I know that it is real SMF, but lets say u download it from simplemachines.com, that real smf
taking off my Mod hat here:
fishy until about 2 weeks ago I had an smf forum myself. I had downloaded the software months and months ago, installed it and ran it for awhile. It was never open to the public and was there only as a learning experience. I had no intention of moving my forum there as we would lose so much that we have built up for two years now and its not worth it to do that.
To be honest the things SMF has added for us made it very easy to use. For instance the way we can edit the Headers and Footers. I have used 3 different hosting companys, different software, and had nothing but issues with the others. (and alot less options)
The nice thing is that if something does mess up he CAN fix it and knows HOW to fix it. Nice to run it for yourself but you then have yourself to figure out how to fix things when mods conflict, when it crashes. When things dont work correctly.
Mod hats back on:
As I said we have exhausted this issue. He is not about to let us install our own mods, do many of the things you could do if you run it yourself.
Lets move on to other things.