Community website/ forum- Tech HELP Please

[Wilmslowboy]

This is my father-in-law's website, which supports men with fertility challenges, he is one of the leading chaps in this domain (he is 70+ years old but still works however the website is more a hobby, and he is not tech-savvy).

He would like to upgrade the site and generally modernise it, needless to say, it's not for profit.

http://www.mensfe.net

Is there an off-the-self (ideally low-cost) platform he should look to port the content to, and is anyone familiar with SMF ? He appears to be running an early version 1.2, the latest version is 2.1.2, any benefit in doing an upgrade?

What would be ideal is

A new modern platform, something widely used that he can hire freelancer admin to support with (the migration and then a few hours a month - I'll be funding this for him so the lower the cost the better).
Better / modern forum, ideally retaining all existing users and their credentials plus historical threads, posts etc.

I should be able to help but all my work is on enterprise sites and IT systems.

[HantsRat]

I would suggest looking at WordPress - It's free then choose a free theme and use bbpress for the forum! You'll just need to pay for hosting the WordPress install.

I am happy to help with a low cost rate re the hosting.

EDIT: You can also keep the SMF forum in a separate directory on the new version but the website can be on WordPress. Just move the DB over too which would retain posts and users.

Edited by HantsRat on Saturday 14th January 18:22

Edited by HantsRat on Saturday 14th January 18:32

Moderator edit: no advertising please

[TonyRPH]

I've had a look at the site, and porting the content to another CMS is likely to be a non trivial task.

On top of that, you'll still need to develop a new template for whichever CMS you choose to use.

You may have a task on your hands, finding someone to tackle that amount of work from a charitable point of view.

EDIT: Sorry - missed the bit where you stated you would be funding it for him.

[Captain_Morgan]

I’d consider splitting the two & using discourse the open source forum platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD1OOz7TDls
That channel has a later 2020 vide on setting it up too

[Wilmslowboy]

Captain_Morgan said:

I’d consider splitting the two & using discourse the open source forum platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD1OOz7TDls
That channel has a later 2020 vide on setting it up too

Thanks.

Do you know if there is a migration path between SMF and discourse, don’t want to lose all the user credentials and post history.

[Captain_Morgan]

Wilmslowboy said:

Captain_Morgan said:

I’d consider splitting the two & using discourse the open source forum platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD1OOz7TDls
That channel has a later 2020 vide on setting it up too

Thanks.

Do you know if there is a migration path between SMF and discourse, don’t want to lose all the user credentials and post history.

Sorry no I don’t you’d have to check, my thoughts were around it’s general uptake as a platform, leading to more & possibly cheaper support costs.

[Akiraprise]

I'd say the best option would be to keep the forum as SMF - but upgrade it, and then build the main site in Wordpress (With Elementor for ease of styling / updating etc).

This way you'll be keeping the forum system that members know, whilst getting the latest update, and Wordpress is very well supported / easy to find freelancers for (including me)