Simple Machines Forum

Simple Machines Forum — SMF in short — is a free, professional grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes.

Its powerful custom made template engine puts you in full control of the lay-out of your message board and with our unique SSI - or Server Side Includes - function you can let your forum and your website interact with each other.

SMF is written in the popular language PHP and uses a MySQL database. It 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!

General Features:
- Uses PHP and MySQL.
- Comprehensive template system.
- Advanced permission and user management.
- Supports multiple languages at once.
- Open and well-documented source code.
- Tracking of new and old unread topics, not just from your last visit.
- Designed for optimal performance and scalability.
- Multi-media output. (XHTML, XML, RSS, WAP)
- Multi-language support from a large community.
- Package manager that automatically installs or uninstalls mods (also known as hacks.)
Security
- All actions seamlessly require a session based authorization code.
- Administrative actions require the user's password (and do not rely solely on cookies.)
- Major actions are time and IP locked, preventing 'hammering'.
- The number of login attempts from a certain IP can be limited and time locked.
Forum Settings
- Ability to display page creation time and query count per page.
- Put a board into maintenance mode, allowing only admins to login.
- Word censoring, either full word or partial.
- Ability to break up long words.
- Boards and Categories
- Group boards into collapsible categories.
- Set categories as non-collapsible.
- Reorder boards within categories, or reorder categories.
- Create child boards under other boards. (sub boards)
- Assign moderators to boards.
- Allow certain membergroups to access a board, including guests only.
- Configure permissions for each membergroup on the board level.
- Ability to indicate new posts to child boards but nothing new in parent.
Member Registration
- Require registration before forum entrance.
- Require a user to agree to terms before they register.
- Disable member registration completely (allowing only moderators to register people).
- Require email authentication by sending an authentication link.
- Require a moderator to approve registration.
- Register new members from the admin center.
- Member Navigation and Authentication
- Several security checks during navigation.
- Password reminder option, by email with confirmation. (doesn't automatically reset your password.)
- Both cookie and session based authentication (works without cookies.)
- Cookies can be set local to a path, global to all subdomains, or normally.
- Adjustable expiration time for authentication cookies.
- Member Tracking and Tracing
- Sortable and searchable public memberlist (accessible by a permission.)
- Powerful sortable and searchable admin memberlist.
- Show all (error) messages and IPs made by a member. (track user)
- Show all (error) messages from an IP address or range. (track IP)
- See who's doing what (accessible by permission.)
Statistics
- Several board statistics (accessible by permission.)
- Tracking of member's online time in seconds.
- Tracking of topics, messages, new members, and hits per day.
- Individual member statistics accessible from their profile.
- News and Announcements
- Ability to create announcement boards (members receive a notification of topics automatically.)
- Member option to disable receiving announcements.
- Email or private message your members by membergroup.
- Show a news ticker or news fader.
- Communication
- Ability to choose sendmail or SMTP (with or without authentication.)
- Ability to send a topic to a friend.
- Ability to view a "printer friendly" version of topics.
Membergroups
- Create membergroups to group members on permissions, access rights, and/or appearance.
- Assign several membergroups to a single member, with one membergroup as the primary group.
- Define membergroups that are auto-assigned based on the amount of posts a user has.
- Determine the maximum number of personal messages a membergroup is allowed to have by group.
- Assign graphical symbol(s) to a membergroup - by primary group.
- Determine which membergroups are allowed to access a board.
Banning
- Ban members based on their username, email address, IP address or hostname.
- Support of wildcards for email address, IP address, and hostname.
- Include a ban reason (viewable for the banned user).
- Include a ban note (only viewable by the admins).
- Chose between full ban, 'no post' ban, or registration ban.
- Include an expiration time for bans.
Changes in version 2.0b3: - Database abstraction including support for PostgreSQL and SQLite
- Post and attachment moderation - setup through board permissions.
- Additional group management features such as group moderators and joinable and requestable groups
- Comprehensive user warning system.
- Paid subscriptions to allow people to make a payment with PayPal to get additional group access
- Personal message labeling system and new viewing options
- OpenID support - to enable users to login and register with their OpenID account
- Custom profile fields to enable admins to setup new profile fields in addition to the default
- WYSWIYG editor, to improve the user posting experience
- Ignore boards and ignore user functions - so users only see what they want to see
- Scheduled events and mail queuing systems to add additional functionality to the forum
- Admin and user logs to track who makes what changes to a user's profile
- A moderation center to bring together all moderation functionality into one place for all people with moderation abilities