Having a moan!

[Scratchit]

Hi all

I've been having problems last week or so with SMF. First my site crashed during an upgrade, with the help of the forum managed to solve that. Now sending email to members does not work, I've not had time to do anything about this yet.

Now comes the moan, I realise this software is free and this is an incredible deal and the majority of the time it runs faultlessly. God only knows how many hours the developers put into this.

However, for novices like me it can be difficult. Even upgrading is a problem for me. I run an Apple Mac and most of the basic software like office stuff is free, i know I can't compare Apple stuff with SMF and sometime they have horrendous problems too.

My difficulty is that trying to solve software problems is like me trying to learn Martian! I get advice to try things, sometimes by inserting a code snippet, how, where! To be honest I'm just a user, I know my television works but have no clue how, I just know it does,

To give a clue what I mean, look at the Advice forum on here, its huge!! And to be honest if I search a problem I have no idea what's being said, let alone solving my problem! You get my drift?

I'm dumb about this type of stuff!! But still love the way the forum runs.

Anyway, sorry for the moan, I don't mean to upset anyone. I'm just putting it from a layman point of view, and wish thing could be "Simple" as in the title! 

Thanks and regards

[LiroyvH]

Generally, they are very simple. Of course, what is simple is relative and can differ from person to person. If you really don't know much to anything at all, I guess the terminology can get confusing sometimes when troubleshooting technical issues. But the online manual often helps out there! It is of course limited, if your hosting provider blocks certain things it's not something SMF can always solve on its own.
Usually, work-arounds are required and those tend to be a bit more difficult than when SMF can simply function 100% out of the box. Not super difficult, but certainly include a few extra steps.

However, looking at your post history; I don't see you mention the mail issue anywhere but here.
Maybe it's a very simple solution as there are the usual suspects with that, and all you need to do is search OR if you do not understand: open a new topic, ask your question and clarify what you didn't understand from any other topics you may have found/explain at which step you get stuck. Then you can get that awesome support again and you'll be ready to rumble! So at this point, unless I understand your post incorrectly: it would appear you're raising a problem that isn't a problem yet? Maybe if you open a topic, the problem will be solved quickly and very easily!
If you think people use too many complicated/technical terms in responses to you, you could always indicate in your post that you're a novice and usually don't know/understand terminology or would prefer a bit extra explanation in terms of HOW you implement a proposed fix. That's nothing to be ashamed of and I'm sure many people helping out with support would gladly give you a response more suitable for a so called "noob".


For the Apple comparison, it isn't free. The price is included in the purchase price of the product.
MacOS upgrades (which include suites) used to be paid, but they made it "free". Meanwhile, prices went up.
SMF is free to purchase and get's free updates. That's quite a difference. So you're comparing free to "free".
I'm a Mac user as well and am not under the illusion that anything Apple is truly free on this machine, so to say.

[Scratchit]

Point taken😱 I totally agree. As I said I've not got round to asking about the email prob, I'm up to my arse in alligators with "Family Christmas"
Rest assured I'll be seeking advice about the email thing when I've managed to read all the "Santa Lists"

Cheers

[Arantor]

This is, incidentally, one of the reasons I complain every time someone says "just make it optional" with a lot of the new feature discussions... every new option is increased complexity.

[Scratchit]

Hi

Yes its a complex piece of kit. What I'm really trying to say is that we novices who do not know our ass from our elbow should not be allowed to tinker around with the code, making changes we know nothing about and do not understand, making things 10 times worse sometimes! I know it would be a total pain for the developers to issue a patch for every tiny fault even if they could understand how we describe the fault. After the total crash of one of my Forums I'm actually scared to attempt an upgrade on the other one. I know I will have to upgrade both of them at some point but its a daunting prospect for me now.

Rest assured I'm not slagging off SMF, its a great piece of kit and runs perfectly. However, when something does go wrong its very difficult for people like me to fix, i'm in what the polite say, as "Advanced Years" 😱, in other words I'm old! You guys do your very best to help but one is a little ashamed to keep asking how to effect a code change when its more or less taken for granted that we would know. Anyway, enough of that. I'll get back in a few days and seek help for the email not sending.

Kind regards to all

[Steve]

Although no specific issue was discussed or resolved, I'm going to mark this solved to make it easier for Support members to scan the topic titles and know they can skip this one if they wish and devote their time to active problems.

Many of them are here on their phones, at work or on a break so time can be important to them.

(Btw, I know exactly how you feel and am member of that 'Advanced Years' club as well.)