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SMF or phpBB... that is the question?

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40hz:
@CT: anything you like as long as it doesn't make more work for you. ;D

I was thinking just something about your goals; how the technology was selected; any design decisions that needed to be made; how well it worked - and what didn't; suggestions for those who want to follow in your footsteps, or branch out from there. Or just a journal where you talk about the experience from a technical and philosophical perspective.

That sorta thing.

Maybe it could be included in what you are making. Something like a designer's page, or the story of how your site came to be. That should also be of interest to your users since somebody will need to take on administrative responsibilities down the road. Almost like your own City of Ember where it's good to know how something first came to be in order to maintain its relevance in the future.

It is a very cool project you're considering. 8)

CodeTRUCKER:
SMF is pretty great right out of the box and has proved very stable, and has a wonderful feature set and organization that just makes sense.
...
What this means is that addons and mods are not easy to maintain, and can be a bit hairy to deal with when applying updates to the core forum.
...
-mouser (November 07, 2010, 09:28 AM)
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That's an important point, and I'd like to add to it from a ServerAdmin point of view.
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I see a lot more vulnerabilities posted for phpbb than smf.
Now that doesn't mean that it's more secure, it could just be that it's more popular/targeted
-Gothi[c] (November 17, 2010, 12:12 PM)
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Thanks, Gothi[c] and mouser,

I appreciate all the heads-up.  When you say "add-ons" I get a cold chill down my back because I don't know much anything about php.  I have installed one (Spoiler BBCode 1.1.3) to save screen real estate since I often write some very long posts, but that is all the mods so far.  I would like to have a simple "Go to Top" button at the bottom of each thread (each post?), but I haven't found one yet.  Aside from those two (and maybe some smileys) I really don't have a need for anything else AFAIK.

I have noticed how much just plain work is involved.  The good news is it is worth it for me because of what I hope it will become.  Already I have discovered some very special things about my children I did not know they possessed in their writings.  It has been a blast!  :)

Honestly I think we (especially mouser ;) ) dread the day we have to finally go for a major version upgrade of smf :D


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I can only imagine!  :o

CodeTRUCKER:
@CT: anything you like as long as it doesn't make more work for you. ;D

I was thinking just something about your goals... Or just a journal where you talk about the experience from a technical and philosophical perspective.

That sorta thing.

...  Something like a designer's page, or the story of how your site came to be.
...
It is a very cool project you're considering. 8)

-40hz (November 18, 2010, 11:43 AM)
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@40hz - These are excellent and very salient considerations! :Thmbsup: 

As you first noted in your comment about, "...not making more work..." I've given up on that!  :P  It just comes with the territory.   :)

My original question to you was "where" I should blog?  I originally thought you were suggesting DC, but now I reread you I can see you are suggesting somewhere in my own cyberspace.  I guess this means I will have to start a new thread, "SMF BlogSpot or phpBB my own web site... that is the question?"  :D

At any rate I'll be sure you have access to the blog or report when it materializes.  Thanks for the encouragement. :Thmbsup:

40hz:
FWIW I was thinking maybe a new thread once you got rolling. You could always do a cut & paste later if you wanted to incorporate it into a more finished account somewhere else.

Possibly put it in the Developer's Corner since it is a development effort even if you won't be doing any coding. Check w/Mouser and see what he thinks.

 :)

Thanks for the encouragement.
-CodeTRUCKER (November 18, 2010, 12:09 PM)
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Thanks for the inspiration.  Like I said, very cool project. :Thmbsup:

JavaJones:
Nice thing about SMF, at least as compared to Vanilla, is it will have most of what you need out of the box, so while plugin handling is not great and makes upgrades hard, at least you may not have to have a lot of plugins!

vBulletin is certainly a comprehensive solution (and expensive, considering the quality of free systems), but *man* is it complex to administer. I'm not a fan. I'm currently the admin of 2 SMF sites and a vB site and by far I prefer dealing with SMF despite some of its limitations.

With SMF and *any* straight forum system I do wonder how well it will meet all your needs though. I think all the basic functionality is there, but it's not *designed* to do what you want to do explicitly. So I think a big part of making this work will be figuring out specific techniques, use cases, and methods to take advantage of features and structural functionality to enable your purpose. Example: Use the forum hierarchy system to roughly emulate familial organization, with a different category for each major family branch, top-level forums for each family "root" (progenitor? I don't know the right term), sub-forums for different families down the line, and individual posts for pieces of info on each family or family member. Not that this is an ideal way to approach it, a completely different method might work better, but it's an example of leveraging the existing functionality to achieve good organization and accessibility of the info. Making a clear and intuitive organizational structure will, I think, be key.

You may also end up having to look at plugins like a gallery system for photos (attaching all photos to forum posts may not ultimately be that great for later viewing).

- Oshyan

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