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[StormWolfe 557]

Y'all, I need help! If this is the wrong forum for this, just move me!

 

I have two sites on IPS forums which I love. It's easy enough that even I can do some basic changes. However, I have a 3rd site languishing away and in need of a new home. It is currently on Nova (which I also love), but it seems that their next major update could be a very long way off.

 

Bottom line: I cannot currently afford a 3rd IPS site. Once I can save up and start buying licenses for the other two so I don't have a monthly layout in fees, I'll be able to move yet again. I'd also kill to be able to have a test site so I could see what I was breaking before live installing it.

 

Next, I am not a coder. I can maintain the basics of a self-hosted site, but it helps to have good support. I need things spelled out (adding themes, mods, etc.). 

 

I have tried JCINK - right now it's a no for me although I am committed to trying and help a friend get her site customized.

 

So - list of questions below!

 

JCINK (Friend's Site)

1. Best sites for requesting a custom theme with out-of-the-box features. I am even willing to look at paid options.

• I have found and looked through numerous resource sites, but most are simply impossible to find things on or everything is very outdated. Add to that, most have an unfortunate tendency to disregard the visually impaired by using light themes with pale colored text or very tiny fonts. Browser zoom only helps up to a certain point.
• I can make minor changes and updates (color tweaks, font tweaks), but I really need to be able to copy the code to the appropriate place and go.
• Theme support would be awesome.

 

FOR ME

(phpBB, myBB, SMF)

1. I need recommendations for an easy to use free forum platform. Ease of use means reasonable well-documented and easy to manage when it comes to adding themes, mods, etc. Having access to simple, clean, well-managed resource sites is a must (preferably ones that stay current with the software).

Features

1. Good documentation. This is a must. I need to have directions stated in Village Idiot terminology.
2. Account Switching: Built-in or easy to add mod.
3. Sub-accounts: Guess this goes hand-in-hand with #2. It would be preferred that we be able to set up multiple accounts on one email.
4. Customizable: site, main profile, mini-profiles, etc.
5. Support for a wiki (yes, I can set one up on a 2nd site, Wordpress works great, but that's a pain to maintain).
6. Some form of alert or mentions system for ease of tagging folks.
7. I loathe BBCode, but if it can be customized, I can live with it.
8. A gallery would be nice, but not mandatory. I can find alternatives or maybe try out some of the gallery software on Softaculous.
9. Easy to install and update...bears repeating.
10. Support, support, support (I'm really nice when asking)
11. Mobile friendly is a huge plus.

Any and all help, recommendations, suggestions, letters, hate mail, etc. are greatly appreciated. Thanks ahead of time everyone!

[Arceus 1,082]

Welp, let me just chime in with some SMF stuff for you, as I think I'm one of like two people that can. It hits most of your feature wants, except three.

 

I'll be honest, the documentation *sucks*. I'm slowly working to fix this in the background, and drop guides here on The Initiative, merely because the official software documentation sucks. You can get the gist of most of the main features, but once you start digging past surface things, it's like did they even try? Also, whatever you do, do not ask the actual SMF community ANYTHING. The ones that can help are mostly elitist snobs, and god forbid you mention RP. Please, for the love of cheesecake, just come here. I'll even support mods because they're such nozzles.

 

Switching and sub-accounts is available in a mod. Rather good mod. One thing it does not do is allow editing posts unless you're on the account that posted it, due to some quirks in the back-end's handling of post ownership, but if an account does not exist, it will make it before linking it (there's not a separate thing for that). I'm also writing a second subaccount mod for 2.1 when that drops, unfortunately 2.1 is still in beta right now. It's usable, being fair.

 

The entirety of SMF can be changed. Admins have access to all the templates in the system and they can all be rearranged, you can also get into the source files and change them, add new functionalities quite easily, but it is raw PHP and often is more of a pain than it needs to be due to this for those that do not know PHP. Mods can also be tweaked to add new features and functions, and with SimplePortal, you can create custom pages with auto-list functions. If, for whatever reason, you wanted a list of everyone's jobs but didn't want to maintain it, make a custom field for it, write up a quick auto-list code for it, poof, there it is, set it and forget it. Whenever someone fills out the field, the list instantly updates. No two SMF boards operate the same way, or have the exact same feature set, because it is so customisable.

 

There are a couple mods that will function similarly to a wiki, but I believe only one is an actual wiki and I can't vouch for it, I use SP pages, but this isn't collaborative. Only staff can alter pages. If you don't need it collaborative, though, and only need your admins to be able to update them, it works fine, supports both BBC and HTML, you can even put a block on the side of the pages for navigation and such. It can look pretty neat and be rather intuitive if set up right.

 

Mentions are available, as are alerts, but these are mods on 2.0, and some mods for these features work better than others. The Ajax-powered alert system seems to work most of the time, but occasionally turns derp and will re-alert or not alert at all. You could theoretically get SMFPacks' alert system, I hear good things, it's more Facebook-like which would be more familiar to IPS users, but SMFPacks' mods are paid (most of them are worth it though?).

 

Custom BBCodes are fairly easy, there's a mod that makes it even easier, you can also install BBCode with Style, which adds div and span, and style and class options to [table], [td] (this one also got colspan), and . Only root admins can post SMF's equivalent of Jcink's dohtml code, for security reasons (we don't need no server breaches).

 

I'm fairly sure there's a gallery mod somewhere, may not be pretty, though.

 

Installation and updating is easy, the system takes care of everything. 2.0's updates are primarily security patches, so it's unlikely to break anything.

 

I'm here, and I love to help!

 

SMF 2.0 is not inherently mobile friendly, it's pretty dated, but the right theme creator can make it so. All of my SMF sites are mobile friendly via good design.

 

You can easily install it and play with it. There are also CMS testers out there that'll let you play on a periodically-reinstalling test board, to get a feel for things.

 

As much as it pains me to admit, SMF will probably annoy you at some point. It annoys most people at some point. It even still occasionally annoys me, and I've been at it for over a decade. Seems to be how it shows affection. I am going to say now, as you're coming from IPS, SMF does not update even remotely at the same speed. All of SMF's developers are volunteers; I'm sure we can all understand that reality and actual paying job comes before something they volunteer their time for. SMF is a passion-project.

 

SMF is also open source. This means anyone can go in and make source code changes, and as a result, its real power is in its modding community. There is a vast collection of mods for SMF, and if you can't find something that does what you want, for whatever reason, you can usually find someone willing to make one. But here's the thing; if SMF made back-end changes every time it updated, it'd constantly break its mods, and destroy the modding community, which is a big part of SMF's selling point, and the major good thing about SMF would crash as mods became more of a pain than it is worth to maintain, due to how mods install themselves (basically it searches for a line, and then either replaces that line, or adds code before or after; if it doesn't find that line, it does nothing).

 

Once an SMF version is dropped, don't expect it to change a lot; it won't. It will, however, remain secure, as security holes are patched essentially as soon as they're found. SMF 2.1 is also a thing that exists, but there are a couple quirks in it, still, and it is similar enough to 2.0 that many 2.0 mods work on it, sometimes with tweaks and sometimes not. I won't lie, 2.1 is a decent improvement, but not the huge overhaul that everyone seemed to be expecting it to be. Why? Modders, and most of their focus is on SMF 3. 2.1's purpose is to bring version 2 into the modern era. SubAccounts did however hopelessly break on 2.1, hence my character mod. Honestly, many things hopelessly broke on 2.1, just most things I can fix.

 

It's really like, if you want a regularly updating free software, you'll most likely want to look to MyBB. @Kit the Human can help you there.

 

And this wasn't specifically brought up, but, while there are a large number of themes available for SMF, they mostly really suck. Gonna be honest. There are a few gems out there, but if you want anything particularly stunning and non-generic looking, you'll probably have to pay a themer, or brave the template system yourself (and it's rough - creating good-looking SMF themes is basically a lost art). Installing them is a matter of a few clicks, but finding usable ones may be a bit trickier.

 

So, yeah. Hopefully, this giant word-dump actually helps lol I think this is the most I've said about SMF in one go. Hmm.

[StormWolfe 557]

@Arceus

 

Thank you for the awesome word dump.

 

Actually, a long long time ago in my own little galaxy far far away, I used SMF and loved it. When I left it, it was for Nova (which I might wind up crawling back to if they ever release the NextGen revision).

 

The only reason I'm hesitating on SMF for my own site are the issues in getting mods and support.

 

Regarding the wiki, it would be admin updatable only not a truly collaborative wiki. 

 

Also, in all honesty, if there were good ways to get around having multiple accounts and still let the threads / posts reflect which characters were "writing", I'd be all in on that! After Nova, I have come to loathe multiple accounts! Nova let you set up one account and link all of your character bios to it. Selecting the character who to post is a simple matter of clicking on them in a dropdown "author" field. What I'd give for a forum RP mod that allowed that sort of thing.

 

So, I will keep SMF in the running. Sounds like I'd just need to find someone to help with the theme, mods, and whatnot. Once it's all set-up, I can usually manage things unless there's major breakage for some reason.

 

Now - goes to stalk @Arceus 's forum to look at all the pretties.

 

Have I mentioned that I simply love looking at other people's forums and wishing I were as talented!?

Edited July 14, 2018 by Stormwolfe

[Arceus 1,082]

@Stormwolfe, it will then make you happy to know that SMF 2's SubAccount mod works essentially just like that. Yes, they are separate accounts, but no email fussing necessary, you don't have to log out to create them, switching for editing is just a click. The character mod for 2.1 will operate more like Nova, there won't be an account switcher at all, because you won't need one, everything will be manageable from the char management screen (this mod will be backwards compatible with 2.0).

 

And, really, I'm here, seriously, I do nothing but PBs, I'm not even the PB person, feel absolutely free to bug me about themes and mods and stuff. I love SMF, I do, and I'm always really happy to help out the small number of us still using it.

[StormWolfe 557]

@Arceus (Let me know if we need to discuss via PM)

 

For my site, you've about sold me on SMF and I'm leaning hard toward signing up for a hosting package here, although I'll have to do some shifting around to free up my fantasy game's domain.

 

More questions...

 

Images: My people love being able to add images to posts here and there, preferably with the text styled wrapped around the image. How friendly is SMF when it comes to uploading images into posts? Is it a case of having to host everything at separate image hosts like JCINK?

 

Text Editor: I think you answered this in your first response, but dumb it down for me... SMF uses BBCode or other type of Rich Text Editor?

 

Seriously? You'd help with the mods and themes? I'm patient and nor horribly demanding.

 

I'm not completely hopeless, but am now sixty years old and vision challenged as well as not having the mental acuity I once did. I have been reading up on HTML, CSS, Javascript, but unwilling to even tackle PHP. I at least have a passing acquaintance with the rest. In fact, I get really pissed at myself anymore because I just don't seem to be able to "get" the things I used to understand with relative ease.

 

Now, all y'all know how clueless I am. LOL

 

I appreciate you discussing this with me and am getting excited!

[Arceus 1,082]

@Stormwolfe

Nah, I think this should stay here, for others that might have similar concerns/questions!

 

Unfortunately, while you can upload attachments to posts, you'll need to copy the link for it and manually put it into the post, after posting, if you wanted to do it that way. It'll display under the post otherwise, and I think the link might actually be a download link, so that's fun. If you've got a gallery mod, you could upload post images to the gallery, instead, if I remember right. Honestly, the more intuitive way would be going Jcink style, if you don't want to spend an age hunting down a gallery mod (I'm probably looking for one by the time you read this).

 

(Ah, there's a free one with basic functionality out there, this is actually a decent modder's, too. Seems to auto-generate linking codes for you, as well. That's neat.)

 

Yep, SMF uses BBCode.

 

Absolutely! The Initiative is help-y place, and I love to help! I will actually soon be dropping free SMF themes here on the I with mobile-responsiveness and some cool stuff built in, and when the character mod is done, it will be an The Initiative exclusive, so, aren't we all lucky bugs? xD There are some little tweaks you'll probably want to do to it, as well, like removing the email field for guests if you advertise (for some reason, people really hate those), things most people don't even consider as being within realm of possibility. I know SMF well enough that I coded a 98% automated table-top style battle system for it, complete with a creature spawner, automatic bestiary, and a Pokemon-style party manager. I'm probably the best person to ask. lol

 

I can't really blame you, PHP's kind of a pain. It may be pretty daunting, but it's okay if it breaks. We can fix it! I've been working with it since 2006, and most common ways you can possibly break it, I've probably done myself, before.

[Kit the Human 758]

If you're keen on smf, you should go for it. Particularly since you've already used it and liked it.

 

Just for information's sake:

Phpbb and mybb are reasonably well documented. People in discord have spoken well of phpbb's resources and assistance.

 

Both gave an account switcher but you do need to create extra accounts. You can use the same email. Mybbs switcher let's the parent account edit the children.

 

Mybb is NOT responsive out of the box, but can be made so. Phpbb however, is responsive out of the box.

 

Mybb and phpbb do not have a wiki but both can be bridged to mediawiki. I haven't done it myself.

 

Gallery

https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/extension/phpbb_gallery/

https://community.mybb.com/mods.php?action=view&pid=259

 

I haven't used either.

 

Tagging

https://community.mybb.com/mods.php?action=view&pid=885

https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/extension/simple_mentions/

 

Both are easy to install. Mybb is easy to update, I imagine phpbb is as well.

 

Both use bbcode.

 

Both can be edited to your hearts content.

 

But like I said, if you liked smf when you used it, theres no reason to pick these two over smf! It's all about your preferences.

[StormWolfe 557]

@Kit the Human

 

I am bedazzled and amazed at all the choices! Each one seems to have good points. And, not to belittle JCINK because I have seen some amazing sites, but I just can't make it work - as you well know! 

 

I will continue prowling and investigating. Might wind up having to take down one of my really old sites and install each forum on it to do some actual testing.

 

So, I am humbly grateful for the information I am receiving and the time y'all are taking to answer me.

[Huskerdust 625]

1 hour ago, Stormwolfe said:

 

Images: My people love being able to add images to posts here and there, preferably with the text styled wrapped around the image. How friendly is SMF when it comes to uploading images into posts? Is it a case of having to host everything at separate image hosts like JCINK?

 

 

https://www.smfhacks.com/smf-gallery.php

 

All right, so this is the gallery I've always used with my forums. I started with the Lite version (it is free) but I've upgraded to the Pro. TBH, it's not really worth it? Anything you want to get done on the lite version is there. You can create categories for your members to upload images and it'll give you different types of links, just as you would find on any imaging host. In fact, because of the debacle with all the image hosts, I use the gallery system SO my members have a place to host their images for my sites. (And tbh, they're friends so I don't care if they use it to link on other places too.) 

 

Also, for themes, definitely go to Arceus. Best themes for SMF out there, hands down. 

 

EDIT TO ADD: OH! @Stormwolfe is this kinda what you're looking for? 

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=3770

Edited July 14, 2018 by Zozma

[StormWolfe 557]

15 minutes ago, Zozma said:

EDIT TO ADD: OH! @Stormwolfe is this kinda what you're looking for? 

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=3770

 

That looks like it might do what I'm after. I couldn't read all of the details just now because my eyes are giving me a fit with light backgrounds. Long day of doing battle with the JCINK site I'm trying to help a friend with. Kill me now and thank heavens @Kit the Human has been so helpful and patient.

[Kit the Human 758]

I 100% recommend that you try out all the forum softwares before you commit!

 

And it's not a problem at all. It's literally my job around here 😉

[memoria 37]

I think I can answer some of your phpBB questions since I've been a  fangirl for more years than I can remember. My answers below will be based on their latest version 3.2 as 3.1 recently came to end of life.

 

1. They have a documentation section full of different articles on customization, features, etc. In addition, searching their forums for questions not found in the documentation may prove useful. Most of the time, I'll just search the forum for the answers I need. There is a phpBB wiki which highlights stuff like template code, features in development, and more. 
2. A developer named Flexrex just got their Account Switching extension approved and as it was reviewed by the phpBB extensions team, that means they try to make sure it works and isn't a big security hazard.  And checking the "Extensions in Development" forum, it looks like this same extension author is making improvements to this extension with more features. 
3. See above. I guess the extension is not technically sub-accounts, but it does allow for account switching. I believe by default there is a setting in the admin panel that allows registration with multiple emails, or at least, that is how I have my forum setup.
4. Yes, everything is super customizable and this is one of the things I love most about phpBB. The forum comes packaged with one theme (prosilver), but you can create child themes which makes it so you can modify templates, but you only need to copy over the templates you want to actually modify. This essentially makes upgrading easier. Child themes can be created for any theme you install.  Related to themes, there is a good range of free styles and images or if you are up to paying for something, you can check out sites such as themeforset which have a few paid themes seem to allow easy alteration of colors and styles. 
5. For wikis, I couldn't find a wiki extension exactly, but there are alternatives:  Knowledge Base, Pages, and cmBB. 
6. Yup, Simple Mentions extension.
7. phpBB comes packaged with bbcode which you can expand to create your own custom bbcode. So, even if you're not a big fan, at least you can add your own things and toggle what bbcode you even want on the board. I'm fairly certain there is an option in the admin cp to allow HTML usage, but I've never turned this on. 
8. There is a gallery, but the current version does not seem to work with 3.2.  It does look like they are working on an upgraded version though. 
9. I've personally never had any problems with installation. It takes a few clicks and entering information to complete the process.
10. Support is pretty good, though I'll be honest, there's occasions on the phpBB forums where I see it could be better/nicer? You can ask for help via their forums or if it's a specific question about an extension, each approved extension has its own Discussion/Support topic.
11. The default theme (prosilver) is responsive, so it works fine on mobile devices.

 

Quote

I will continue prowling and investigating. Might wind up having to take down one of my really old sites and install each forum on it to do some actual testing.

 

On this note, I wanted to mention one additional thing. Instead of taking down an old forum, you might want to attempt an install of a program such as Wamp of Xamp. Essentially this will set you up with a "server" on your computer that includes PHP, Apache, and MySQL. I use Wamp for all of my testing and development. So, if you're up for learning something else that's new, I think you could benefit from this as it will allow you to spin up multiple installs of SMF, phpBB, and MyBB without having to take down sites and reinstall.

[Morrigan 1,826]

So throwing my two cents in here. Before becoming an IPS nutter (like I am now) the software I used was SMF. While I still stand by my reasons to leave using it. It was by far my favorite as far as roleplay went while I still used it. I don't have a personal preference (from an admin or member point of view) because I believe if it works and can be adjusted to how I like it, then it's good for roleplay.

 

And yes, I totally agree with @Arceus NEVER NEVER NEVER go to their community for help. They are filled with some of the elitist assholes that think only pure forum software is key! However we have the best SMF person anyways. So who needs them!?

[StormWolfe 557]

@Morrigan  I was up way too late looking at myBB and phpBB which both seem like they are excellent options. However, I did have that SMF site way back in the pre-Nova days and loved it. I think it is going to win the race. I love Nova's character management and forms features, but it's actual role playing no longer works for us.

 

@Arceus I reread this thread because I thought I saw a mention about not being able to edit posts that you're not an author of? Can that be bypassed by giving members a moderator role for specific forums. We do a huge amount of joint posting (i.e. editing our replies to dialog directly into a standing post so the flow is smoother). We also do play-by-post so it's a good combination of both styles.

 

@memoria Thank you for the phpBB input and research. I read the information from several of the links and have seen some phenomenal phpBB gaming sites. Right now, I am going to default to the most familiar (which isn't saying alot)! Wamp sounds interesting. I'll look into it. I think Mac offers something similar, I just haven't explored it because I have so many spare domains right now.

 

My next bit of work is moving my old Nova files onto a spare domain so I can put SMF on the current Aereth domain. I will need access to bios and images or I'd just start from scratch.

 

Here is the site that will be moving onto SMF...  Aereth RPG and its work in progress Wiki (I like the colors and images there better). If I can find a way to get it all in one place (our lore for Aereth is massive), then I can drop one of my server hosts where all my Wordpress Wikis are. The thing I like about Wordpress as a wiki is the ease of management, the mods for tables of contents, etc. I am apparently too stupid to use wikimedia or wikidot (I tried).

 

And on to trying to get the Aereth Nova files uploaded to my test site. Ugh! 😉

 

Oh oh oh! When it comes time to install SMF, is doing it via Softaculous a viable option or would it be better for me to do it manually?

 

Thanks everyone!

Edited July 15, 2018 by Stormwolfe

[Morrigan 1,826]

If you're using the Initiative hosting, yes. Softaculous has 2.0.15 on it and we keep it up to date with Softaculous.