Andrew Wrote:
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> Anyway, a short question for everyone: Again, I
> am thinking about changing from the present
> message board (Phorum) to something else.
> vBulletin is probably the best paid for, but I
> keep looking at SMF. I know that Gerry runs SMF
> over at SciFilm.org and that message board has
> matured a lot. The newest release even has
> converters for Phorum, so all the old posts could
> be carried over.
I think you are going to get a log of 'if it ain't broke' or 'I like this forum' responses. For my $0.02, I vote for whatever YOU find easiest to maintain.
I'm not familiar with VBulletin, but I host a SMF forum and mod on another. It is pretty easy to admin. Would you divide the board up into different sub-forums like most 'modern' message boards, or keep it consolidated as one monolithic discussion area?
One nice thing about SMF (and I would guess the others as well) is that you can assign user groups and make different boards visible only to certain groups/users, etc. This is handy for having a Mod-only area, a Member-only area and Public Area. SMF allows moving threads or merging theads pretty easily, so your mods can keep info where it is supposed to be.
SMF does offer "post counts" and "Karma" (though I don't think you HAVE to use either). Like this current board, there are Private Message features. There are also polls and other niceties. I've only got experience with SMF and phpBB2, and I like SMF MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better.
If anyone would like to take a look at another SMF board to see it in action:
SailFar - Small Boats, Long Distances Actually, there are a BUNCH of SMF boards on the 'Net, and it is very well supported.
>
> What has been eating some of my time lately is
> doing coding for Phorum to get all the tweaks
> right and make it more user friendly. Honestly, I
> would rather be writing reviews.
See my above comment about supporting any move that lowers your effort in maintaining this GREAT site.
> The newest release of SMF also supports letting
> guests submit replies if they solve a CAPTCHA (the
> "what does this say" or "solve a math problem"
> question).
FYI, here's an article you might want to read:
SANS Internet Storm Center - Reducing Forum Spam without Captchas that was just out this week. There might be some ideas in there worth trying.