What do you think about Simple Machines Forum?

As I grazed the subject in this topic there is a Simple Machines Forum system integration into XOOPS (system powering libervis.com) integration which opens a possibility of switching from the forum system we have here to it.

That's just an idea and I would like to ask you how do you like SMF if you have used it or take a look at SMF forums and see if you like it better then current libervis forum system. You could also take a look at the XOOPS SMF demo.

EDIT: If you don't like the looks of SMF forum (on their homesite) check out Joomla forums. So you see, it's just about having a good theme.

Tell me what you think.

Thanks
Daniel

Well, admittely there doesn't seem to be really a huge difference, but there are a few upper points for SMF such as it's spell checker, straightforward WYSIWYG editor and the fact that it's menus aren't DHTML, click or select boxes like in CBB (NewBB). Those menus are actually exactly one of the things I've got problems with now after applying clean URL's hack because URL's within select boxes aren't getting rewritten to new URL's and therefore give 404 errors. Luckily, not too much of people seem to be using options from those menus and there are also "click" and "hover" style menu options. Another bug it has is that I can't set click or hover style menus as default for some reason.. Also, the click and hover style menus in CBB don't always look too good in other browsers.. Simple link menus as in SMF is IMO much better..

All of that might be fixed in CBB soon enough though.

That does make sense, but I'm not sure it's really possible with XOOPS. After moving blogs to b2evolution (which still isn't integrated to Joomla, a possible candidate for switching at some point) and maybe even moving forums to SMF all else we can move to something else is gallery to coppermine (which actually has a XOOPS bridge).. but I wouldn't exactly end up on a Joomla system that way.. If we are to move to Joomla, then it would have to be an "all in one" move more than not because it has it's own set of modules.

Agreed. XOOPS currently is a bit shaky, but there's a good chance it'll come about. The latest 2.2.3 final release was a beauty. It was the first *really* stable release of 2.2.x series so it does seem promising. Now if XOOPSers could only bridge b2evolution to XOOPS, have better support for clean URL's and fix remaining bugs.. that would be great..

This moving talk is just an idea so far. I don't really plan on switching any time soon, not after I made such a great XOOPS theme (IMHO) here.

Yes.. that did cross my mind.. Well, it might be possible to fix this by using modrewrite by apache in .htaccess and that way redirecting all old URL's to new ones, although that doesn't seem like the cleanest solution..

We'll see.. more opinions are welcome. For now though, no changes will be made except for blogging.

This topic is about forums though, SMF:

Thanks