smf 2 a little disappointing

You're comparing apples to oranges here, really. You can't take situations that affect a handful of people and compare them to situations with global affects. Yes, you can build a building (or another structure) in a matter of months, but you can not rewrite code in that amount of time, especially if you're doing it for free. The two are certainly not the same, or even close to it.

 

For no pay?

For free?

With no money?

Again, no pay?

And you did this all out of the generosity of your heart, with no concern for the needs of yourself and your family?

Who, naturally, will work for free.

Now, of course, I could point out that you completely omitted - probably intentionally - the most related portion of the work - the actual engineering. SMF isn't building the ship - it's designing it.

Oh, yes, it could be done better. As a project that is not truly open source, it severely inhibits development - I don't contribute much to it for that reason. Even if it were open source, though, the problems would still remain. You see them in Joomla, you see them in Drupal, you see them in Wordpress, you see them in phpBB, you see it in MyBB (2 years and two months for 1.2 to 1.4).

Sure, pay me $60k and I could put something quite impressive together fairly quickly. But that's because I no longer have other concerns. If you don't pay me enough to push my other needs aside, I need to address those needs. To me, that's rather obvious and straightforward, but hey.

 

There are a lot of SMF Mod that helps to improve the software, you can find them at simplemachines.org -> Customize

 

You can edit the meta tag in SMF 2
As for Recaptcha, I don't think it's a good idea to use a global captcha system. What if it gets hacked? All forum softwares using that particular captcha would be breached.However if you want it, install the mod that implements it
The navigation bar is actually very easy to modify, but you do have to do it manually or via a mod.

Can you point to them? My impression is that people in general are very happy about SMF, not the least because of splendid support feedback.

There's actually a lot of new features with SMF 2. Maybe they just didn't implement the features you wanted :

In the time I used SMF, I never had any problems installing mods, other than that they didn't install in some custom themes. SMF 2 allows to check the installation with other themes and do so if you accept it.
If you had problems with mod installations, it must have been due to other mods being in the way or a corrupted or poor build mod.

 

Although you can't edit the meta description from the admin center, it would not be that difficult to add such a feature and I'm sure there will be a mod for it.

SMF 2.0 RC2 does have the site slogan feature (it will be in Admin -> Configuration -> Current Theme).

You can easily edit the template to remove the site title if you don't want it there...

In addition to what alex@ said about reCaptcha, keep in mind that you need a unique site key in order to use it, which can only be acquired by signing up for said key at recaptcha.net. Therefore, even if we did include support for reCaptcha in a default installation, we couldn't enable it by default.

Also, SMF 2.0 does have improved anti-spam features - there are now 5 complexity levels for the built-in visual verification (SMF 1.1 only has 3), and you can choose to have the user answer any number of verification questions, even randomizing which question the user has to answer.

I'm not sure how editing of the menu could be streamlined any further. In 2.0, you only have to edit a single file to add a new menu item, which will show up in every theme. Previously you had to edit the index.template.php file for each theme that you wanted to add the menu item to.

I'm not sure we can do much about mods messing up PHP files either. All mods are thoroughly checked for problems/potential security issues before they're approved, but we can't test every possible setup, nor can we test for conflicts with other mods.

 

I had to install 2 anti-bot mods because the bots were getting through the verification process.I had to dump the Captcha clock,because it was preventing legitimate registration from happening.I was getting e-mails from real people who could not work with the clock because it was not working properly.

But after installing the SMF anti-bot mods,ALL of the problems vanished.

 

That is no reason not to include ReCaptcha. I have to put gas in my truck every couple of days, but I still drive it. So what if you have to have an extra key? That is a lame excuse.

Spam bots broke the standard capthca codes years ago. Ever since that time forum developers have been slow to provide an effective replacement. When a replacement does come along (recaptcha), the developers look for "reasons" not to include it.

Then there is search engine friendly urls. Wordpress has them, so what is SMFs problem?

Where is the built in sitemap generator?

Where is all of the stuff that quality software should have? Its past time to get with the times people. SMF is not ahead of the technology curve, its not even in the curve - its way, way back there.

At one time SMF was one of the best free forum solutions on the internet. But something has happened and the project has fallen behind.

 

I don't disagree with you in general, but I tend to think that everything has it's ceiling, if you will, specifically at points in time.

Thus,

Do more and do faster for less.

 

So what if recaptcha is cracked? A lot of boards would be wide open. There's a mod that implements recaptcha. I don't use it, it's to hard to read the letters.

SMF supports search engine friendly urls, but Google has claimed it makes no difference to them.

What other features are you missing? I'm not talking about the "Cook a chicken in 5 minutes" -feature, but the features missing in SMF that other forum software has.

 

What if recaptcha is cracked?? lololololol

The old style Captcha was cracked a long time ago!!!!! And boards "are" exposed to spammers right now.

I can not even start to understand the logic with that statement. What "if" recaptcha is cracked,,, but the captcha code that smf uses has already been cracked,,,,,,.

Something is better then nothing. And right now the smf captcha is about as good as nothing. "If" the bots crack recaptcha, I will find another solution at that time.

 

So recaptcha is the only software in the world that can't be broken? Any software can be hacked.

 

Where are you going with this and what is your point?

I did not say recaptcha could not be broken, I was laughing at your statement - "if recaptcha is broken then forums will be at risk".

That is funny, because the classic captcha has already been broken and forums are already at risk.

 

It's me loling. If the captcha of SMF is hacked, then SMF is open. If Recaptcha i hached, then SMF, Google, Facebook and a lot of other software is wide open to hackers.
What's the best solution?!

 

Cars can break down eventually. Don't buy them.

Your life will end eventually, so don't live it to it's fullest.

You're gonna stop working eventually (retirement, layoff, quit, etc), so don't bother working.

 

Yup, SMF 2 is missing such basic features like Paid Subscriptions, WYSIWYG editor, Post Moderation etc. Oh wait, I tell a lie it has these most basic of features which to my knowledge, none of the other free reasonably popular software has...

As for Search engine friendly URL's I think you are missing the point, the main issue isn't the urls themselves, but the duplicated ways of accessing the same content. SMF uses the canonical feature to negate this issue.

 

Technology goes forward and so do forum softwares and their features, why are they staying back in the 60's?

 

You can use anti- bot plug ins and use the admin approval only setting for registration.

I use both with NO CAPTCHA,or reCAPTCHA at all.

 

Me too

Wrong again. They are all in SMF 2. It's amazing so much people thinks they know about SMF, but still they don't.

 

The best solution:

Don't run any forums.

Or only do admin approval. (crap, that's too hard)

:doh:

 

I think you need to slow down since this is the full section Bendo wrote:

:o

SMF has indeed added new features and I knew that MONTHS AGO!