Note: This post was originally posted here.
The day many of you have been waiting for is finally here! Congratulations!
SMF 2.0 is available to the public, in beta form. While I personally feel it is really quite stable for a beta product, I would advise everyone to be very careful about using it. At this point the official advisory of the SMF Team is that it is not recommended to use on a production site. That being said, I know many of you will jump the gun and upgrade your production sites to use it. I would strongly recommend that those who want to use it to first install a carbon copy of your forum, upgrade that forum, and play with the forum to see if there aren't too many problems running it. What I mean by this is creating a copy of your 1.1 SMF database tables and perhaps copying them over to a separate database (so you don't have to worry about changing the prefix of your tables).
One major disadvantage to upgrading as this point is that you will lose any customizations and mods that your forum has. The majority of the mods have not been upgraded to be compatible with 2.0. Many mod authors will upgrade their mods in due time, perhaps shortly after they themselves get to use 2.0 for the first time. Other mod authors will wait until 2.0 hits a final state, that is, they will wait until 2.0 is no longer classified as either a beta or release candidate product before they update their mods. There is logic behind those that do this. One, there is the potential for a number of changes that could take place between any beta or release candidate release. This could create an overhaul requiring constantly updating the mod to be compatible with each release of 2.0. As well, some mod authors may recognize that 2.0 as a beta product really should not be used by anyone other than those testing the product for bugs. Some may view updating their mods as providing more encouragement for users to upgrade to 2.0, when they personally feel people should not be doing so just yet.
What will I be doing with my mods? I will probably update them to work for Beta 3. I will hope that I won't have to make significant changes for them to be later compatible for Beta 4, RC1, and etc, but if that is the case, I will accept the fact. I do know I have one mod that is now a built in feature of SMF 2.0, so that mod will be discontinued.
So what excites me most about 2.0 personally? Some users have been a bit critical about 2.0 not introducing too many new features to the regular users of SMF forums (the non-administrators). While 2.0 is admittedly more of an update for admins, there still are many features that have been added for the convenience of the users that use SMF powered forums.
Some of the new user features include:
- WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) post form - What does this mean? Most people are familiar with word processing applications such as Microsoft Word. This is similar to that, when you format text you get to see the text actually change in the post form.
- Personal Message Rules - Think of this sort of like an email filter system. When an incoming personal message sent to you meets a specific criteria that you set, you can either apply a label to the personal message or delete it altogether. So for instance if you wanted you could have any personal message sent by a member in the group "Administrator" with somewhere in the subject the text "[Important]" to be applied a special label.
- More Personal Message Display Options - In previous versions of SMF you could only view personal messages in an anchor like system where a list with the subjects of the personal messages would appear at the top and then clicking on one of the subjects would anchor you down the page to the corresponding personal message on that same page. All personal messages would appear on the same page. This option still exists, but now you can view personal messages one at a time, as well as in a conversation format, where replies made to a personal messages can be shown together.
- Custom Profile Fields - This sort of ties in between being an admin enhancement and a user enhancement. The admin can create custom profile fields that the user can fill out. This allows users to give out additional information about what type of person they are.
- Calendar Visual Improvements - The forum calendar now shows mini-calendars on the side of the main calendar for the month you are viewing. In total 3 miniature calendars are shown. One for the current month you are viewing, one for the month before that month, and one for the month after.
- Viewing a member's posts, topics and attachments - In previous versions of SMF you could only view a list of all the posts a member has made. SMF 2 takes this a step further, allowing you to view a list of the topics started by the member (not the replies made to topics), as well as a list of attachments the member has added to their posts. All of these lists can be viewed by going to a member's profile.
- Configure how many posts to show per page - What used to be a global forum wide admin setting can now be individually configured by the user. The user can select in their Look and Layout section of their profile from a list of numbers for how many posts to show per page inside a topic as well as a separate setting for how many posts to show per page when viewing the listing of topics made inside a board. As a side note, I personally made a mod that did essentially the same thing for 1.1 which I am very pleased to not have to update for 2.0.
- Notification digest - Previously you could only get notified of replies to topics you subscribed to either; instantly, that is, immediately as the reply was made, or instantly but only for the first reply made. SMF 2.0 adds two new options into the mix, which are getting notified of all topics you are subscribed to in a daily manner, as well as an option to only be notified weekly instead.
As for administrator features that were added, there are just so many. I will mainly mention some of my personal favorites:
- Admin Settings Search - There is now a search field for searching for admin settings. This expands to also being able to search the documents on the Online Manual.
- Custom Profile Fields - As mentioned above. It is possible to have the fields show up on registration, inside of topics next to the member's posts. Each individual field can be shown only to admins if desired.
- Moderation Center/Post Approval/Warning System - You can now setup certain boards to be post moderated; that is, members have to wait for a moderator to approve their post before the general public can actually see the post. This is accompanied nicely with a moderation center, which will show the posts awaiting approval. Members can also now be warned. Depended on their warning level they may be just added to a watchlist, or may be post moderated for all their posts, or even post banned. The warning system can be configured so a certain number of warning points for a member decreases each day to a point where they would eventually return to a normal member state automatically. This can however be set to be done completely manually if desired. The moderation center will also show a list of these warned members as well as show information such as the warning message sent to the member (if one was sent). Additionally the moderation center will show reported posts, the moderation log (previously only available in the admin center), and group requests (explained next).
- Joinable Groups - Admins can now setup groups that members can join by one of the following methods; the member is able to join the group automatically, or the member can request to be in the group, or the group is not requestable but a member selected as the moderator of the group is able to add members to it.
- Scheduled Tasks/Mail Queue - Certain tasks for the backend of your forum can now be configured to occur during scheduled parts of the day. There is also a mail queue to help soften the server strain for forums with many members that want to email their members.
- Permission Profiles/Group Inheritance - This one is not that easy to explain quickly. Basically each forum has a permission profile selected for it to use. A permission profile is a profile created of permissions for each membergroup of your forum. This greatly simplifies the permission process by making it much easier to assign common permissions sets (profiles) to multiple boards that can share the same permissions. Basically before "Global" was pretty much the only permission set you could assign to multiple boards. To accompany this, you can now have a group's permissions completely inherited from another group.
A Personal Special Thanks
I would like to take this moment now to thank everyone who has helped make SMF what it is today. When I discovered SMF back in 2004 my life was dull so to speak in many regards, I didn't have much of a social life, didn't have too many friends. I quickly however was embraced by the people of the SMF community, from team members and non-team members alike. When I became an SMF Team Member in 2005, for the first time I felt like I was a part of something that felt real to me, accepted into an entirely new family. I have built an even stronger bond after getting to personally meet many of the team members behind the project in Arizona a few months ago. Today I feel my social life in many senses is coming together, but I will never forget what SMF has done for me, and I will always appreciate it.
This is my thanks to SMF.
It really does put a tear in my eye to see how much this project has matured and developed since I became a part of it years ago. And I am filled with nothing but excitement for the future of the project. I know I will unlikely be able to remain on the SMF Team forever, but I have the utmost confidence this project will be able to move on without me when my time finally does have to come to an end.
To the Developers
Yes, I admit I have always had a desire to become a developer for this software someday. Well, for quite some time at least. I am beyond fascinated by the level of commitment that the development team brings to the project. They are all incredibly talented in coding and most possess an extraordinary amount of patience to keep the flow of development steady. At times it is hard to do it, but you all come through time and time again to deliver a secure and stable product that 1000s of people from all around the world get to use and enjoy. Be proud.
To Support
The community is growing at an alarming rate. Yet the script we have that let's us find support posts that still need attention always seems to have a relatively small and stable number of topics. The ability to keep up with this demand is incredible and you all deserve to be proud of what you have accomplished. The work can be tedious and feel unappreciated, but always remember all these "users" you are helping are actual human beings and what you do for them actually does put a smile on their face, and many people couldn't have gotten very far without you guys.
To Project Management
Coordinating the entire team to work together, I personally know can be a very difficult and at times frustrating task. But yet you really are ultimately successfully at managing this project and the team behind it. You make many of the tough decisions that we put you in power to make because we firmly trust you that your judgement will be the right thing for the project. You all deserve a pat on the back for the often hard and behind the scenes work you put into SMF day after day.
To Marketing
Your job require immense creativity and smarts in order to effectively get your job done. I have always been fascinated by the ability of pushing this project forward you guys have in promoting SMF and trying to present the most positive image for this project as possible. One thing I love is that you do not try to use dirty tricks for our own advantage. You guys respect our competition immensely and do not try put harsh words at any of our competition just to get people to use SMF.
To the Customizers
Your themes and mods are amazing! The work you put into approving themes and mods is also very impressive. The support you do for the community is also very helpful. Your job requires many different tasks that can get overwhelming at times, yet you all always seem to hold it together.
To the Documentation Writers
Well, this is my area.
But I will thank those past and present who have helped write documentation for SMF. Documentation in my opinion is crucial to any project, and can serve as the most effective tool for supporting a project. If more and more people read documentation, it would cut down on the number of support questions asked by a whole lot.-John Thorsen, more commonly known as Jack Thorsen, or even "Buggy".
