SMF is wonderful, and I've had great times moderating/adminning on SMF forums.
It's easy to use, for both regular members and mods, and the admin CP is well thought out. It's also got plenty of plugins, for basically anything you'd ever want in a forum.
Obviously some paid software excels in certain factors, but all around I would say SMF is without doubt the best free option for forum software.
EDIT:
' Wrote:From a user standpoint, what we have is great.
Half of the editor doesn't work in certain browsers.
I'm use IPB for the years on my project, and I must say it's one of best boards ever. Yeah, problem is IPS changed policy and for now everything is can be only get by cash.
Regarding free boards, I had for some experience with phpBB. Yeah, it's looking not cool as IPB does - but that just template, which is alot of free templates. And code is fine.
(10-09-2013, 10:51 AM)Knjaz Wrote: Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)
' Wrote:Just effin' transfer threads and current forum themes somehow Q_Q
I couldn't stand new things pfft.
' Wrote:What would be the reason for such big effort?
The current version of the board is an incredibly old version. It hasn't been updated in ages and the IPB no longer support it with plugin updates, panel updates and security updates. Aka, our current boards have more holes than Swiss cheese.
I also don't understand some people here, really. Crying about losing the current themes (which are incredibly dull and old anyway) at the cost of more security and better functionality. Like... what? You really need to set some priorities straight. Even if you donate enough money and upgrade to the newer version of IPB, it wont have these themes anyway, since they're incredibly old themes.
I agree with Daedric and Bob. SMF or MyBB are probably the best choice (from the free ones anyway).
My point is rather saving the tons of work that is needed to be done for board change. It is really pain in the a""
to change forum platform- takes a lot of time and there are tons of unexpected problems. I personally prefer Cannon and Dev team to put their efforts in fixing the issues of the mod. Forums are secondary all the way.
If this board have security issues then better to rise capital from donations of the board users to update it to the newest version. You need 10-12 people to give 10-15'¬ to update anyway I guess it is possible to rise such capital. My view is more practical one because shiny things as skins and similar are not important- after all the forum have support function for the game it is secondary- I was involved in changing the old platform to new platform in other big community-it was messy.
(10-09-2013, 10:51 AM)Knjaz Wrote: Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)