I almost thought I stumbled upon some random website forum. HOW DARE YOU MESS WITH MY FRAGILE BRAIN!
*Drums fingers together evilly*
Excellent...
Smithers! Release the hounds!
looks spiffy to me. i like how wider avatars get scrolled now. XD
SMF is a VERY nice forum software, I switched over to it about two months ago from YaBB for my WoW guild (which I no longer play but still host their site, not on my Xepher acct). The default smilies kinda suck though, so I created a smiley pack using YaBB's since they were better. ::)
I think it looks nice. I should suggest this to another forum group because they're not happy with phpBB right now and they might like this.
The thing seems to be a lot easier to admin too. I went to unstick a topic, and the button was just right there in the thread where I'd expect it. Before, I had to reedit my original post. I'm also liking the "new" marks. Rather than just marking stuff that's been posted since my last visit, it keeps things marked new until I actually read them or mark them read. Great if I get interrupted halfway through reading the forums. Before, if I left for more than 15 minutes, I had to guess what topics I hadn't read. Not that hard, but still, me like this better. :-)
The only thing I dislike is that it has no feature for a global announcement, which you've gotta mod in separately. That seems like something that should be core standard if you ask me. Aside from that, you can build an entire site from SMF. You can literally set each forum with a custom view, AND this forum supports forum nesting. So you can make the front page use it's own little template (front page of your site), and every sub forum use it's own template, and hell even have a sub forum actually be your "forums" for the site.
It's pretty hot.
What do you mean by "global announcement?" At the top of every page is "News: New Forums! Woot! Let me know if you have problems." It's also in extra big letters and it's own box on the main forum index. I didn't mod anything either.
News is different than a topic stickied to the top of every forum (without needing to duplicate it). You can't place an entire set of forum rules or anything in the small news area, but you can place it in a global post (announcement).
Okay, I misunderstood what you meant by announcement. "Global Post" makes things clearer. I would personally just make the news item a link to the post with the rules or whatnot in it. The idea of one post going across different boards breaks the paradigm in my head for forums, which is a strictly hierarchal structure. Then again, I learned net etiquette from things like the following usenet haiku. :-)
Take it somewhere else
This thread does not belong here
Death to crossposters