The Web Hosting Blog of Host Color

So far on Mary’s Corner we’ve started looking at how to build a website on your Host Color account, and we’ve specifically looked at how to do this using the MODx CMS. However, what if  instead of building a content based website you want to build a user forum for people to gather and discuss different things. You may be interested in creating a user forum to discuss your hobby, or for your favorite band, or anything really. You can do this on HostColor using one of several different scripts. We will start with the Simple Machines Forum (SMF) script and walk through the process installing and setting up a forum using SMF.

What is SMF?

SMF is a free, professional and powerful software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes. SMF is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database, both of which are available on your Host Color account.  According to the official website

SMF is designed to provide you with all the features you need from a bulletin board while having an absolute minimal impact on the resources of the server. SMF is the next generation of forum software - and best of all it is and will always remain completely free!

Doesn’t that sound good?

Benefits to Using SMF

• Cost: The one and biggest benefit ofcourse is that SMF is free and will always remain free.
• Maturity:  SMF has been around for a while  and is a mature system with a dedicated development team, so you know it’s going to continue to be around for a long time to come.
• Customizing: The SMF community is always actively developing and adding new mods to allow you to extend and expand the functionality of your forum. In addition, you can install different themes to give your forum a unique look, or you can create your own theme.
• CMS Bridges: There are several bridges available that will allow you to connect your SMF site to different CMSs.
• Support: SMF has a very active and helpful community and the use r forums are a great place to get your questions answered and to learn how to use SMF. In addition, the website has a detailed FAQ as well as a user manual.

What do you need to run SMF?

The system requirements for installing and running a SMF forum are outlined on the official website and you can read through them to familiarize yourself with them. However, if you have a Host Color hosting account you can be assured that SMF will install and run just fine on your account

What do you need to know?

You don’t really need to know much to start working with SMF. The very basic knowledge that you should have is:

1. How to upload files to your hosting account
2. How to create a MySQL database on your account

Armed with this information, you can start installing, exploring, and working with SMF to build online forums and communities. As you build your knowledge and want to customize and do more interesting and complex things with your forum/community, you may find it useful to get some knowledge of PHP, HTML/CSS, etc. But just to start out, having the two pieces of knowledge stated above is all you need.

Any Examples?

Yes, quite a few actually :)  Below are forums that are powered by SMF, to give you an idea of what’s possible:

1. Piano Street Forums

2. SolarVPS Forums

3. PortaMX (an example of an SMF forum extended with a portal)

And I could add more and more examples!  You can peruse through more examples at the Showcase on the SMF forums.

What Next?

Now that we’ve gone over an introduction of SMF, the next step ofcourse is to learn how to get SMF, how to install and configure it on our Host Color account, and then move on to building our first user forum using SMF. We will be covering this in upcoming tutorials on Mary’s Corner, so stay tuned. But before then, I encourage you to take some time to:

1. Come up with an idea of a forum/community you want to build for practice. You can do this build this online or even on your own local development environment. It doesn’t have to be an idea that you’re committing to, but having a project in mind helps you as you work through tutorials and motivates you to learn and apply the concepts and ideas you’re reading about.
2. Read through the SMF Feature List to see all the things that are available to you with SMF.
3. Take some time to read through the SMF License and Copyright information as this will be useful to you when determining your way forward in terms of what you can and cannot do with the logo, the copyright information, distribution etc.

In the next installment on SMF, we will go through the process of obtaining and installing SMF onto your Host Color account. COnsider signing up for SMF Hosting plan. It is ready for SMF. You might also use the forum with CMS Hosting, Social Web Hosting, E-Commerce Hosting and Multi Domain Hosting plans. If you have a popualr discussion board based on SMF, review our Virtual Private Servers.

About Mary:
I am a part time web developer and full time web enthusiast who is very committed to open source technologies and promoting their potential for use across the web. Some of the technologies that I am involved in are MODx CMS and Drupal. I am also a fan of Wordpress, SMF, phpBB, and any and all open source endeavors. I enjoy learning new things and teaching people what I know in ways that are simple (I hope) to understand. You can find me on the Host Color Forums (username is mary), at my blog (The Coding Pad) or follow me on twitter (@einsteinsboi).