Discussion on SMF vs other forums

Kube

Vanilla isn'ta Reddit like system. It's just a remake of the classical forum style. If you would like to get an SMF like forum, you can use it (see forums.thesims.com for an exemple who use classical BB style, just a setting in Vanilla).
While Flarum isn't finished, Vanilla is, to me, the best solution.

Kube

MarkoZovko Themes work with Smarty. Vanilla as a simple mobile interface by default, but it can be changed too with specific mobile theme, or global responsive theme (simple exemple: Bootstrap theme, but more are available, and easy to make).
All elements have specific css class and IDs to make everything editable. I hope that Flarum will do the same, it will be good.
(Sorry for bad english, i'm French)

SolidOrphan

MarkoZovko thank for the post, it's nice to see your points. PHPBB seems to have evolved a lot since the last time I checked on it, did you try it recently ?

SolidOrphan

MarkoZovko I didn't use it since they released the 3.1 branch so I can't really help you but I heard good things about it.

meetdilip

In the end, you are saying SMF is the best choice for you ? Good luck. ?

jordanjay29

I split the topic out from this post so you can continue here.

tecnologiaterabyte

It really is excellent to be able to freely discuss the competition around the forum community, I could say that I am in a project to start a community, the decision on which forum platform to choose is always complicated, because of the resources available for it, Which come out of our funds.

For me the best I have seen are:

1.- Discourse:

It annoys me to have to install docker on a vps that normally is well configured, to run a container with another operating system, which both modifications and configuration and maintenance requires time and expertise, otherwise is a portent software, what I like Your mobile notifications app
Allows you to be aware of everything without checking the email.

2.- NodeBB:

I think it's a good forum, just install nodejs, npm and [redis / mongodb] this is very simple to do when having ssh console, regarding that consumes many resources I do not think so since if you install with mongofb is minimal The use of resources, it has a good friendly aspect and a great community, for my part I do not see any disorder of the developers, I think they are going in the right direction.

3.- Flarum:

I saw it the first time as a community forum for an extension of yii2, specifically yii2-user https://dektrium.com/, and I really liked how simple it is and its tag organization looks fabulous to me as far as Its installation and configuration is simple, its modification is something complicated for those who do not know mithril.js, as a developer for more than 15 years I have learned that no software will ever be free of bugs nor 100% complete, I think flarum should be able Install in production because there will be a true diagnosis as to performance, bugs when handling real data, that will bring more people to the community that can help the development of it, I agree that it can be a great bet to run flarum in production but as I say Is the most logical way to correct errors, which in environments with few data will not appear.

For now I am between nodebb and flarum evaluating, and I like a world flarum, hopefully as a community we can support as far as the operation of forums in production, I want propose to open a tag with the name forum production where you can answer questions and give some Support and above all to see the bugs to report them and to arrive at a first stable version.

With this it would encourage many people to use flarum, and to be able to document in the right way, they are going very well, I really congratulate the whole team flarum for their work, dedicating time, money, developing a great platform,

I'm sorry, my English

Thanks,

Wilmer.

luceos

tecnologiaterabyte I want propose to open a tag with the name forum production where you can answer questions and give some Support and above all to see the bugs to report them and to arrive at a first stable version

I was under the impression the community was already doing a great job answering every question that pops up under the support tag ?

In addition, getting to a stable version at this point won't be stimulated by reporting issues related to the latest beta version as most (if not all related) code has been refactored for the stable version. A way of speeding up development is by getting other developers actively involved by contributing to the Flarum source code.

I appreciate your concern and the friendliness and wisdom that is a key part of this community.

tecnologiaterabyte

luceos Completely agree with your comment, sometimes the problem of contributions is the architecture in which the project is developed, that sometimes is a barrier, as for the support, just comment because in the guides to post says no Support for sites in production and that of course away from many people to use flarum, I understand the concern of having a stable product, but I comment that as it is in version 0.6 Beta really looks great,

Regards,

Wilmer.

luceos

tecnologiaterabyte Support for sites in production

Support on forums in production has always been given on best effort, no matter what the guidelines say. You cannot expect anything else anyway from software that's completely free and open source.

There are plenty of Flarum installations used in production already and I bet the Support tag has helped a big group of these at some point.

meetdilip

MarkoZovko Is there any reason you said good luck? I'd love to hear your point of view.

It is mostly luck when it comes to a decade old product. There could be a lot of security holes you cannot imagine that has emerged in a decade.

jordanjay29

meetdilip To be fair, SMF has one of the best records in patching security holes as quickly as they discover and fix them.

meetdilip

I was leaning on what Microsoft said about XP. They were saying that it is too old and built with technology of those days. There could be a million flaws you don't know about, in today's age.

SolidOrphan

euh, it does not apply to SMF since they still support it unlike Microsoft.

meetdilip

What about the core ? How much will you patch a century old house and make it worth living ? Same applies to a decade old application.

meetdilip

The same common sense as not choosing to rent a century old building to live with children.

staion

meetdilip so what you are saying is that you only need to use fresh released software?! It's old, but still supported, fresh updates. And comparing building with forum software is not the same...yes, people (children) can die in that case, but I never heard of anyone dying from an old forum software...you can't compare it like this! It's like comparing dreaming of a murder and a real one...

SMalt

You came from SMF and want change to a more modern forumscript? Well, for a quick and unelaborate upgrade to the "next genaration SMF", have a look at http://www.elkarte.net

IMO beside flarum one other interessting boardscript.

acmirapt

I'm from a team who is managing a SMF Forum since the date they launched the platform. Today we are a Car Club Community, one of the biggest in Portugal and we are thinking to move on to something better and Flarum fit's what we need.

We are seeing most of the foruns going down because social networks and his good usability and the easy way to communicate. I think Flarum can get some of the foruns up again like ours.

SMF like someone said in this topic is old and some of our users don't use it because it's hard to use it. (Bad UX).
We have spent some money in the latest years upgrading the usability, features and so on... But we are seeing the numbers.. The users don't use it or use it but with difficult.

So in the last months we have been studying how Flarum can help us, if Flarum is a good start point for a new Club Generation and if in the future we can integrate this with our Portal (WordPress). We think this is our new home 🙂

Prosperous

acmirapt It really is a good bit of kit. I am part of a car club here in Australia as well so can relate to the community you are trying to keep. If you have spent money on your existing SMF instance then it can't hurt to try Flarum, it doesn't cost you a thing extra and if you don't like it simply move back to SMF.

I do wish you all the best and please don't hesitate to post your community once you have established it in the Showcase.