Topic: Forums software

[Bonk]

Just doing a little research.

[Age]

I would get php not just 3.0x but fully modded although it is not easy to install.

[MrCue]

SMF 2.0 is in beta 3 at the moment btw.

[Bonk]

SMF 2.0 is in beta 3 at the moment btw.

I noticed. I completed a test conversion to 1.1.4 two months ago (it took ~36 hours to run). And just completed a test conversion from that to phpbb3 (about 18 hours run time, with complications - beta converter)  So I have not tackled SMF 2.0.x yet. Basically, I'm looking for the general view of our members and staff on SMF vs phpbb.

[MrCue]

36 hours to run the upgrade?
That doesn't sound right, upgrading from 1.1.4 to 2.0 only took me ~15 minutes.

Anyway, SMF 2.0 is quite an improvement over the 1.x line.
Best improvments for me were.

group management, and the ability to give someone(s) rights to add people to a group, previously we had to use a mod for this.
Custom profile fields, which were using to allow users to change some settings.
Ignore boards, this one is great for those that really just aren't interested in reading parts of the forum.
The moderator center, to help our moderators with their tasks.

[Bonk]

36 hours to run the upgrade?
That doesn't sound right, upgrading from 1.1.4 to 2.0 only took me ~15 minutes.

It is not an upgrade from 1.0.12 to 1.1.4, it is a conversion. I imagine an update of my test 1.1.4 install to 2.0 would also take only 15 minutes. So its not just updating the database, it is converting the whole thing. (IIRC - this was 2 months ago) Also, note the IDs on the latest topics and posts here, this goes back to whoever did the original conversion from the Taldren forums. (I suspect that tables were flushed without resetting the autoindex on many conversion attempts or something like that - note also the ~10000 dupes from that original conversion from UBB) I have to edit the schema of any forum we might convert to, to account for these huge IDs (renumbering it would be a monumental task). This also increases conversion time. (often code will loop from 0 to the top ID - assuming contiguous IDs, regardless of how many records are actually present) Our database is about 550MB, with the size increased by the huge IDs and the efficiency of keys and indices dramatically reduced.

See, we currently have 637683 posts, yet the ID of this post is 1122872684 !  That's FOUR ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE in the difference.            etc.  etc. ...  you get the idea of how I feel about that.

group management

Much needed. The interfaces for group permissions in both phpbb and SMF are currently horrific.

Ignore boards, this one is great for those that really just aren't interested in reading parts of the forum.

Excellent. I love that mod.  However I'm reminded of my objection to SMFs approach of absorbing mods instead of writing functionality themselves. It has its advantages and disadvantages.

Currently I'm very disturbed by excessive use of the @ error suppression operator in the phpbb3 codebase. It's seriously turning me off.

[FCM_SFHQ_XC]

against SMF 1.1.x and phpbb 3, I would perfer phpbb3,
if SMF 2.0 has any better usergroup management system then I'd probably switch over my opinion to SMF 2.0 .. the phpbb 3 usergroup forum permission system is great in having just a few forums, but load 20+ forums for that usergroup and your internet explorer (or whatever other clients are out there) then it is very sluggish with so much visual interation taking place 

[Age]

36 hours to run the upgrade?
That doesn't sound right, upgrading from 1.1.4 to 2.0 only took me ~15 minutes.

Anyway, SMF 2.0 is quite an improvement over the 1.x line.
Best improvments for me were.

group management, and the ability to give someone(s) rights to add people to a group, previously we had to use a mod for this.
Custom profile fields, which were using to allow users to change some settings.
Ignore boards, this one is great for those that really just aren't interested in reading parts of the forum.
The moderator center, to help our moderators with their tasks.

Will it finally get a proper shoutbox?