Simple Machines Forum
Simple Machines Forum, or SMF short is a free software (freeware ) to create web - based forums in the style of bulletin boards. It is based on the PHP scripting language and the MySQL database.
Simple Machines Forum has not only industry-standard features such as a custom template system, and support for file attachments, but also a simple package manager for the import of modifications and integrations in content management systems. In addition, several languages can be used for instance forums by many language and UTF -8 support without complications at the same time.
Advice and assistance with technical problems can be obtained in SMF own web forum. Alternatively, there is an official, but paid support as in many open source projects. This is done through appreciation of their own forums account to a " Charter Member ", which costs U.S. $ 50. In addition to support this membership also provides relief by technicians installing and updating as well as its own beta versions.
History
YaBB was one of the first bulletin boards, which was written in the Perl scripting language and was developed in 2000, among other things Zef Hemel, Jeff Lewis, Corey Chapman and Matt Mecham world. However YaBB was initially not very successful due to some bugs that were corrected later by means of bug fixes in the form of patches. In 2001, the PHP and MySQL based bulletin board YaBB SE was parallel to, or removed by YaBB developed; while most of the YaBB source code has been ported.
In 2003, the developers of YaBB SE have decided to program the forum from scratch, among other things, the design of new build and to improve the performance and safety. After it came the part of the end-user confusion between YaBB and YaBB SE due to the very similar naming, it was decided, as part of the redevelopment of the forum to choose the name Simple Machines Forum.
In 2004 came the first beta version of SMF, soon later it is version 1.0. In early 2005 beta and release candidate of version 1.1 were then published. In the published 2 December 2006 final version 1.1, among others, the search function has been improved and a preview image ( thumbnail ) and introduced support for mobile devices.
On 8 April 2007, the new version 2.0 has been officially announced. A public beta version was released on March 17, 2008. The first release candidate was released on February 4, 2009. This major new version brings several new features are released, such as the ability to warn users to create groups and join them. Other new features include a WYSIWYG editor, OpenID for user management and support for PostgreSQL as the database. On 8 November 2009, the second release candidate has been released. This includes various bug fixes (including in OpenID ), measures to increase the performance and some new features. After three more release candidates finally released the final version 2.0 was released on 11 June 2011. This version has been changed from its own to BSD license used previously. The source code could be viewed and modified previously, but for passing were additional requirements.