Simple Machines Review - General Features & Requirements

Wed March 3, 2010 00:23 |
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Web Site: http://simplemachines.org/
Download here: Download Simple Machines
Community Forum: Support
Released under: Custom License.
Current version: 1.1.1 (December 01, 2009).
Sponsored By: Lewis Media.
Price: Free.

From Simple Machines web site:

Simple Machines Forum - SMF in short - is a free, professional grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes.

Its powerful custom made template engine puts you in full control of the lay-out of your forum and with our unique SSI - or Server Side Includes - function you can let your forum and your website interact with each other. SMF is written in the popular language PHP and uses a MySQL database.

It is designed to provide you with all the features you need while having an absolute minimal impact on the resources of the server. SMF is the next generation of forum software, and best of all it is and will always remain completely free!

Please note that Simple Machines Forum was also known as YaBB SE which was initially a PHP port of YaBB Forum (originally in Perl).

Review Updates

Server & Clients Requirements

Server Requirements
Operating Systems
Systems supporting this software.
  • Linux
  • Windows Server 2003
  • Windows XP
  • Solaris
  • FreeBSD
  • OpenBSD
  • NetBSD
  • Windows Server 2008
  • Mac OS
Web Server Details
Web servers host the forum software.
  • Apache 1.3
  • Apache 2.0/2.2
  • Microsoft IIS
  • Lighttpd
  • Nginx
Languages Details
Development language.
  • PHP 4
  • PHP 5
Databases Details
Systems that store forum datas.
  • MySQL
Browsers & Clients Requirements
Compatible Browsers Details
List of compatible browsers.
  • All
Required Plugins/Technologies Details
What the user needs exactly to use this forum correctly.
  • HTML and Javascript
Localization Details
Languages supported by Simple Machines.
Yes Yes.
  • Albanian
  • Arabic
  • Bangla
  • Bulgarian
  • Catalan
  • Chinese Simplified
  • Chinese Traditional
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • English British
  • Finnish
  • French
  • Galician
  • German
  • German Informal
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Indonesian
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Kurdish Kurmanji
  • Kurdish Sorani
  • Macedonian
  • Malay
  • Norwegian
  • Persian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese Brazilian
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Serbian Cyrillic
  • Serbian Latin
  • Slovak
  • Spanish
  • Spanish Latin
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Urdu
  • Uzbek latin
  • Vietnamese

The full list is available at SMF Language Packs page.

This software is a classical PHP/MySQL Bulletin Board.

It will be installed easily in most dedicated servers and website hosting solutions, Linux distributions and even EasyPHP installation.

Forum Threads & Posts

Forum Threads
Forum Style
General appearance of the topics.
Flat
Social Networks
Users can share information from their social network account...
Thread Icons
An icon that identifies the type of a topic.
Yes Yes
Forum Organization
Organize your forum with categories, sections,...
  • Forum Categories
  • URL Redirection Forum
  • Sub Sections
Sticky Threads
Sticky threads stay at top of a section or a forum.
Yes Yes
Spell Checking
Posts and topics are spelled checked with a dictionary.
Unknown Unknown
Detect Duplicate Threads
Duplicate Threads are detected before creation.
No No
Shadow Topics
Some topics are only accessible to a limited list of users.
Yes Yes
Posts
Post Editing Form Details
Details about the manner to post messages.
  • Formatting Buttons
  • Preview Button
 Emoticons Details Yes Yes
Post Editing Format Details
Markup Language (HTML, Wiki, BBCode,...).
  • HTML
  • BBCode
 Attachments Details
Attach files (screenshot, archive,...) with a post.
Yes Yes
Post Quoting
Quoting a post helps readers understand who answers who.
Yes Yes Syntax Highlighting
Posted Source Code is formatted using colors.
Plugin Plugin
Post Rating
Users can rate the quality of other users posts.
Yes Yes

Note that several plugins exist to plug Social Networks into Simple Machines:

More information on SMF Social Modifications page.

Key Features & Additional Tools

Key Features
Bundled Softwares
Softwares that are also available with the forum.
  • Portal
 Users List Details
List of all user accounts, to helps users searching their friends.
Yes Yes
Private Messages Details
Users can communicate using an internal messaging system.
Yes Yes Online Users List
List of actually connected users, in the forum home page, a dedicated topic,...
Yes Yes
Instant Messaging Details
Communicate in the forum like in other IM (Yahoo Messenger, Live Messenger, Google Talk,...)
No No Quick Reply Box
Write a post directly from the topic page.
Yes Yes
Calendar Details Yes Yes Remote Control Details
Remote control from external softwares or websites.
No.
Poll Creation Details Yes Yes Friendly URLs
URLs are as short and simple as possible (for better copy/paste and share).
Yes Yes
RSS/Atom Syndication Details
New posts and threads available using aggregators Syndicate
RSS 2.0

Plugins in the Simple Machines syntax are called packages or mods. You can view an interesting list of them here :
Mods List.

Themes are also available in the official website, even if it's not the only way to get additional themes :
Themes List.

You can find in Simple Machines all classical bulletin boards features, like poll creation, user profile, etc...

The security and access rules are quite powerful because administrators can easily group users to prevent them accessing private forum places.

About bundled software, please note that a portal management could be added with the SimplePortal modification. You should consult the SimplePortal website if you are interesting in such feature for your forum.

 
 
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