of features from the php code.  That's probably outside my skill level.  Would there be any packages or themes that could accomplish this?

And if it happens that SMF is not a good fit for this, can anyone recommend any other ready-made packages like this that I could investigate?

thank you

[MrPhil]

SMF has a permissions section where you could allow "guests" to post (its control panel -- no code changes). Note that even with a captcha or other visual verification, be prepared to shovel a LOT of spam! (unless you have access controlled in some other way, such as being on an intranet) SMF's default is to require a member to log in to post.

Add: I'm pretty sure SMF 2 has this ability... I don't recall if SMF 1 has it. You really should be using SMF 2.0.2, despite your posting in the 1.x section.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Both 1.1 and 2.0 can be configured to allow guest posting. 2.0 however offers better security against spam, in the form of verification questions. Highly recommended to use them, if you plan to allow guest posting.