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Simple Machines Forum

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Simple Machines Forum, or SMF, is an internet forum script written and supported by Simple Machines. This script is free to download and use, but the license does not permit removal of the copyright notice or redistribution of modified versions.

Latest releases

Note: 1.1 Beta 4 is a Charter Members release only. 1.1 Beta 4 will probably be the last beta release before 1.1 becomes the release candidate stage.

History

SMF was created to replace the well known forum software YaBB SE, which at the time was getting a bad reputation due to problems with the Perl based and similarly named software YaBB. YaBB was known to cause resource allocation problems and was resource heavy on many systems, in its earlier versions. YaBB SE, written as a rough PHP port of YaBB, tended to have many of the same resource and even security problems.

Originally, SMF started as a small project by Unknown W. Brackets, one of the developers of YaBB SE, to add more advanced templating to YaBB SE. This project slowly grew to address many common feature requests, efficiency problems, and security concerns. At that time, a YaBB SE 2.0 project had been in development for several years, but when this new project (which was called that developer's "secret project") became more popular, it was decided to use it as the next official version instead. This new interest sparked a complete rewrite of the code, with security and performance in mind.

Localisation

SMF is available in over 20 languages, including Swedish, Catalan, Persian, Chinese, Finnish, Greek, Turkish, Portuguese, French, English, Dutch, Spanish, German, Hungarian, Hebrew, Bulgarian, Italian, Thai, Polish, and Norwegian. It can be easily translated to unavailable languages if volunteers are willing.

Modifications

SMF has a modification base repository for free modification hosting and tracking via the Simple Machines main site. Many modifications, or mods as they are usually called, have been created and distributed for free on this site, including and arcade, profile additions, message approval, zodiac, and many more with RPG mods in production.

The package manager included in SMF has often been named one of its best features. It allows you to install these modifications (and updates to SMF) with usually only a few mouse clicks.

Support

Simple Machines has a team of support specialists that supports its users for free. The developers are also at hand to deal with some of the most tricky support requests, also offering advice to the best and most optimised settings that SMF can run at and how to deal with high loads more efficiently.

Other divisions of the Simple Machines team include a graphics team whose job it is to improve the look of the software, a documentation team which makes sure every SMF feature is explained in great detail, a mod team that works on making modification development easier, a language team to make sure the translation process is co-ordinated and efficient, and finally a project management team to oversee the entire project and make sure things run smoothly and to plan.

Charter Members

People who wish to support Simple Machines for a yearly fee of $50.00 USD are rewarded with a Charter Member only section on the forum, advanced beta versions to test before they go public. Advanced support for SMF including installation and upgrades by the staff is also provided.

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