Forum Software

Tom said:

You'll soon be the SMF expert around here  ;D

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Thanks so much.... well i got the smf forum all set up, i will say that permissions  are much more understandable than they are on phpBB.  That could be because phpBB has more permissions options but it could also be that they just make it confusing.  The one thing i found out about smf is that themes are sometimes hard to come by.  All i wanted was a darker grey, black, and white theme that would resemble the colors on our website and also be supported by the current version of smf.  But i finally had to take a theme that was almost what i wanted and then go in and mod all the theme css to get what i wanted.  Now i will say that the end result is really amazing however it would have been nice if such a theme was available without the mod work.



The question i have now is (other than the out of the box features) what would be the 4 plugins that most people install?

[quote author=durangod]The question i have now is ... what would be the 4 plugins that most people install?[/quote]
The answer is on the SMF Mods site:

https://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?action=stats

TY 

Let us know which mods you decide to install. A couple of things that will help you quickly understand what code changes/additions are included in a mod package:

• On the mod site, you can parse each mod for different versions of SMF and view the code, changes and additions, and in which directory/file.
• The respective .xml file in the download package of each mod tells SMF what code to change/add and in which directory/file.

thanks  

i have a bigger challenge at the moment though....  seems cpanel updated the SSL/TLS cypher well  dovecot did.. And now my local mail client and the forum wont send any mail. 

The workaround is to go back to the old cypher but thats a risk...  So i contacted my local mail client to see if they have an update for smpt..  However for the forum there is no way to edit that... So im not sure what to do about that one...

the mod i would be interested in now is a mod to test my smtp connection from within the forum admin.

Have you tried using the php option for mail?

No sir, but i dont want to use bare bones mail,  it needs to be secure. I was just getting used to this software i sure hope i dont have to go back to phpBB over this...   

Well i might have to, i am using cloudflare and a cert so maybe that will be enough protection..    Luckily i did get a new SSL library download from my mail client company so thats a blessing...

i dont know if you could use them or not but they are really awesome, i ran into them by accident just after they first started with one of their first versions many years ago, and i have used them ever since...  the client is called everdesk  it puts everything right at your fingers, really cool stuff. 

well i guess ill tinker to see what can be done, what is it they say... one bite at a time lmao 

Just wanted to update i got everything working now.  Turns out the cpanel accounts were set to have a remote mx instead of local.  Now it works..

Good news. Congrats.

Tom said:

Good news. Congrats.

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I may have spoke too soon, seems that not its getting choked on SMTP still.  So i checked the smf forum and they do have a code change suggested here http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=544856.0  but it still does not work.

So i ask on their forum if SMF is able to do SMTP out of the box and if there is a fix for this issue.  If they cant do SMTP out of the box like almost every other forum software can. Then i have no choice i have to crush this and go with phpBB that does it all without any issue.  Sorry im sad too cause i put alot of work into this forum already.  Ill wait to see what they say.

I ran an SMF board for years.  It's still up and running SMF, but by someone else.  Anyway, SMTP is tricky - a lot depends on where you host it and what methods they have to get you past all the spam filters out there.

It should work out of the box....but......may need to relay through the ISP's relays or find another "trusted" way to send the mail.

Well i gave it a shot but im back with phpBB.  Its more modern coding and has more currrent theme and current mod options.  There were several reasons i finally decided to go back. One was the SMTP issue (phpBB did SMTP easily and i didnt have to enable allow_url_fopen at all). Another one was the fact that SMF still uses php end tags ?>  Using the end tag is not really wrong but it shows your script is really old and not well designed on the inside for the future.

What i mean by that is in the old days there used to be a big time famous well known issue when people would put spaces or anything that would display on the page after the end tag at the bottom of the page. It caused a "header already sent" error that drove people nuts.  So when php finally decided to remove the requirement of the end tag to solve that problem, the rule became "if everything in your php file is php then you dont need the end tag" so its not wrong to have it but its not current.  So that tells me that their script is old. 

Now for the other part (not well designed) i did ask SMF about this issue and they said that they might remove the tags but it would mean that all their plugins would break.  So that tells me they are stuck in the muck and if ever php decides to remove the php end tag all together (which prob wont happen) guess what, SMF is going to either have alot of work to do redesigning their script or they will just go the way of the dodo bird. So i wondered what else was inside that was not (or could not) be updated.

It seems like a small thing, but as we all know living in our RV's if something is lose or broken or breaks and you put it off, before you know it you have 20 or 50 things broken or lose.  And that is sadly how i feel about SMF.  There are just some little things with it that can and might cause some big issues down the road. I would hate to see that happen because i value the hard work that goes into these open source projects.  But i have to think about 10 years down the road not just today or tomorrow.

But i am glad i tried it, at least i tried something else for a change, it was fun...

Thanks

I mentioned that SMF had a breakup among developers  and coding improvements have been slow coming.  I believe I also mentioned that we've had a plan to move to XenForo. Based on our testing over two years XF leaves vB and SMF in the dust.