Your ideas on going live by Nov 1 w/ a new site

[iowamf]

Greetings -

I'm in the process of prototyping a new site that needs to replace an old site by Nov 1.

The site I'm replacing is really bad - but the (invision) forums are busy & operate well.

I'm leaning heavily towards this portal w/ SMF - and have some basic questions:

A.) Stick w/ SMF1.1 Beta3 & the latest TPbeta (TinyPortal v.0.7.2b_180805)
B.) Go for broke and see if I can get SMF RC 1.1 working with the latest TPbeta.
C.) some other combo of CMS/Portal & Forum

The site is a Not-for-Profit and as long as the new forums work as good as Invisions - they'll be happy with the new look of a portal. They've had as many as 550 users on-line at the same time - there are ~2500 members.

The other CMS/Portals I've looked at are either too complicated or have a crappy forum.

The new site will be very forum oriented - which is why I'm wondering if the latest & greatest SMF 1.1 RC1 is worth it.

Thanks & Regards -

[IchBin]

In my experience SMF has not released an unstable product even during their beta tests. If I were you, I would go with what is working though. Bloc will always have a release of TP for the stable version of SMF. I would go with 1.0.5 and TP for the win. Especially considering the size and activity of your site.

[iowamf]

Thank you IchBin for your feedback - that gives me confidence I'm heading the right direction.

A follow-up if I may ... why do you suggest 1.0.5 instead of SMF1.1 Beta3?

Again - I'm a newbie to SMF and when I joined here Bloc was targeting SMF 1.1 Beta3 with his v0.6.5 TP ... there's got to be a reason behind that?

[borgBOB]

I might go with the option of SMF v 1.1.beta3 with TP v 0.7.2 beta.  These may still have some issues, but for the most part they work, and would have almost the most current updates. 

BUT If bloc is able to release updates which make both TP and his TP themes
compatable with SMF v1.1 RC1, then I would go with that option.

[IchBin]

The reason I suggested it is because if you're going to be following the beta testing side of SMF with TP there are going to be many updates. Considering the activity of your forum I would stick with what works for as little updates as possible. But seeing as I wasn't thinking about all the fixes and bugs fixed in the latest TP I would suggest as borgBOB said, beta 3 because it is very stable right now IMO with TP. However, I would stay away from RC1 for a while until all the kinks are worked out.

[iowamf]

Awesome - thanks borgBOB & IchBin -

Agreed that TP working w/ SMF v1.1 RC1 is ideal - but I don't want to put any pressure on him - he's doing enough as it is.

I'm still leaning towards Beta3 SMF & the latest TP (especially since I got it installed and working in both a local & a hosted environment).

I too am worried about RC1 - I don't mind being on the "bleading edge" with TP - but a high-volume forum on the "bleading edge" is another story.

I'm also wondering what is so special about RC1 ?

[borgBOB]

 iowamf ;

Do you have the ability to do a clean install of SMF v1.0.5 and upgrading it to SMF 1.1 RC1?

If you can, do it. Just use it as a private test board, as you may want one later.

But you can then see what's special about RC1 for yourself