The Recent Changes.

[[Unknown]]

Here's a summary of the most recent changes, written by skoen.  For more information, please see www.simplemachines.org.

For anyone of you who don't want to search the whole forum for information about Simple Machines, I made a simple introduction to Simple Machines for the Nordic users on a separate board. But, many of you guys would want to know what, why and when about SMF.

First of all, let me tell you that YaBBSE and SMF have almost the same developers, so sort of speaking this might be more only an update than a complete new forum, since you will recognize a lot of the members and the features on this forum.

The Beginning

At July 17th, the YaBBSE developers had a Chat Session on IRC to give the users a possibility to get the latest information about the changes, and also get to ask some questions directly to the dev team. At that chat session a lot of information came out and it was all about what was going to be Simple Machines.

Why the name?

The main reason why the dev team wanted to change the name from YaBBSE was that the original YaBB, the CGI version, contained a lot of errors and when it came out i 1998, it wasn't such a great success before all the bugfixes arrived. And not forgetting that there were more advertising for YaBB than for YaBBSE, which was released for beta testing in December 2001. SE stood for Splinter Edition. The differences between YaBB and YaBBSE was that YaBBSE was built on PHP and MySQL. But, despite the name YaBBSE many people got too many associations to the original YaBB and that was made a problem for the dev. The name Simple Machines might have a history, but my little hint is that it got its name because it can run simple on a computer (machine). Simple Machines.

YaBBSE <-> SMF

Version 1.5.4 of YaBBSE became the Final release of the YaBBSE forum software. This release was very fast and didn't contain that much errors as version 1.0.0. During only a year YaBBSE got many members and many felt that the forum needed something better. Simple Machines is much faster than YSE1.5.4. A lot of the reason for that is the code, which is better than in YaBBSE. It's more logic. There have also been made a lot of new features that have been implemented in this new forum. See below for a list of some of the few new changes that have been made. But the kernel is somewhat unchanged, and you will anyway recognize the dev team behind Simple Machines. [Unknown] can also inform that the Charter Members thing get them many possibilies, they get to test the new versions before anybody else.

Charter Members

Charter Members is a group of paid members. You might call it a VIP-member who pays to get more than regular members. When you are a charter member you get the possibility to recieve extended support for your forum software and even get your forum upgraded by the dev team personal! To be a charter member you have to pay an annual fee of $49,95, in Euro it is €43,91.

A simple list of some of the changes from YaBBSE 1.5.4

Here is a list of changes I can remember:

• Enhanced look on the Profile screen
  
• Enhanced look in the Admin Center
  
• New smilies
  
• Faster kernel and better code
  
• New BBC tag icons
  
• Child boards - boards inside boards
  
• A little different translation system with separate files for each section
  
• To ways to change your Forum Template
  
• Possibility to see Total time Logged In

[note from [Unknown]: there are a lot more, a list will come around soon.]

Welcome to Simple Machines. I hope you could understand some of the stuff I've written.
Note: This is translated, poorly, from my original text in Norwegian. Sorry for some translation errors.

When is it ready for release? Well, you might ask, but this forum is still under creation as it's still in Alpha status, and the regular members have to wait for the Charter Members to finish their Beta testing when it's ready.

Thanks for reading the whole text

[addition by [Unknown]: Support for YaBB SE will continue until most of you, our users, have converted over to SMF.  Please join us over at www.simplemachines.org to see development as it unfolds.]

-[Unknown]

[Dataforce]

3 Questions

1) Why the heck was it caleld Spliter Edition?

2) Will Themes from YaBB SE be compatable with SMF ? - eg can i copy and paste my tempalte from my YSE to a SMF ?

3) Why did you change the name - imo YaBB SE is a much niver name

[[Unknown]]

3 Questions

1) Why the heck was it caleld Spliter Edition?

2) Will Themes from YaBB SE be compatable with SMF ? - eg can i copy and paste my tempalte from my YSE to a SMF ?

3) Why did you change the name - imo YaBB SE is a much niver name

1. Because it was a "splinter" off YaBB.  The creators also seem to like the Ninja Turtles .

2. There is, and will be, a converter.  Not exactly compatible (because the old version's method was... imho... useless..) but it can convert to the new method.

3. Sorry, that's covered.  A lot.

-[Unknown]

[AcsiakSupport]

So then, I guess - YabbSE is dead?

So now what happens?


I, and all my clients have always used YaBBSE - now must we move to some other forum like phpBB or Invision Power Board? - As I can honestly say, SimpleMachines certainly doesn't look anything special and to be totally honest is downright ugly.... and believe me when I say UGLY. (I use GAIM, and personally I think that is the most ugly chat program on earth, but that's not even as ugly as SimpleMachine)


What new features will Simple Machine have?
Also, will it still be free like YaBB SE was?


I don't like to say it.... but I think I can foresee another XMB/myBBoard tragedy....

[Ben_S]

Why dont you bother to look at the smf site, read a few threads, it wont take long to understand what SMF is all about, what changes have been made.

Every change is for the better, you complain it looks ugly, it looks just like YSE but with different colours, but the fact is you can make it look like anything you want with the new template engine.

Every question you have asked is answered on the SMF forum.

[Douglas]

And on top of that, I happen to be converting several customers OVER to YSE so that we CAN get onto SMF when it comes out.

I switched my forums from a paid forum system to YSE, and will be upgrading to SMF when it becomes a Release Candidate.  I have two to four sites that will be running the beta software as soon as it comes out.

[Peter Duggan]

3) Why did you change the name - imo YaBB SE is a much niver name

Personally, I'll be glad to see the back of the YaBB SE name because it's almost impossible not to read it as 'Yabbsy' (which sounds downright ridiculous) instead of 'Yabb ess ee'!

I, and all my clients have always used YaBBSE - now must we move to some other forum like phpBB or Invision Power Board?

I don't like to say it.... but I think I can foresee another XMB/myBBoard tragedy....

And I can't believe I'm reading this!

[klumy]

YabbSE is not dead.
It just has a new name.

As Ben_S already says, all question will be answered in http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php

Personally I think this is a step to the right direction. I hope other YAbbSE users won't have prejudices about SMF and will take a closer look to the upcoming SMF forum.

I believe in the SMF project  

[skoen]

I also believe in the YaBBSE project, or else I wouldn't have written the article in the first post. I've published it in Nordic (the original format) at this link -> here.

[proenski]

I take it we can upgrade from YabbSE to SMF?

[Metho]

Yes.

[TREO]

I think it looks nice
And the new features seems also good
so I WILL use SMF even if it's just because I dont like wbb and all the others

[BigMike]

So could I please have the Magic Llama script ?  

[Metho]

I think magic llama's should be for charter members.  

Not that I'm biased or anything...

Methonis

[K7]

Hmm...whatever happened to the little YABB tutorial pages, though? I can't find those anymore. Did you get rid of them, or something?