Simple Machines Forum
| Simple Machines Forum
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| Basic data
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| developer | SMF team |
| Current version |
2.0.17 ( December 30, 2019 ) |
| Current preliminary version | 2.1 RC 2 (March 30, 2019) |
| operating system | platform independent |
| programming language | PHP |
| category | Internet forum |
| License | BSD version 2.0 or higher, previously proprietary |
| German speaking | Yes |
| simplemachines.org | |
Simple Machines Forum or SMF for short is free software for running Internet forums . It is based on the PHP scripting language and the MySQL database .
Simple Machines Forum not only has industry-standard features, such as its own template system and support for file attachments, but also a simple package manager for importing modifications and integration options into content management systems . In addition, thanks to the many language packages and UTF-8 support, several languages can be used simultaneously for a forum instance without any complications.
Advice and support with technical problems can be obtained in the SMF's own web forum. Alternatively, as with some open source projects, there is also official, but fee-based support . This is done by upgrading your own forum account to a "charter member", which costs 50 US dollars. In addition to support, this membership also offers help from technicians with installation and updating as well as its own beta versions .
history
YaBB was one of the first bulletin boards worldwide, which was developed in 2000 by Zef Hemel, Jeff Lewis, Corey Chapman and Matt Mechamin using the scripting language Perl . However, YaBB was not particularly successful at the beginning due to a few program errors that were later corrected by means of bug fixes in the form of patches .
In 2001 the PHP and MySQL based bulletin board YaBB SE was developed as a spin-off from YaBB ; most of the YaBB source code was ported. In 2003, the developers of YaBB SE began programming the forum from scratch, including to rebuild the design and improve performance and security. After confusion between YaBB and YaBB SE because of the similar names, the developers chose the name Simple Machines Forum .
In 2004, the first beta version of SMF came out, soon later version 1.0. In early 2005, the beta version and release candidates for version 1.1 were published. The published 2 December 2006 at final version 1.1 improved among others, the search function and introduced a preview image ( thumbnail ) and support a mobile device.
On April 8, 2007, the new version 2.0 was officially announced. A public beta version was released on March 17th, 2008, the first release candidate on February 4th, 2009. This new major version brings several new features with it, such as the ability to warn users, create groups and join them. Other new functions are a WYSIWYG editor, OpenID for user management and support for PostgreSQL as a database.
The second release candidate was published on November 8, 2009 . This contains bug fixes ( e.g. in OpenID ), measures to increase performance and some new functions. After three further release candidates, the final version 2.0 was finally released on June 11, 2011. This version replaced its own license terms with the BSD license . The source code could already be viewed and modified beforehand, but there were additional requirements for passing it on.
Web links
- Official website (English)
credentials
- ^ Article about the release of version 2.1 RC 2
- ↑ Licenses for current and previous versions
- ↑ Information on "Charter Members"
- ↑ Announcement of Version 2 (English)
- ^ Article about the release of Version 2.0 Beta 3
- ↑ Contribution to the release of version 2.0 RC1
- ^ Article about the release of version 2.0 RC2
- ^ Article about the release of Version 2.0 Final