ElkArte Community Modern, Free, Powerful
Community building forum software

Sorry for the late reply, a lot has been going on.
Someone asked how people are finding the Elk site. Well, I came across it Googling "secure forum software". The page it led to had a list of the "Top twenty forum software (Paid & Free)". Security is a big concern for me. IPB let me down several times on that over the years.

Elk was on the list. When I saw it had an ancestral link to SMF, I decided to stop in and check it out.
The reason I went past the first page was the tone of the forums. Not the usual beating newbies up and making them regret reading the messages. That impressed me. Too many times today, the norm seems to follow the path of the trolls that infested the Yahoo boards when they first went online. It's an interesting atmosphere here.

Just went through the upgrade process that I was anxious about with my IPB licenses.
Out of the two lifetime licenses and one perpetual license, I ended up with one version 4 license and a $50 credit to be used for support.
I do NOT! like the software now. It is bloated and a nightmare to deal with for new comers. Just trying to do some simple documentation on the new stuff would take forever and be hundreds of pages. Like the owners manuals for new vehicles. Just bought the spouse a new vehicle and no paper manual, the documentation is on a DVD and has 366 pages.

I can see now why the move was made by IPB to dump the old customers in favor of the corporate/business model. There's almost no resemblance between the 3.X version and 4.X. Just about every aspect of what made IPB a decent forum software is gone. It wouldn't surprise me if IPS wasn't in talks with CompTIA or some other cert source to offer official company tech training and certification on the software.

Anyway, the upgrade was my one last hope of hanging on to IPB. I've decided I'm going to have to let it go after all these years.
I don't mean to drag down the Elk forum with ragging on IPB. But I do want to let Elk know that people are dropping IPB now. Lots of people. People who want to hang on to the basics of what they think community, online forum software is supposed to do. Allow people to communicate without an advanced degree in quantum cyberdynamics.

I'll be putting an Elk install up this weekend and hopefully have it going by Tuesday (31).

I kind of want to see how I do setting it up with just the documentation. But I hope I can get help here with the inevitable stump or two I'll hit on the way (senior citizen moments and the like).

I was driven away from SMF boards, I can't believe the way they treat people there. How can I participate in that community when discussing basic things as a new user will devolve into ugly name calling? Anyway, didn't want to start out with a negative foot here, I'm actually here to see if this might be my friendly forum community for the years to come.

I just wanted to comment that so far I'm pretty impressed by the quality of communication here and the Elkarte software looks promising, I think I'll give the SMF import a go and see if I manage to get a test board going! .. Elkarte seems to have just the things I've wanted in SMF, but haven't found right mods to do it and don't really have the time to customize that much. I will report next week how it went.

(A quick note, the drag & drop attachment doesn't seem to be working, I can't add an image to a post - Seems to work now, don't know why it didn't show the first time around I checked...)

If you are using a mobile device or a narrow browser window it may show you the "old" interface. I added few changes to the repo, but not yet uploaded here to have a similar interface for both mobile and "desktop".

Welcome @CTalks and @Kimurantti. 

A lot of text to read for me, english isn't my native language, so it takes some time. But I will read it all and can assure you, if you need help with the simpliest things, here's one around that tries to help you with it, without giving you the feeling you're not welcome. I'm coming from SMF too, had a german SMF support board for eight years. Things changed with SMF, so I am happy I've found a new "family". 

The team is awesome! 

Without casting too many stones, the SMF treatment scheme brought me to seek alternatives as well.  This place is different.  Far better.  If it matters the coding is more sensible as well.  Once I figure out (or TE does it first) how to import attachments for a 2.1 conversion, all my sites will be Elk from now on. 

Thanks to the people who make this happen. 

SMF used to be a lot friendlier, but a large part of the problem now is that the survivors there have frankly just been through the mill too many times (due to various factors over many years). Some of the old hands are pretty much burned out and jaded, and there aren't many new bods on the crew. I can empathise to an extent, having been through the mill at SMF myself over a period of some years.

So don't worry. There is plenty of time and opportunity for Elk to turn into a bunch of old grumps.

Elk's coding was deliberately made as sensible as possible, given the obvious limitation that anyone who wants to make a forum app is arguably insane. SMF's codebase, in 2.0.x form, suffers from a lot of legacy stuff that was kept for backwards compatibility, and was old even at the time that 2.0.x was finally released. The 2.1 codebase should be a fair bit better.

I am sure ElkArte will never be what SMF is. It is all about culture on board and Elk's way to talking is one of the best you can find on public boards.