Evaluating SMF to see if it is what I'm after

[maker]

I've been a member on 1 shortlived forum that in hindsight must have used SMF - but can you tell me the good things about SMF?

On a simple level, one of the things that I want that I know PhpBB can't do is vbulletins 'news as part of the forum' - if you know what I mean?

Does it get hacked as often as PHPBB?

How much scope for skinning/templates are there and is it easy to skin or hard?O

I have an OSC store and there is a contrib to use SMF with OSC - has anyone used this? Is it worth stuffing around with? I'd like to use SMF as a discussion forum for charity/not for profit resources as well as product feedback and fanbase from my store.

Lastly, this site looks nice (I am assuming it uses SMF ) but can someone give me some links to sites that use SMF that don't look like this one?

I have a number of projects on my server for my company (actually a charity) and I'm thinking that SMF could replace the wordpress blog I use as a news blog. (hxxp:www.mpm.org.au [nonactive]) IF I could pretty it up to suit. A not to distant future project I'll be working on is a niche wiki - is it hard to integrate SMF into/with one?

[J. Williams]

1. SMF isn't hacked at all,just people get server problems.
2. There's many themes
3. Its easy and hard (Its secure with the stuff in echo's)
4. Mostly everyone on here uses it
5. Nope,its already integratable with mambo,joomla etc..

[maker]

thanks for the reply.

what about the news on frontpage being part of the forum a la news bulletin? Is that possible as well?

[Bigguy]

Here`s my site. I use Joomla 1.0.8 and SMF 1.1 rc2. I hope you enjoy SMF
http://link removed

[Dannii]

How about this theme? Ever seen anything like it?

[maker]

I like the look of SMF - but it's important to me to have a blog/news structure as my front page that links directly into the forum (like vbulletin) - any examples of this being done with SMF?

[Harzem]

I like the look of SMF - but it's important to me to have a blog/news structure as my front page that links directly into the forum (like vbulletin) - any examples of this being done with SMF?

This is called TinyPortal