6 Must Have MODs for Simple Machines Forum (SMF) for a Newbie
I am sure you must be knowing about free open community forum called “Simple Machines Forum (SMF)“. It is one of the best FREE forum software which is developed in PHP by contributors from around the world. I am using this FORUM software for 7 years now and had awesome experience using it. This article doesn’t contain my experience of SMF, but it will tell you what are must have modification for your Simple Machines Forum (SMF).
Choosing new modification for your simple machines forum can be a tough task, if you are new in running your website as a forum and don’t know where to start and which modifications or packages are helpful for your website.
So, go through below modification or package list and install them as per your need.
Essential Modification for Simple Machines Forum (SMF)
1. Pretty URLs
This is one of the best modification available in SMF community. This package comes under “search engine optimization” and will help your forum to perform better in search engines as it will create search engine friendly URL’s.
Instead of some numbers in the URL, you will see words and it will also look good. I highly recommend using this modification if you are just starting your forum.
The second essential package for SMF forum is “Anti-Spam Links“, this mod will help your forum to fight SPAM by blocking users to post spam links on your forum, which is one of the major problems for forum administrators.
With this plugin you can stop members having less post count to post external links. Even you have option to make the link nofollow if user doesn’t meet particular post count criteria.
3. Anti-Bot: Are You Human/Bot?
This is very interesting mod and checks if registering user is human or not by asking questions. These questions can be set by the forum administrator. This anti-bot modification will surely decrease the bots which are trying to register and spam your forum.
4. Add Facebook Like, Tweet, and Google +1
In this social media era, this modification is a must have. With this mod you can allow your users to like, tweet, and Google +1 your posts and articles. By default SMF don’t have any social sharing feature till now.
When you enable this mod, users will see social sharing option as described above below the first post.
5. Minimun Characters or Words Mod
This is a very useful modification and sets a minimum amount of words or characters per message for the user. If the user doesn’t fulfill the condition, they won’t be allowed to post the reply.
It will help your smf forum to grow by not allowing users to post small one word comment. They will have to write a minimum word in reply as set by you.
Last but not the least, Ad management mod is very essential if you are thinking to monetize your forum with ads. You can use different ads provided by different platforms, like Google AdSense, Amazon Ads, Tribal fusion, Chitika, etc.
This modification gives you many different positions to place your ads and you can also see reports and can know which ad is shown how many times.
Ads through this plugin can be placed within a post, under the category, message index, post page, on every page as a tower on the left and right side, etc. Do use this mod if you want to place ads on your forum and earn money online from it.
These were some of the essential & must have Mods for your simple machines forum (SMF). If you want to add any other modification which should be in this list, do let us know through your comments and email. If you are interested in reading more such article, do subscribe to Tech2Blog.com by Email and like and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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