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 forum 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.

Simple Machines Forum is a widely supported and highly customizable online message forum script, perfect for building an online community with your VERSION-NEXT Hosting.

To begin building your SMF online forum community today with an VERSION-NEXT Hosting plan, click the order button below and follow our signup page!

To view our demo SMF site with a custom theme installed please click on the thumbnail to the right

SMF is designed to provide you with all the features you need 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!

SMF has a large community of developers contributing not only to the core development, but also providing Mods and Themes that make it easy to customize SMF to suit your requirements …. Customize SMF your way

You can add extra functionality to your SMF forum by installing Mod’s to your forum. These Mod’s are packages that can change your forum’s operation, add features, remove features, and a lot of other possibilities.

These packages can be downloaded from the SMF “Mod Site”. Once you have downloaded the required package you need to login to the Admin section of your SMF forum and navigate to
Admin > Packages > Download Packages

Once you are one on Download Packages page, click the “Browse” button at the bottom of the page, navigate to the package you’ve already downloaded to your local computer and click upload. Once it’s uploaded you’ll see a confirmation page.

To apply the package, you’ll just have to click on “[ Apply Mod ]” in front of the package you’ve just uploaded, the package is now installed and ready to use.

Bulletin Board Codes or BBCodes are a way to format posts in SMF, and also in many other forum software.

The general format of a BBCode has three parts, an opening tag, the inside content and a closing tag, as shown below:

[open] text inside [/close]
[b] bold text [/b]

[b][i]bold & italic text[/i][/b]

Bold & italic text
This is shown more easily when the tags are indented:

[b]
    [i]
        bold & italic text
    [/i]
[/b]

Basic BB Codes
Please use tags in this manner: [tag]Item goes here[/tag] or [tag1=blah][tag2]Item goes here[/tag2][/tag1]

Some of the common tags are listed below.

Button	Usage	Description
	[ b ]text[ /b ]	Makes text bold.
	[ i ]text[ /i ]	Makes text italicized.
	[ u ]text[ /u ]	Underlines text..
	[ s ]text[ /s ]	Strikes out text.
	[ move ]text[ /move ]	Makes the text inside move in a marquee.
	[ pre ]text[ /pre ]	Preformats enclosed text.
	[ left ]text[ /left ]	Aligns enclosed items to the left.
	[ center ]text[ /center ]	Aligns enclosed items to the center.
	[ right ]text[ /right ]	Aligns enclosed items to the right.
	[ hr ]	Inserts a horizontal rule into a Post or PM. Note there is no closing tag.
	[ size=10pt ]text[ /size ]	Adjusts the font size of the enclosed text.
	[ flash=200,200 ]http://somesite/somefile.swf[ /flash ]	Inserts a link to an animated flash file in .swf format. Please be cautious when enabling this BBCode in your forum, since it may be a security risk.
	[ img ]http://somesite/image.jpg[ /img ]	Inserts an image into a Post or personal message.
	[ url ]http://somesite/[ /url ]	Formats a URL in a Post or personal message.
	[ email ]someone@somesite[ /email ]	Formats an email address in a Post or personal message.
	[ ftp ]ftp://somesite[ /ftp ]	Formats an FTP address in a Post or personal message.
	[ sup ]text[ /sup ]	Formats enclosed text as a superscript.
	[ sub ]text[ /sub ]	Formats enclosed text as a subscript.
	[ tt ]text[ /tt ]	Formats enclosed text in teletype format.
	[ code ]code[ /code ]	Used to insert a selection of code into a Personal message or post.
	[ quote ]text[ /quote ]	Places enclosed text in a quote box.
	[ list ] [ li ]Item 1[ /li ] [ li ]Item 2[ /li ] [ /list ]	Inserts items in list format.
	[ table ][ /table ]	Inserts a table. It can’t be used alone, or it has no sense!
	[ tr ][ /tr ]	Inserts a row into a table. This BBCode can’t be used alone.
	[ td ][ /td ]	Inserts a column into a table. This BBCode can’t be used alone.

You can easily change the appearance of your SMF forum using the Theme Manager in the Admin area of your forum. There are many themes available for download from the SMF website as well as 3rd party sites. Just do a search using your favourite search engine to find a theme that suits your needs.

First we need to install you new theme. After you have logged in, navigate to the Admin area. Select “Themes and Layout” from the “Configuration” section.

To install a new theme, browse for the file on your local computer and click Install. Once the theme has been installed you can select it from the drop-down list and click Save. You can also set options for allowing users to switch themes if you wish.