SMF hosting
A forum is something that gives a person the freedom to form a community concerning any particular idea or topic. Many a times a 
person might be interested in a particular idea or concept and a related community for that particular topic might not be present. In this case a community forum can be formed by a person. SMF, which stands for “Simple Machines Forum”, is a reliable and a user friendly application that allows you to create such a forum for free. It can be downloaded free of charge and comes with all the features that are required to form a forum for smaller as also larger communities. Also, it is of fundamental value, to find a web hosting provider that is has extensive experience of this kind of specialized hosting service. SMF hosting is not another type of hosting, but has a core role in every successful online community that is based on SMF platform.
System Requirements for SMF hosting:
- Linux or Another Unix based operating system.
- Apache 2 or higher version.
- Preferably a PHP 4.3.0 or greater.
- MySQL 4.0.15 or higher with the query caching option on.
- A GD Graphics Library of 2.0 or greater.
Forum Administration: SMF comes with an advanced control panel which is much better than its counterparts. It provides many options that let you customize, put restrictions on the settings etc. It lets you set almost every aspect of the site. Right from the general forum settings which include news, topics and categories, member settings, restrictions on use, access to members etc.
Layout - XHTML 1.0 transitional are the preset SMF templates that are compatible with CSS 2.0. The SMF control panel also gives the option to install new themes and lets you customize. Even here the freedom to the members to chose the themes from elsewhere can be restricted.
Extra functionality – The SMF sites can be personalised as per choice with the use of different tools. Members can have their personalised avatars, their own country flags etc.
Security – SMF provides the user with the options of security. The users as well as the moderators and the administrators can have restricted access as per the owner’s choice. Usernames and passwords are necessary for all administrative settings and all actions can be time locked. The number of log in attempts can also be set as per choice.
Forum users – The forum users are provided with a lot of options. Members need to first register to be a part of the forums. They need to create their own log in IDs. After the authorization process is completed, members can choose to log in through the visible or the invisible mode. Once the log in process is over the members can review everything in the forum such as the messages polls etc. they can also keep a track of what the other forum members are doing and the topics through which they browse.
Maintenance of Stats – The SMF system also gives an option of maintaining the statistics as well. Everything like the number of new members who get registered the various posts, topics of discussions, etc can be tracked completely. Public polls can also be created here.
Wireless access - SMF provides the user to log in and also post messages from practically anywhere in the world. This is thanks to the wireless access that is provided through WAP, WAP2 and I-mode protocols.