Must have mods and theme

[arsibajrami]

Hello,
I am new to SMF, and I am looking after a simple forums' app.
I find an SMF is very good for me.
Need to know what mods are essential for starting a simple board, and I am interested into an RTL theme I just saw.

[shawnb61]

That's difficult to answer, because it really depends on what you want to do with your forum.

E.g., SMF has a youtube embed feature.  But if you envision folks linking to videos from all sorts of sources, maybe you want the Simple Audio Video Embedder.  Maybe you do, maybe you don't...

Do you envision a lot of image embeds or photography?  There are a couple of nice resize/rotation/single click upload mods. 

Giphy support?  Best answer support?  Articles/portal?  It all depends on the purpose of the forum.

To learn which mods are downloaded most often, it may help to browse the mod stats:
https://custom.simplemachines.org/index.php?action=stats#mod_stats

It may also help to just browse all the 2.1 mods here, to learn what's available:
https://custom.simplemachines.org/index.php?action=mods;major_smf_versions%5B0%5D=2.1

My personal suggestion would be to go without anything, & watch what folks do.  Start vanilla. 

[arsibajrami]

Thank you for your response,
I meant if I install vanilla SMF, Do I need to install e.g. Google captcha, I really don't need anything complicated, I used PunBB before, but that one is dead...

[Kindred]

You don't NEED anything.
SMF works just fine by itself.

However,  many admins like to customize their sites with themes or additional functionality.

THAT is up to you.  There is no set of "recommended" mods.

[vbgamer45]

For antispam good questions and answers work the best. Which is built in to SMF.
Otherwise i suggest hcatpcha I find the puzzles more user friendly versus recaptcha

[Nodaz]

For antispam good questions and answers work the best. Which is built in to SMF.
Otherwise i suggest hcatpcha I find the puzzles more user friendly versus recaptcha

I cant find hcatpcha in the mods section.  Can you expand on what it is and how to impliment?

[vbgamer45]

Just install and grab the key from hcaptcha post in the mods topic if you have more questions