I am not trying to be negative. But we all know one day someone will ask this question. I agree that we are up to date. But if someone ask why should I use ElkArte, what will be your answer(s) ?
Antlers. :)
Wombats!! :D
/me runs
Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the wombats. So that's two unique (and very cool) features.
Serious answers:
Elkarte has a large capacity for addons, mods, themes and other things that extend the basic functionality of the core forum. It is easily extensible, and addons are easy to install. Because Elkarte has a shared history with SMF, it shares its strength in this respect, and it's entirely possible to take a forum like Elkarte and turn it into a full site with an e-shop, games and other draws for visitors, all without even utilizing the forum aspect.
Elkarte is also modern and up to date, making it competitive with the latest versions of vBulletin and IPB, or phpBB 3 and the like. It's a useful, open source choice for someone who wants to build a simple discussion board, and powerful enough for someone who wants to build an entire community, without having to pay a single cent for the core software.
I hope that helps.
Short version: competitive with the high cost solutions, but without the high cost.
Not sure but I think PbE (Post by E-Mail) is a unique feature. Haven't seen it in other boards before..
Mirai Gaia actually has had post by email for a long time. (Well, assuming it didn't go missing in the latest incarnation like some other features.)
Indeed...
http://www.dannychoo.com/en/post/25399/Upload+via+email.html
That was in 2010. Dunno about later. But that's not really a forum system, is it..?
Also there is github of course but they're not a forum system either. :P
Anyway, post by email is the one feature Elk has that Wedge doesn't have and that I want it to have, too. So if I were you guys, I'd make it very prominent in my marketing. ;) neither SMF nor Wedge will have this anytime soon. Personally, I'm too worried about potential spam. (Eg user gets a virus that starts spamming user's contact list.)
MG is pretty close to a forum system. Look at figure.fm. A series of categories. Users make posts. Others comment on those posts. It just has a front page that lists most recent topics rather than the category list (that's a drop down) and the comments are threaded instead of flat.
I am pretty realistic (and from time to time pessimistic), so don't be scared if I don't say Elk is the best forum script ever.
I don't say it for two reasons:
1) I'm realistic,
2) not being means to me we have to improve. This is true even if Elk was the best, but believing Elk is not the best makes it easier for me to have goals and expectations).
Well, saying "other scripts" to me means "what does ElkArte have that is not yet available anywhere else?".
Well, I kind of think that at the moment the
real answer (apart from marketing) is: nothing.
I'm pretty sure that anything Elk has is available *somewhere*.
If I'm not wrong, Discourse has post-by-email.
Xenforo has a responsive theme.
Likes are available for sure in some script.
Mentions as well.
And so on.
Does any other script have all of them together in a single package?
Some may have, dunno.
There are several features. I don't think there is anywhere a complete list of features ElkArte has, TBH I'm not even sure myself... lol
Regarding the code: Elk derives from SMF, we (those that worked on it until now) have changed it quite a bit making it hopefully easier to use. The refactoring and changes are "just started", take a look at
@groundups's work and ideas (even though I'm doing my best to make him angry :P I hope you won't give up just for my stubbornness in understand things ;D).
Yup. TBH this sort of thing is like arguing over best football team or best car. There may be some basis in fact, but the selection thereof is often highly subjective. If someone tells me they like vB more than Elk I'll probably think they're as bonkers as if they claimed Chevrolets were better cars than Mercedes Benz, but they're entitled to their opinion.
Unfortunately, to most people, it boils down to whether or not they like the default look.
If elk's default theme is not their cup of tea, they won't even bother that it has plenty of great features -- or other themes for that matter! First impressions are crucial. XenForo was successful because it had a nice default theme. People didn't care that it only had a tenth of vB's feature set. (Not that I like VB...)
Sad but true.
Makes sense. I remember back when 2.0.x was in development. Aaron showed me a demo of the upcoming IPB release and we were both blown away by the contrast with SMF. Even if the two had been the same price (IPB is far from free) and with the same feature set (IPB was more advanced) I wouldn't blame the average mug for going with IPB over SMF. It's a good argument for not using bargain basement looks on the default (assuming you want increased market share).
True.
The main reason I never tried MyBB is because I don't like the theme of the home page of their site.
/me runs
Eliana and I both prefer the old Light variant over the new BeSocial! variant. My comment yesterday on Pidgin was "Hey, I figured out what was wrong with the old default. It's slick enough to pass for a custom theme, so that's no good. A default has to be uglier." :P
I couldn't agree more with Emanuele. Elkarte isn't special... yet. What it does have is a good environment for development which will help it succeed. I'm enjoying it because there is a lot of low-hanging fruit which offers a good way to learn some new stuff .
Oh and don't worry about making me angry. Your questioning the code and my reasoning is an excellent way for me to ensure it is valid. When I explain the reasoning, it helps me flesh it out. It also ensures that I know why I did something and then it is "documented," even if that documentation is only in an IM.
Thankfully I'm above those pe*is length comparisons.. :P And by the way: light is the default variant...
Didn't realise. I thought it had been scrapped as default since it wasn't being used here. Not that it really bothers me since I can use what I like anyway, and it's all subjective.
I hope this means in the Elk package, because it's not Elk.net's default variant. When I load up a page when I'm not logged in, it's clearly the Be Social! variant.
yep, you're right.... It was initally switched from "light" to "Be Social!" for testing purposes.. I don't mind switching back to light, light is still nice on the desktop, "Be Social!" has it's strenghts on mobile devices.
It (_light) should work on mobile since the markup is the same. The CSS does contain stuff which is probably not optimal for mobile (hover effects for one) but some of that could be dropped via media queries if anyone thinks it's important.
Really the font stack should probably be changed in the queries too. Android's native font is Roboto, IIRC. I called that in the mobile font stack for the custom theme I did at CEMB.
More like a SWOT discussion. SWOT gets in-depth as to the validity of each characteristic and examines competition. This would be completely missing the O and T hehe. I kind of did this over at SMF at one point.
Very good to learn about SWOT though. It's important to have focus and that's one of the best ways of determining what you should focus on (prioritization).
Emanuele, I think that is a good way to pose the question to people though. What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to Elkarte.
Strengths are things that Elkarte does well or better than others.
Weaknesses are things that Elkarte doesn't do well. Things that need improvement to make it better. Sometimes you can't improve a weakness without lessening a strength, but it should be listed.
Opportunities are things that it could do better to be better than the competition. The best opportunities are ones which match the strengths.
Threats are things that others are doing that could be problematic. As examples: that goes from lessening forum use to some new feature on phpBB.
With forum software it hard to have something different then the next guy, I think making sure what you have works and works well is something better. There are too many out there trying to be different but when you cut them all down it's still just forum software.