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Need Advice on Forum Software

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brahman:
Thank you Mouser for your input.

Can I not handle d.) Multimedia by incorporating AEVA mod?

So you would choose SMF again, if you would start from scratch and start a forum forgetting about your familiarity with administering SMF?

mouser:
There is a lot about SMF to love -- I think my aesthetics and design/administration sensibilities line up very well with the smf coders.

However, one thing that i did not appreciate in 2005 when we set up the forum, is just how important having a less invasive system for incorporating modifications could be.

I'll explain.

In the current generation of modern CMS systems (and more modern forum systems i imagine though i have not kept up with them), a huge amount of effort has gone into letting people build extension modules for the systems that do not involve modifying any core code in the base software.  This actually requires a great deal of work and planning, involves tradeoffs in speed, and requires a lot more documentation.  Essentially a modern cms provides a library of hooks and functions that can be used to allow a module to interface with and modify the functionality of the system in a way that makes it easy to add and remove modules and combine them with little fear of conflicts.  And most importantly of all, it makes it easy to update the core code without interfering with any module code.

SMF unfortunately belongs to the previous generation of systems, where "modifications" quite literally involve modifying the core code or writing replacement files.  Over the years i have made many modifications to the smf forum software, some big, some small.  I find the SMF code (php) relatively logical and well organized, and it's been in many ways fun to modify it.  BUT.. because of the way code modifications work, it means that when a new SMF release comes out, i need to go through a semi-panicked process of reconciling and merging in my modifications into the new updated code base.  Often this is easy, sometimes it's a pain and prone to error.

So that's why I would be happy to recommend SMF to someone who has little need for modifications and addons to the core code, but would be hesitant recommending it to a coder who wants to add features or someone who is hoping to extend the system with lots of addons.

brahman:
Hmm... thanks for the comment.

MyBB seems to work with hooks. Should I check into that instead? (see http://www.mybboard.net/features/plugin-system)

Has anybody had any experience with Liferay or Ning? Can Ning give me what I want security wise?

Thanks.

B.

brahman:
Just checked out Ning: Seems toooo social for me. More work and collaboration oriented would be better.

Any comments on Liveray yet? What does it take to install?

sri:
http://delicious.com/sridhar/collaboration

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