SMF (simple machines forum) requirements for the installation and running the forum.
2.5MB of storage are recommended by the SMF but we advise to have at least 100 MB. This will give you enough space to experiment with mods, themes and allow enough room for the database
SMF runs well on any web server that supports PHP. Either Apache or IIS would be a good choice.
Recommended Web Servers
- Apache 1 or 2 with AcceptPathInfo directive on in Apache 2 which will enable query-less support for the URLs.
- Microsoft IIS 6 or 7
Recommended Database Servers
- MySQL 3.23.4 and up.
- MySQL4.0.15 and up with enabled query caching
Recommended PHP versions
- PHP4.1.0 and up.
- PHP4.3.0 and up.
An important note is to have resiter_globals off to ensure the proper speed of the forum, otherwise it will crawl.
We do not recommend going with older software due to security issues.
Our choice of the best packages to run SMF is either our managed shared hosting or GoEasy plan both of them have been fine-tuned to run SMF. A lot of people recommend these as a perfect platform for SMF web hosting.