Simple Machines Forums – SMF

I’m investigating Simple Machines Forums as an upgrade from phpBB2 for the forums for this site. Seems like I never can leave well enough alone. In looking around, SMF seems much more modern and has attachments built in. We’ll start with some attractive themes and then probably convert some of the previous themes to SMF, just to get our hands dirty.

Already digging in, I needed to debug the converter for phpBB2 to SMF.

Stay tuned, SMF is pretty cool.

cheers,
djd

Fix to phpBB2 to SMF converter

OBSOLETE
See the new version

Here’s a fix that I’ve made to the phpBB2_to_smf.php converter.
I’ve done a conversion from phpBB2 2.0.18 with attachments to SMF 1.1RC2 and it appears to work. I would not say that it was thoroughly tested.
The memberlist failed without the fixes that I’ve included.

  • There were field name changes in the SMF members table. im_xxx changed to pm_xxx and this caused a silent failure in the INSERT’s.
  • Also the version number needed to be changed from 1.0.5 to 1.1.99 [maybe , but this works.].

You can download it here: Fix to phpBB2 to SMF converter

enjoy,
djd

Get your startup list under control

Do you have a bunch of stuff starting up when you boot that you don’t need?
Get it under control.
My daughter and I had a problem and we found this little startup control panel. Just the thing that really ought to be built into windows:

Startup Control Panel

This allows you to check and uncheck the programs that start and all the various types of items are available to set.

Site now validates…

I’ve gotten around to validating the code, and found a few bugs in the theme code. The pages should validate now.

A friend noticed a problem [difference] between MS IE and Firefox. The banner is not a link in firefox. That was subtle anyway, so I added a link to the main page in the links section, put the links at the top and always enabled the remainder of the menu on all pages. No reason to be subtle with navigation.

cheers,
djd

Glitches with Gallery are fixed…

At least I think they are fixed…
You may have noticed that some pictures couldn’t be displayed. Well, I deployed Coppermine with a plug-in that allows some albums to be removed from the thumbnail lists so that more revealing photos would not show up on the front page. Well, the plug-in either had a bug, or my changes to provide a user interface introduced a bug that prevented images in those albums from being displayed at all.

All fixed now, I think. If you notice something, please comment to this post and I’ll try to address it. Or check the contact page for the email address.

thanks,
djd

Woops… Coppermine is fragile. See the comments.