smf costs money?

[Radioactive Cat]

does it, cuz I wanna maek mah own forum. lol. I un-leashed my inner noob. Get to the saferoom....

[Ad Bot]

[Wynd_Fox]

Yes, but SMF for free exists.

[Radioactive Cat]

Yes, but SMF for free exists.

Wot? So, it costs money, but theres one that doesnt?

[Wynd_Fox]

A worse version is free.

[Wedge]

SMF is free. All versions are free. Here is a quote off the website.

Simple Machines Forum — SMF in short — is a free, professional grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes.

Anybody trying to sell it to you is scamming you. The official site is here, this is the only place you should download SMF from. http://www.simplemachines.org/

However, websites cost money. While the forum software is free, you're going to have to pay for a server to host it on. You can get a free website running the forum software through smfforfree if you just want to experiment, but if you want people to take your site seriously you're going to have to pay for it. Even then, people won't come unless you've got the content to keep them there.

[Wynd_Fox]

Oh, well, I was guessing. Silly me.

[Radioactive Cat]

-snip-

Locking after someone tells me how to install, the script makes no sense to me.

[zackin5]

This -snip-ing for no reason is starting to drive me crazy.

[Regulith]

This -snip-ing for no reason is starting to drive me crazy.

He didn't want to quote a small text wall, that's a reason.

[Radioactive Cat]

Baump.

[Cody574]

1. Find a webhost. Some may cost, some may not. Make sure it has PHP and MySQL support.
2. Open the control panel. Make a MySQL database and user, set permissions.
3. Extract your SMF .zip and upload it all to the webserver. I recommend using FTP for this.
4. Go to http://yoursite/install and follow the directions.

I would highly recommend using MyBB or phpBB over SMF, though.

Edit: This gave me an idea for a thread - thanks.