By theRatWonder@community.activestate.com on

I don't think the default drupal forum looks very nice. It doesn't look like a forum at all, and subsequently it's a lot harder for people to get used to.

This is obviously because a drupal forum is just a page with comments. I think this is wrong. Conceptually. A forum topic isn't a page with comments, it's a different sort of page altogether. Each individual post is just as important as the original question, therefore all posts should be the same type of element as the original post.

To me it seems like the forum module that comes with Drupal was something that was just tacked on the end because someone couldn't be bothered to write a whole new forum module. So, I thought, someone must have written a proper self-contained forum module since then, that looks more like phpbb or something and has similar functionality - all I have to do is search for it. But half an hour searching around the modules page and no joy.

Someone mentioned in a post a while back that I could use flatforum (http://drupal.org/project/flatforum), which apparently amends the forum module to make it look nice - but presumably still doesn't add any more functionality. I tried to install this and couldn't get it to work. I guess this must be because flatforum states in its requirements "Flatforum requires a theme based on the phptemplate engine". Does anyone know if there's a way I can easily change my theme to be based on the phptemplate engine? It's my own hand-written theme, so I'd rather not have to change it drastically.

I know this is all quite demanding of me, but it's very important. By the way, here's where I want to use the forum: http://www.lbss.org.uk/forum

Thanks guys.

Robin

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

vm’s picture

vm commented

To me it seems like the forum module that comes with Drupal was something that was just tacked on the end because someone couldn't be bothered to write a whole new forum module.

Drupal is a CMS/CMF not a forum, as such the main focus isn't forum centric. That is not to say that the forum.module isn't viewed as important, or is viewed as an after thought. It just means development is not centered around the forum.module. Developers of Drupal have not set out to reinvent forum scripts. Also keep in mind that anyone who want's to expand on the forum.module may do so and suppply patches for it the same way patches are supplied for every other part of Drupal. Many complain about the forum.module however, very few actually step up to do anything about their complaints.

To address some of your other statements/questions/points:

There is a forum replacement module called UIEforum. (I've never tested it to be able to comment on it byond mentioning it)

There is also a group discussing the desires to expand on Drupal forum.module on groups.drupa.org. The group is called DRUBB

Extended functionality comes in the form of modules work on the forums, as they do with other content types. ie: file attachments, images, filters ....

The release of Drupal 6 will make themeing a bit easier and more powerful as you will have for your themeing pleasure

forum-icon.tpl.php 
forum-list.tpl.php 
forum-submitted.tpl.php 
forum-topic-list.tpl.php 
forum-topic-navigation.tpl.php 
forums.tpl.php

Though one can already accomplish much of this themeing for versions of Drupal previous to Drupal 6 by using the methods outlined here: http://drupal.org/node/154320

Of course if the above isn't considered "easy". You can choose to go the method of a 3rd party forum by using one of the mutiple forum integration modules in the downloads area including but not limited to FUDforum, PHPBB & SMF. However using a bridge like this means your forums are no longer tighly integrated into drupal. Example, searching.

I guess this must be because flatforum states in its requirements "Flatforum requires a theme based on the phptemplate engine". Does anyone know if there's a way I can easily change my theme to be based on the phptemplate engine? It's my own hand-written theme, so I'd rather not have to change it drastically.

provided you have not changed the theme engine from phptemplate (which is core) to another theme engine, like smarty for which you would need to install the smarty theme engine. Then you are already using the phptemplate engine. That being said, we'd need to know more about "what didn't work" to help you get past the installation problems you were having with the flatforum.module

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theRatWonder@community.activestate.com’s picture

theRatWonder@community.activestate.com commented

Thanks VeryMisunderstood.

I have now installed UIEForum and it seems to cover most of what I wanted. The rest I can probably tweak in the CSS or something.

I did see a discussion on UIE forum http://drupal.org/node/38830 which was very interesting. I can see people are arguing that this forum duplicates a lot of what's already contained in drupal, and so ideally I would move back over to using the forum module when I have time to get it to work how I want.

You see the issue is not that I can't be bothered to understand the current forum module and get it to work for me, it's just that I don't have time right now. I am extremely busy with work, but people have been complaining about the forum on my site and I just needed a quick fix to get it to work properly.

Ultimately I would like to understand the whole of drupal, and help in its development, but I need to sort out my life so I have some free time before that can happen.

Thanks again for your help.

Robin

daniel.hunt’s picture

daniel.hunt commented

You should keep in mind that there are no scripts available for moving your UIEForum posts/threads/forums over to Drupal, or vice versa, so simply moving back to the Drupal forum may not be as easy as you think.

onlineguy’s picture

onlineguy commented

I checked out your forum(s), and I wonder if you'd put an update here to show newbies like me what you did to make it look so nice. Well done. :)

vm’s picture

vm commented

The forum prettifier of choice these days is http://drupal.org/project/advanced_forum