The forum at donationcoder.com is (a heavily modified) installation of SMF (SimpleMachinesForum).
They've just announced details of SMF v2, with plans to release it to testers this year(!).
Very exciting. More details below.
For many months now we've been asked questions about what the plans are for the next release of SMF - what features it will have and when it will be available. We are now in a position to answer some of these questions. Simple Machines is proud to announce that the next version of SMF will be version 2.0 - in recognition of the scale of the changes implemented since SMF 1.1.
SMF 2.0 represents a significant step forward from the current version of SMF and has been in development alongside SMF 1.1 since December 2005. As well as adding new features SMF 2.0 makes considerable changes "under the hood" with improved caching, database abstraction and a move towards "Model, View, Controller" functions to improve integration and simplify mod writing. Whilst we are reluctant to announce all the features for this upcoming version the ones currently implemented include:
- Database abstraction - with support for PostgreSQL and SQLite planned alongside that of MySQL.
- Automatic installation of packages into themes other than just the default.
- Email templates to simplify customization of forum emails.
- Moderation center including post, topic and attachment moderation - to allow approving of user content before it is made public.
- User warning system.
- Additional group functionally including group moderators and requestable/free assignable groups.
- WYSIWYG editor to provide an intuitive user interface to those users not familiar with BBC.
- Permission improvements such as group inheritance and permission profiles to further reduce the complexity of the permissions system.
- File based caching for a performance increase on all forums regardless of whether an accelerator is installed.
- Mail queuing system to stagger the sending of emails to improve performance on large forums.
- Advanced signature settings to allow the administrator of a forum to more tightly control the contents of users signatures.
- Personal messaging improvements including ability to automatically sort incoming messages and a variety of display options.
- Improved upgrade script with better timeout protection and simpler user interface.
- Custom profile fields to enable administrators to add additional member fields from the administration center.
This is only a handful of the many improvements made in 2.0. Whilst we are not able to commit to a firm timetable for release of 2.0 we are hoping to get an initial beta in the hands of our Charter Members come June this year, with the first public beta likely to be around late October.
ps. no i'm not looking forward to migrating all of the modifications to the new version..
