Posted by davejjj on September 23, 2012 at 3:33pm
I don't understand the organization here. If I don't like the standard forum in Drupal how can I find a list of modules that offer improved forums? When I go to Modules Search there isn't even a module category for Forums. Uh, forums are a super-important feature. Why is there no category for them?
Comments
Have you tried searching for
Have you tried searching for the term 'forum'?
Jaypan We build websites
Yes of course I did, but
Yes of course I did, but there is no way to search only the module title so you end up with all sorts of things; Views, Webform, Links, Slideshow, Page Title, Nice Menus, etc...
You need an advanced search.
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all of the aforementioned modules can be used to extend the core forum module. Thus, the results shouldn't be considered irrelevant.
views.module to make lists of comments or new threads on a specific form or all forums. These lists can be put into pages or blocks.
link.module to add a url field to the forum content type.
nicemenus.modue to enhance forum menu navigation.
pagetitle.module to add page titles to the forum content type to enhance forum SEO.
multiple filter modules are returned in the results as those filters can be used on the forum content type
multiple modules that integrate with taxonomy are returned in the results as they can be used on the forum taxonomy
and so on with access modules, workflow modules ..... as well as others.
It's worthy to note that Drupal has never been forum centric in its development. There are other scripts developed for the purposes of a forum centric website. Interestingly many of those scripts are gravitating more toward CMS's than CMS's toward forums. Which isn't to say that a forum can't be built with drupal. However if the expectation is a forum centric drupal build that rivals SMF, PHPBB, or Vb, you likely won't arrive at that want. There are bridge modules in the repo that aid in providing different levels of integration with forum centric scripts like PHPBB, though this type of integration also has it's draw backs. The main draw back being that two totally different scripts need to be maintained.
If you haven't already, try
If you haven't already, try searching for forums but change the search to "relevancy" rather than the default "most installed".
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beyond jaypan's advice, forum are expanded on like all other parts of drupal. forums are essentially a taxonomy and a content type. comment notify module for example would work on forum comments as well as all other comments, and so on.
And here's a link to Advanced
And here's a link to Advanced Forum, which is the most-used contrib forum module.
Yes
Yes, I did find the Advanced Forum, but now how can I tell how it differs from the older UIE Forum? Everything here seems to be written in "Drupalese" but where is the glossary or plain-English translation?
Drupal forums look like blogs. Someone makes an initial post and then everyone else just "comments" on that post.
Thanks
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That's because all content types (forum, blog, article, etc) are just that-- content types.
But don't confuse appearance with function. Forums (or any other content type and content lists) can look like whatever you want. You're only limited by your imagination and css styling skills.
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