What made you choose SMF?

[Elf_Ears]

Ooh. One last jab at SMF.

I really hate the constant overreliance on IF/ELSE statements. Yes, It's a really easy mistake to make especially if it's only a select group doing the coding and you aren't counting on others touching it (Plus it saves having to write extra error checking code)
But it means something as simple as adding a third option requires massive code changes.

Not sure if this problem has been fixed up but it bit me hard when adding an "Unread notified posts" screen and broke the gender statistics when I added a bunch of stupid joke animal genders.

 

[Pete]

That incidentally has been fixed by moving the gender thing to be a custom field.

Though speaking as one of the ex-devs, how else can you possibly do most of what they do in a meaningful way without if/else, without making everything database tables (which makes everything slower)?

 

[Elf_Ears]

I thought you could just do

IF CONDITION
(code)
IF OTHER CONDITION
(code)
IF NEITHER
error

Admittedly it would probably make the files a little bigger (most likely by a negligable amount) but it would make it so less thinks broke with a single change

(It also makes it a little easier when developing as it clearly lays out what state it is expecting)

 

[Pete]

You mean:

if (condition)
do stuff 1
elseif (condition)
do stuff 2
elseif (other_condition)
do stuff 3
else (condition)
everything else

What, exactly, would you like to see changed? This does increase the time it takes to develop, however because every 'just one little extra test' explodes the number of permutations that need to be tested.

 

[Elf_Ears]

It's hard to explain but I've just seen this irritating to modify style of coding throughout SMF.

Idk man, maybe I'm just ranting and raving and this is how most software is developed.
I haven't really delved into the code of other forum software so I can't really compare.

 

[Pete]

I literally don't understand how it could possibly be any different in practice for anything.

If you already have an if/else, adding an elseif in the middle is trivial.

Either that or I failed to understand what your objection was...?

 

[Bigguy]

I was on phpbb when I started my first site. I tried a few other forum software's I didn't like after that and then found SMF. Everything in SMF was easy for me right off the hop so I stuck with it. Been there 13 years or something. Was on the team but am not anymore. I don't think I'll be going back either. I still like SMF, I think its a good forum software for people.

EDIT: How do I get rid of the SMF Helper Owner under my avatar ??

 

[zappaDPJ]

EDIT: How do I get rid of the SMF Helper Owner under my avatar ??

https://theadminzone.com/account/personal-details

If it's still a problem pm me your preferred title and I'll replace it for you

 

[Bigguy]

I either PM'd you or started a conversation, lol. I'm not sure if they are the same or not.

 

[Pete]

I either PM'd you or started a conversation, lol. I'm not sure if they are the same or not.

In XenForo, PMs are called conversations.

We had a big ol' discussion about this not so long ago, confirming that it does confuse people.

 

[Bigguy]

It is confusing. I haven't been around in a bout a year so I got a bit of catch up to do .

 

[Deprecated]

As for the dev blackmailing... Yeah... Complete ****show I agree. A bunch of important people being kicked off for criticising and trying to remedy the glacial pace of development and criticising the s***ty company structure (and then getting their names removed from the credits just to add insult to injury (although [unknown]'s easter egg was kept)) was terrible. Now it was a few years back and most info is on rickety archives and some people went back to SMF from wedge so I don't feel I have 100% understanding of events but this is what I mean when I said the dev team was toxic. I don't like to use that word because painting a whole group of people with a black and white Nice or A**hole stamp doesn't really reflect reality and from what I've seem most of the time they seem reasonable but I will say that the reputation exists for a reason.

This! This is what I was looking for, but after I answer the topic question:

I don't really know why I chose SMF except it was free. I don't really know why I even wanted a forum or the name/URL of my first forum. I've had dozens since, been on staff at maybe 100 forums (a guess). I got involved in modding SMF and learned the internals that way.

Back in the time I considered vB to be the best paid forum software, SMF second, phpBB third, nothing else worth running.

Now to this: I finally got disgusted with the site when a friend got banned because she had trouble with multi-post and wouldn't do it, and they have a out-of-control mod who deems that multi-posting is required, despite there being no rules that require it, and she got banned.

I pulled my mods and don't visit their site any more unless there's a 2.0 release, and I don't plan on upgrading to 2.1, although some comments I've seen indicate it might not be such an upgrade at all. And the devs have been whining and moaning for years about it.

I'm pretty sure I recognize some of you in this topic. BTW Arantor too has gotten disgusted with SMF's management (mods & devs) and he too seems to have left the site, my last PM to him remains unanswered.

I still run SMF but I am satisfied with 2.0 and I'll just mod anything that needs modding. In effect I branched them out of my life.

 

[Bigguy]

I recognize you from SMF. A lot of good people left there. It's a shame to see.

 

[Deprecated]

Thanks Bigguy. I recognize your avatar from SMF if not the username.

I don't want to carry an agenda from there to here, but they have a serious problem with moderator-member relations, in disrespecting their members and having the hubris that they moderators are gods who deign to help we mere mortals.

What is really a personal shame is that I had 22-24 mods, and I got so annoyed with them I just deleted all my mods from their mod site. I've got another several good mods but nobody at SMF will get to appreciate them, because they mods p i s s e d me off. It's sad that bad forum management caused their users to lose my input. The SMF staff brought this on themselves, and the collateral damage caused their users to be harmed too.

I could still be a contributor of not for their bad mannered staff. From what he told me, Arantor too. I knew him from when he was Lord something...

It's such a shame when the moderators at a software site ruin the member relations despite the efforts of the devs. Yet Arantor told me of the dev battles, and why he left.

Yet who can you blame but management, the top staff, the mods, the devs, when a site drives away the modders like me, and drives away users like my friend (who herself wrote a few mods that impressed me!). She and I got together and started a political discussion forum. We got the mods and the SMF community don't.

The SMF community suffers because of bad management of their community site, by driving away developers, modders, and their community members. I don't see it as germane to discuss the quality of their software.

I joined this site to discuss forum administration in general. I already said I forked myself off from SMF and I won't be following their main branch in the future. I'm not going to update my and my partner's about 30 mods now to comply with 2.1. Not happening. Just like the 1.x release. Gad, PPL still running 1.x.

 

[Pete]

From what he told me, Arantor too. I knew him from when he was Lord something...

I have had many names, but Arantor is the usual one most people know me as.

I've relayed some of the battles that have been fought here, just because I think people have a right to know, but after the 2.0.14 I stopped having any faith in them any more so I ended up forking and putting in all the things I wanted to do, but it's not a general purpose forum software.

As far as I'm concerned, it is entirely self-made misery, and day by day it is compounded by people who strut around, puffing their chests out and shouting down any chance of doing anything interesting. I know I could be obtuse at times but all ideas were welcome, all ideas had some merit even if I believed some ideas weren't appropriate for a given direction of the core package.

2.1 is coming up for 7 years and still no RC and last I checked they were still putting in things that were improvements rather than bug fixes and moving to a final.

 

[Deprecated]

I just gotta laugh! We who know, we know way too much. So much that you and I both decided to go fork ourselves!

I'm staying with 2.0.15 as long as there is a 2.0.16 etc. When they quit updating the 2.0.* line that's when I go play with my fork and they can release 2.1 and claim it is somehow better. With all the continuing dev battles I don't see how that can happen. Oh, they'll release something. I'm not even going to bother to test drive it.

I know for sure I'd have to rewrite many of my mods, and I'm not going to waste the labor for perfectly good mods.

Add that as counterpoint to perfectly bad mods, mods in this case being their moderators. What a bunch of bloated, egotistical bunch they are, although I'm sure there are good mods too. It's just that the bad mods are so bad they outweigh the good ones.


And then there is this: Their bloated monster of a mother site cannot handle Outlook email addresses, or at least fails many of them.

 

[Pete]

You assume Outlook isn't the problem, it is a huge headache getting email to Outlook (source: up until last year I did corporate communications tools including newsletters, and managing literal millions of emails a month was challenging, but none more than Outlook)

2.1 has more features than 2.0 does. It has better compatibility for the most part, since 2.0 is never going to be properly updated for PHP 7.2 because it's not really feasible (every bbcode mod in existence also needs updating at the same time)

Assuming it ever releases.

I forked from 2.1 then did a ton of work on it, not least replacing literally every template with something like Handlebars templates, before adding my custom shenanigans to it. Lots more still to do but I still reckon I'm ahead of them. I even started writing unit tests!

 

[Deprecated]

Actually I think Outlook IS the problem. They're just damned difficult to convince you are not spam. I'm concerned that Outlook may be a problem for my SMF 2.0 too. I've identified a very inexpensive mail hosting service if I too encounter problems with some domains not accepting my emails. Gmail finally accepts me as real. As I said I operate my own mail server, got the cert from Let's Encrypt. I should test it by joining as a new member and using an Outlook email to check it out. — I would think a big, fancy, expensive SSL cert would get SMF accepted, but I'm fine with free certs.

I'm running Debian Jessie with PHP 5.6.30. One of the reasons I got my own server was to have full control of the server config. I don't know what the lasted PHP 2.0 can work with. In a way I'm kind of boxed in, can't really upgrade my OS without baking up everything. I could upgrade my PHP though.

"Assuming it ever releases." /me chortles!

I am thinking of dressing up my forum with a theme, or more likely just mod curve. Or portalize my forum.

 

[Pete]

Yup, so don't bash simplemachines.org because Outlook's the problem. It's not that it's a problem for the software - because it's not. It's a problem in general with Outlook.

Having a cert on your web server does squat for your email reputation. Having your mail server configured properly does more, especially if you go down the road of SPF/DKIM/DMARC and registering for the SNDS and JMRP stuff that Outlook has set up. And even then I guarantee it will be an uphill battle.

Regarding PHP 5.6, it's only got security support until end of the year. I'd be looking at going to 7.1 ASAP.

 

[Deprecated]

At least it will be no big deal to upgrade my PHP, as long as Debian Jessie supports the later versions. If not then I guess I've got a problem. It's a good thing I'm not running an image host any more. I could probably download all my content in maybe 36 hours and image the whole HDD. The biggest problem would be my upload speed, but my public content is a small fraction of whatever space I use and I could have my public sites up relatively quickly. I doubt if I'm using 5% of my 2TB HDD.

I still think the SMF server ops should make peace with Outlook. Personally I think Outlook is horrible (because MSFT owns it) but gotta deal with it if you run a large forum, let alone a corporate site. I have a bookmark on my desktop for a bulk email host that is really cheap for small volume users (like me) and if I get faced with the Outlook problem I'll just port my forum mail over and pay a couple bucks/quid monthly for their service. It's chump change until you get into large volumes and I doubt my forum will ever be big enough to matter.

I wonder if this is the last time I'll say this is my last forum.