This is the 5th part of the creating a forum series.
We have covered so far:
- what script to use, niche and hosting;
- installation and configuration of the forum;
- what theme to choose;
- getting members to the forum;
And today we will be focusing on adding mods to our forum.
Now that we have members on our forum and traffic coming, it is time to add something more to the forum. This “something more” is achieved with modifications, or mods for short. We can look these mods in the same way we look for wordpress plugins.
Getting mods
SMF has a big and active community that constantly releases new modifications for SMF. And happily for us, they all post their new mods at the SMF mod site.
There you can easily browse mods, read a description about them and see if there is a version compatible with your smf version.
Installing the mods
A great feature that SMF has, is the package manager (located in your admin panel: Main»Packages).
For now, you will only need to focus on the “Download Packages” link. Here you will be able to upload a mod to use. You just need to download the desired mod that comes in a zip format, to your drive. Then hit the upload button, select your recently downloaded mod and hit ok. Don’t worry. The script will install all the files on the proper places and make the necessary alterations to the theme code.
Warning
Although this is an easy process, sometimes this will fail and you will see some error messages. Don’t worry. It is usual, specially if you are using a different template than the default one.
You need to remember that almost all mods are ready to be installed in the default version. When using a different template, the code structure is different and the installer script does not know where to place the necessary template modifications. We will take care of this in a future topic.
Recommended mods
- SEO4SMF: this was my favourite mod for SEO. Sadly it is a bit insecure and not that easy to configure. It seems to be discontinued. While i used this mod, i have seen a big increase in search engine visitors.
- Pretty URLs: This mod does the same thing as seo4smf. Actually, the url seems more seo friendly. And it is easy to use. Sadly, it is showing not to be as much effective as the previous one. It is the only seo mod compatible with SMF 2.0 beta.
- SMF Sitemap: having a sitemap always helps right?
- vBulletin Style Meta Tags: This will let you configure your forum tags
- Auto Embed Video/Audio Clips: this will allow your users to insert a link in a post and automatically change it to the respective video. Very useful.
- SMF Arcade or E-Arcade: every forum should have an arcade for users to play. This will atract new users and make the old ones come. This is an excelent addon as long you know how to proper use it in your advantage.
- Gender On Registration: useful to know who is a guy or a girl
- Registered Images: this will prevent from guest to see images on the forum, and will recommend them to register at the forum
- EmailValidator: This is to prevent members to register with a fake email. We want real mail address.
- And last but not the least Ad Management mod: This is one of the most important mods available for your forum. This will let you place ads in 2-3 clicks. You chosse where to put them and the mod will do it for you.
These are just a few that i reccomend. You won’t need them all, but they will surely help your blog.
When browsing for for a mod, just remember to see if the mod is compatible with your version.
Friendly advice: make regular backups, specially before adding mods that make huge modifications to the smf installation.
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Informative post.. Drop to ur EC!