Features and Options is the section of the Administration Center for editing core forum related settings that help to change the way in which you want your forum to behave.

General

• Poll mode - This selects whether polls are enabled or not. If polls are disabled, any existing polls will be hidden from the topic listing. You can choose to continue to show regular topics without their polls by selecting "Show Existing Polls as Topics". To choose who can post polls, view polls, and similar abilities, you can change the permissions for those membergroups. If polls are not working on your forum, check to see if they are enabled.
• Allow guests to browse the forum - If selected, guests will have the privilege of browsing your forum. Otherwise, only registered users will be allowed to browse your forum and when a guest tries to access the forum they will see a login screen with a note that the forum is only for registered members.
• Enable buddy/ignore lists - If this is selected, users can choose to add members to their buddy or ignore list. Adding members to these lists helps in controlling the mail and PM traffic according to each user's profile settings. Additionally, posts from users in the ignore list are replaced by a message informing that the member is ignored along with the option to show the message.
• Allow users to edit their displayed name - Enabling this separates Username from Name (also known as display name or real name) and gives users the ability to change the latter. Username will always be the one used for logging in.
• Allow non-administrators to hide their online status - With this option enabled, all members will be able to hide their online status from other users (except from administrators). If disabled, only users who can moderate the forum can hide their presence. Note that disabling this option will not change any existing member's status - it just stops them from hiding themselves in the future.
• Enable custom titles - Enabling Custom Titles will allow members with the relevant permissions to create a special title for themselves. This will be shown underneath the display name in posts made by that member.
  For example:
  Jeff
  Cool Guy
• Enable buddy lists - Allows members to add buddies.
• Default personal text - Sets the default text a user will have as their "personal text." This will be shown underneath their avatar when posting.
• Maximum allowed characters in signatures - Sets the number of characters a member can have in their signature.
• Search engine friendly URLs - This changes the format of forum related URLs a little, so search engines will index them easier. They will look like index.php/topic,1.html. This only works for Apache and Lighttpd.
• Default time format - Administrators have the power to adjust how the time and date are displayed on the forum. Registered users can also set a different format in their profile. The conventions follow PHP's strftime function and are described as below (more details can be found at PHP.net).
  The following characters are recognized in the format string:
  %a - abbreviated weekday name
  %A - full weekday name
  %b - abbreviated month name
  %B - full month name
  %d - day of the month (01 to 31)
  %D* - same as %m/%d/%y
  %e* - day of the month (1 to 31)
  %H - hour using a 24-hour clock (range 00 to 23)
  %I - hour using a 12-hour clock (range 01 to 12)
  %m - month as a number (01 to 12)
  %M - minute as a number
  %p - either "am" or "pm" according to the given time
  %R* - time in 24 hour notation
  %S - second as a decimal number
  %T* - current time, equal to %H:%M:%S
  %y - 2 digit year (00 to 99)
  %Y - 4 digit year
  %Z - time zone or name or abbreviation
   %% - a literal '%' character
  * Does not work on Windows-based servers.
• Default number format - You can use this setting to format the way in which numbers on your forum will be displayed to the user. The format of this setting is 1,234.00. Where , is the character used to split up groups of thousands, . is the character used as the decimal point, and the number of zeros dictate the accuracy of rounding.
• Overall time offset - Not all forum administrators want their forum to use the same time zone as the server upon which it is hosted. Use this option to specify a time difference (in hours) from which the forum should operate from the server time. Negative and decimal values are permitted.
• Failed login threshold - Sets the number of times a member of the forum can fail attempting to login before having to reset their password.
• User online time threshold - Sets the number of minutes to show the people who are active during x number of minutes on the board index. The default is 15 minutes.
• Track daily statistics - This will allow users to see the latest posts and the most popular topics on your forum. It will also show several statistics, like the most members online at a time, recent new members, and recent new topics.
• Track daily page views (must have stats enabled) - Adds another column to the stats page with the number of hits (viewers) on a page on your forum.
• Enable error logging - This will log any errors, such as a failed login, so that you can see what went wrong.
• Disable administration security - This disables the additional password check for the administration section. This is not recommended!
• Require reactivation after e-mail change - When this option is checked all members who change their email address in their profile will have to reactivate their account from an email sent to that address.
• Require admin approval when member deletes account - An administrator must approve any member accounts which are submitted for deletion.
• Allow users to disable announcements - This will allow users to disallow administrators from sending e-mail notification of posts sent out as announcements. (This can be overridden, but it is not advised. See the News and newsletters page of this wiki.)
• Don't allow post text in notifications? - This feature removes the option to receive the text of replies and posts in notification e-mails. Often, members will reply to the notification e-mail, which, in most cases, means the webmaster receives the reply.
• Log moderation actions - Logs all moderation actions.
• Max width of posted pictures - Sets the the maximum width of pictures.
• Max height of posted pictures - Sets the maximum height of pictures.
• Enable reporting of personal messages - Allows members to report personal messages to the administrator.
• Maximum number of recipients allowed in a personal message - Sets the maximum number of members to whom a message can be sent.
• Post count under which users must enter code when sending personal messages - Sets the number of posts which a user must reach to stop having to enter a code before sending a personal message.
• Number of personal messages a user may send in an hour - Sets the maximum number of personal messages a member may send within one hour.

(Layout and options in 1.1)

The Layout page has settings specific to the layout of your forum, such as whether to show the "Go Up" and "Go Down" links inside topics and whether to show "Today" and "Yesterday" in place of the actual date when those conditions are true.

• Limit number of displayed page links - This will just show a selection of the number of pages.
• Contiguous pages to display - This affects the way in which page numbers are displayed
  Example:
  "3" to display: 1 ... 4 [5] 6 ... 9
  "5" to display: 1 ... 3 4 [5] 6 7 ... 9
• Enable "Today" feature - This will show "Today" or "Yesterday" instead of the date.
• Enable Go Up/Go Down buttons - This will add "Go Up" and "Go Down" buttons, so that member can go to the top and bottom of a page without scrolling.
• Show online/offline in posts and PMs - This will show an image to indicate whether the member is online or offline.
• Show a quick login on every page - This will show a more compact login menu on every page of the forum for guests. It works only if SP1 stats is off.
• Members per page in member list - This shows how many members per page you would like to show in member list.
• Display time taken to create every page - This will show the time (in seconds) SMF took to create that page at the bottom of the board. For example, "Page created in 0.132 seconds with 7 queries."
• Disable hostname lookups - This disables host name lookups, which on some servers are very slow. Note that this will make banning less effective.
• Enable who's online list - This option allows you to turn on or off the ability for users to see who is browsing the forum and what they are doing. You can reach it by clicking on the online icon found in the info center.

Karma

Karma is an optional feature that shows the popularity of a certain member. The administrator can enable this from core features. When members are allowed, they can Applaud or Smite a member to raise or lower that member's karma.

• Karma mode - This option is to select how the karma feature will be used in the forum:
  • Disable Karma - Disables the use of this feature.
  • Enable Karma Total - Makes SMF show only the total of points received.
  • Enable Karma Positive/Negative - Shows the positive points as well as the negative points for the user.
• Set the minimum posts needed to modify karma: Administrators can set a minimum number of posts that a user must have before raising or lowering someone's karma.
• Set wait time in hours: This is the time that an administrator specifies before a user can modify karma again.
• Restrict administrators to wait time: This specifies whether the forum administrators are restricted by the time limit.
• Karma label - Here administrators can define the label that is shown for the karma field in profile and posts (default karma:).
  • Karma applaud label - The text that appears in the link to increase the karma of a user (default [applaud]).
  • Karma smite label - The text that appears in the link to decrease the karma of a user (default [smite]). Removing the text from this box will hide the "smite" link, resulting in something similar to disable smite, but the function will still be active and usable.