A Forum / bulletin board.
I would like to build a professional looking forums site built preferably with SMF and Mysql. I am open for non SMF (phpBB or any other) forums if you can convince me compelling reasons or advantages.
The forum is about discussing the current economy. If the theme somehow relates to the 'economy' subject, that would be wonderful but it is not a must.
I am open for any reative/decent/professional looking theme or template.
The Forums should have
1) A place holder for a future Logo & Name of the forums (could be an image).
You could place a test image or logo.
2) User registration
3) Anonymous or guest posting ( I should be able to turn it on or turn it off ).
4) Multiple moderators
5) Search capability
6) RSS feeds from few popular web sites posting directly to one of the sub categories in the very first category. ( I will provide the web sites soon)
7) Display number of posts and topics for category.
8) Unlimited categories and topics
9) A section called 'users online' (should be able to turn it on or off)'
10) A section called 'forum stats'
11) A section called 'Recent Posts'
12)Provision for future advertisements or google ads.
13) compatibility with all popular browsers.
Even though most of these features come built-n with SMF, I just wanted to list them here. Please do recommend if I am missing any key features of a successful forum site.
The deliverables should be easily deployable and configurable.
Deliverables should contain the mysql database as well.
I have deployed an SMF forums site before but if I run into issues deploying it ], you should be willing to help. I am hosting (linux) with Godaddy, if it helps you in testing it.