Howdy! I'm hoping to set up a Tiny Portal/SMF site, and have a few questions for those of you who know more than I do about this stuff (well, that would be just about everyone...).
I see that the latest version of SMF is 1.1 RC2. That came out around the first of the year, and from what I can glean from the SMF site, most people seem to be having good, stable experiences with 1.1 RC2. Others seem to hint that they think either a 3rd RC build or the final release might be due sometime "soon" (a few weeks? a month or two? - just speculation). Of course, nobody knows for sure.
Here's my primary question: if you were just starting out with SMF and Tiny Portal at this point, which combination of builds would you use? Although I can generally follow directions, I have no experience messing with this sort of thing and I'm hoping to get through this stuff with a minimum of futzing around. Of curse, I have no clue how much extra tweaking would/will be necessary if I install one version of SMF and Tiny Portal, and later update to a "final" build of each....am I worrying over nothing?
Any suggestions? Thanks!!
I would recommend the SMF 1.1 RC2 version, as it is the newest, and is closest to the final version. Chances are good, if you stay away from other mods untill the final version is released, TP will cause no troubles. TP does work with other mods installed, it will just be easiest for someone just starting out.
You will need themes made for TP, unless you use the SMF default theme, so other mods would have to be added manually to those themes. As the SMF Package Manager, which installs mods, only makes changes to the SMF default theme.
If a major change is made in the next release of SMF 1.1; then you would just un-install TP, do the upgrade/update to SMF, and then re-install TP. Not to much hassle.
A suggestion is to add a test installation of SMF+TP in a folder on your web root directory for testing purposes. So, if your address is www.mysite dot com; install SMF there, and then create a folder called TestSMF, and install the 2 SMF there. The second test installation will be invisible to the public, and it will not interfere with your main site.
Starting with a nice clean install is the best way. I've got no problems with 1.1 RC2 and I'm using it on my main site (with TP). TP installs best into a clean install of SMF.
Irrespective of what theme(s) you intend to have available leave the default theme completely untouched, if you want to use it, make a copy and use that instead. Having a default theme that has only been modified through the package manager will prevent a lot of grief when adding mods in the future.
If you want to hack a template put the hacked version into your custom/copy default theme.