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By publicme on
Many regard Drupal as the premier "community" website platform. However, the Drupal forums module isn't nearly as impressive as bulletin board systems like vBulletin, or phpbb, pubbb, or simple machine forum. But aren't those type of bulletin board systems the most popular "community" type platform online, that is, if we exclude the major social networking sites? If a non-technical person wants to sponsor or facilitate an online community today, don't they think hey, I want a discussion board? So, how can Drupal be such a great community platform with a second rate BB system? Shouldn't the forums module at the core of the Drupal application mix -- and be able to compete out of the box with all the great BB systems available today?
Comments
Show me one active bulletin
Show me one active bulletin board system that uses Drupal's forum module besides the one at drupal.org.
...
Your approach leaves much to be desired. It seems very demanding and challenging and you seem to be upset. It may be that Drupal doesn't offer what you want and that's all right, Drupal is not a fit for veryone.
Drupal gives you a lot of capabilities out of the box, true but it also gives you the ability to build a site that looks the way you want it to and not the way every other site looks. This of course depends on your skill set and team. The Drupal project was not established to 'compete' with other packages out of the box. It was established over seven years ago to enable cooperative development between developers, many whom found the tools the Drupal api gave them to be a good fit to their needs.
Drupal gives developers the basic functionality and tools for you to build/assemble the solution that meets your sites and therefore your members needs. Now each iteration of Drupal sees more and more tools being built and added to the core package that lets a wider, less technically proficient user base do neater and more complex things and it still does all this with less then a 2MB download (almost half being images for Garland).
An interesting article for your consideration and their site which uses Drupal forums module.
A random mix of sites, newer and older.
http://www.terminus1525.ca/forum
http://gallery.menalto.com/forum
http://www.opentk.com/forum
http://therevival.eu/forum
http://teamsugar.com/forum
http://musicbox.sonybmg.com/forum
http://www.mtv.co.uk/forum
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Thank you very much for the
Thank you very much for the references. (Okay, I'll tone down the rhetoric.)
My favorite...
http://www.mobilepokernow.com/forum
That's the site that really inspired me and showed me what Drupal forums can do. Pity it doesn't seem to actually be used.
Michelle
--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
features matrix
Thanks for this reference.
I need to step back and closely compare the best examples of Drupal forums to what I'm familiar with in punbb, smf, and phpbb... and define exactly which features are missing - if you take the trouble to hunt down and apply the various forums related modules that extend features. Maybe none.
An interesting article for
An important standard in this article is intelligent code. So, perhaps punBB should have been used for comparison instead of vBulletin. Doesn't punBB offered a much more finely coded option compared to vBulletin?
Does Drupal's "node" architecture precludes Drupal forums from ever having the useful functionalities of the great bbs systems we see today? (I should specify these exact features...) If so, maybe it's pointless to try to make Drupal forums do what it can never do. What are the limits based on the 'node' architecture?
Is there any chance of a core Drupal initiative to take a finely coded bbs like punBB and produce a bridged, template compatible, integrated system with Drupal?
...
That won't happen in core. Drupal has its own forum. I don't expect that ever to change.
As for the features comparasin in your other comment, there's http://groups.drupal.org/node/5470 . It's pretty badly out of date, though. One of the things I'm planning on doing is taking phpbb's feature list and seeing what's still needed in Drupal. I already have a known to do list, though, so I'll get to that when I run out of things to do. :)
[Edit: That table was actually horribly inaccurate. I gave it a quick update, though it could use more work.]
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
What features do you think
What features do you think Drupal's forum should add?
(this is separate from the theme, which I agree is somewhat limited for non-techies)
Take the present Drupal.org
Take the present Drupal.org forum site as an example. Does this forum system facilitate discussions and online learning very effectively compared to any of the fine standard forums in use so much today, such as punbb, smf, phpbb? Right, you want specific features so I'm backing myself into a corner here, so I'll followup with specifics. But regardless, as a user of this forum, do you feel that it functions at the same high level as those common BBSs? Lacking common BBS features, for me, the answer is no. This makes this forum less useful compared to those systems and hence serves as an impediment to learning. So, I continue to find it ironic that a CMS that many regard as the top community website platform has these forum shortcoming. I would expect Drupal to have a standard forum with features that go beyond those systems. Maybe one can add to the core features of Drupal's forum module and have one of those systems, so keep it out of the core in case some don't what forums.. Anyway. If someone wants to know what the easiest, fastest way is to deploy a "community site", while Drupal can be deployed quickly, I'd recommend a open source bbs like simple machine forum. Of course, it depends on what you want to do... but beyond having a Yahoo or Google Groups elist, common BBSs come before Drupal as easy solutions for micro communities. Anyway. For the moment, I'm checking the "Advanced forums" module,
http://drupal.org/project/advanced_forum
I wish I didn't have to enter a subject
From a theme point of view I'm not a fan of the default forum, but on some of the sites above it looks a lot better. It's surprising how much difference a good theme does.
I'm not that familiar with Drupal's forum which was why I asked which features in particular were missing. So far I've noticed 2:
- instant messaging: this is available as a module but actually it's not that necessary as you can use email on here instead, which is better in some ways, depending on the situation.
- sticky/announcement posts: these don't seem to be present.
The big problem with forum software such as phpBB, SMF, vBulletin etc is integrating them into the rest of the CMS. When you consider everything, for a lot of sites I'd choose a simplified forum over integration nightmares.
publishing options
Use the 'Sticky at top of lists' in the Publishing options field set. I think you need edit nodes rights to use this one. The most common messaging one is Private Message (and is listed on the handbooks page but there is also a few different messaging modules as well.
The strength and weakness is that you are not locked into one cookie cutter solution.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Older topic, New reply
I read through and wasn't entirely impressed by the "list" that was asked for. ;)
Private messaging is important, but so is being able to track it for abuses of policies to a given company. That can be sticky. So I've listed some thoughts and suggestion below in addtion to PMs.
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What I find in forums, that I know is currently being poked at from looking at the release notes for Advanced Forum Module, is the ability to "Nest" (Hidden subforums) and "Hide" ( restricted access ) Containters.
Also the ability to limit access by Roles to certain given Containers or Forums. For example:
A Forum with 3 Containers has either 3 Sub-containers/Forums:
*Public (all access for registered and non registered users),
*Members (registered users only),
*Specific (certain roles only)
The 'Specific' Conatainer/Forum can only be seen and accessed by a specific Role. In the base version, straight out of the box, one can do this to some extent. But, being able to limit the Roles more would be a lovely addtion. For example:
Each of these containers have forums which are also limited: Group (say for a club or smaller group within the 'Specific'), faction (a different group within the specific that cannot see the first forum for 'Group', but all 'public' forums in the specific).
~
Nesting, or "Sub Fourms" keeps a forums neat and tidy. It "hides" forums inside a containter but leaves a link so that they can be accessed by those with the proper Roles. This keeps the style and look crisp and neat. Users don't have to scoll through HUGE sections of Forums to get to where they need to be.
Limiting this perhaps on the front page would also be wonderful. Make the "front" of the Forums a set of links instead of boxes, so that users may simply click on where they want to go first.
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Breadcrumb Trailing Links at the top and bottom of a Forum helps keep the user on track and aides with surfing around the forum itself. It's easy to get lost on one of the bigger forums sites.
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User profiles with hidden ( role aceess limited ) sections for security.
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Avatars w/ an avatar Gallery ( which I do believe it already its own Module for teh whole of the site ).
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Rank Images/comments ( controled by favorites, user comments (voting system), or by posts (rank goes up by a given number of posts - people really seem to like this )
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Rating system (voting system) w/stars or some other graphic.
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User-specific Titles (often found under the avatar. This can be used to denote Moderators, Super Users, Admins, or can be customizable by the admins to "say" or display something else. )
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Ability to attach/view media ( again I've found this already in the Modules Section. LOVE IT! )
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Smilies. Yes, smilies. phpBB systems have mod after mod for smilies. People LOVE to make them and share them.
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Sig File Lines ( again I do believe this is a Core Module ).
That's about what I can think of right now. :)
Contrib
I think what many people over look is that Drupal's forum module is just meant to do the actual forum part. A lot of the features found in stand alone forum software are available in crontrib. They just aren't part of the forum module. Looking over your list, I don't see anything that can't be done with contrib modules and a bit of theming.
I've been asking around getting feedback on forums and looking into things and, honestly, I think the only thing Drupal is really lacking when it comes to forums is the back end administration / moderation. That is its weak area. There are some modules that address this, but not fully. Once I get the user facing part of advforum done, that's where my focus is going.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Adminstration / Moderation
From my perspective this can be done through the regular role assignments. Allowing certain user types access to edit user posts (comments), or modify the forum itself.
If kept on that level the User1 user can keep things in check on a site-wide basis.
I like how each modules can be used for different purposes through out the site. That is one of the best features of Drupal, imo. The user Profile isn't -just- for the Forums. Its for all things, like blogs, book content, etc. Beautiful work.
My primary concern for my client is being able to limit forum access on a more specific level. Out of the box, there is only 2 levels. Admin, and basic user wherein either you can see and write to the forums as a whole, or you can't.
What I'd like to do is have them limited by Container, and then by Forums. But I do know, from following the updates on Advforum, that is one of the sections that has caused problems. Something about it interferring with Taxonomy?
The subforums ( hiding them ) I think might be doable as a CSS feature. Much like sliding menus, where the link, once clicked "reveals" a section of the forums.
I'll be following along, as this is a rather important feature. I just wish I knew more about the code itself. :( I'm a slow learner, still picking up PHP.., urgh. ;)
Thanks
The comments in this thread are very encouraging. Thanks.
Halca's Comparison
To help define this "list", see Halca's "Comparison of current forum software",
http://groups.drupal.org/node/5470
I see it has most of it
I see it has most of it listed. Nice nice.
Still don't see the limited access to specific forums or contaniers. phpBB does this naturally as part of the back end administration. I can limit access to specific forums inside the main forum group by "roles" as well as by individual users.
*sits and watches* Wish I knew more coding, otherwise I'd give more helpful commentary. ;) *chuckles*
Oh and the note on Smilies vs emoticons. As far as I understand it they are one in the same. IE: Little graphic images representing emotions of various sorts. Size and place doesn't entirely matter, as they can be found in forums, blogs, chat-rooms, and webpages across the net in different usages. :)
...
You want the forum access module for the first part.
I think emoticons are tecnically the actual keyboard symbols but I'm not sure. But I assumed he meant smileys in the list, which is why I changed it to list that module.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Forum Access Module?
Is that part of 6.1 Core?
Or is it still in dev stages for 6?
Smileis Vs Emotis: Semantics, of a sort. The keyboard symbols creates a graphic representation of a face when viewed a certain way. ASCII Art, if you will. They may not be .jog, or .gif images, but they are, by artistic definition, 'graphic' representations of a face. :)
*hides* I'll shush up now. ;)
*chuckles*
...
Forum got a few more permissions in core in D6 but you still need the forum access module for more advanced access control. I don't know if it's been ported to 6.x yet. I really haven't looked at D6 much beyond porting advforum because it's useless to me until cck, views, and panels are ready.
As for the emoticon/smiley thing... What I was saying is that when the original dude made that forum comparason list, he put "no" for emoticons. But we have a smileys module which, to me, is basically the same thing as emoticons, so I changed the "no" to "smileys" to indicate the module to use for it.
Michelle
--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Find all posts by
It's cumbersome to find all recent posts by a member. For example, I'm interested in the following the tense discussion between JohnFor... and "Steve", as I decided to try Steve's Drupal hosting service and would like to see if John's skepticism has any merits. So, I find JohnFor's account profile through any means possible and then view Track. I see that he's posted in the past 24 hours in the hosting threads, but where? From what I can tell, I can neither easily jump to Johnfor's posts or sort his posts, so I can read what's he's said most recently. In contrast, vBulletin has a link "Find all posts by..." which neatly lists all related posts.
Am I missing something with Drupal forums? I hope so.
(Sorry, I meant for this post to be a reply to the earlier request for missing features. Shouldn't I have a small window to delete a post? If so, I would have quickly fixed this error.)
Am I missing something with
No, you're not missing something here. It's because in Drupal forum posts are comments, only the first post is a node. Unfortunate.
This, if the community does the work, will hopefully be fixed in Drupal 7. Am not sure if you could rig something up using Node Comments in the meantime.
We all need to pitch in and make the forums better in seven, otherwise things will never improve. Keeping an eye on the DruBB group is a good start. My friendly advice is not to spend your time and energy talking about the lack of features, save them until you can help make the forum module better. :)
We all know Drupal's forum software sucks in many ways, but talking about it doesn't fix the problem. We don't expect everyone to be code wizards, and I'm not saying RTFM, write code or shuddup n00b! Because there's tonnes of stuff everyone can do to make Drupal better, no matter what level you're at. :)
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Web Design, GNU/Linux and Drupal.
Just talk...
Thanks for the DruBB reference.
I joined Webmaster-Forums.net, which uses Drupal forum, and it's very close to being perfect. (BTW, the top menu there doesn't render properly in Opera 9.26 for XP , and actually is almost unusable.) Anyway. Are there any systematic studies of the most desirable forum features with a comparison of how Drupal forum stacks up?
ForumMatrix.or might be a good starting point.
http://www.forummatrix.org/
Drupal forums,... not even listed there.
BTW, the top menu there
Rest assured, Opera is my main browser, so this will be fixed. For some reason it works in 9.25 and Firefox 2.somethingorother. Thanks muchly for reporting this though! :)
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Web Design, GNU/Linux and Drupal.
(BTW, the top menu there
Just upgraded my Opera and tested this problem, the menu worked for me. Thought it might be a problem with the Windows version of Opera so tested using 9.26 on Windows and couldn't reproduce the problem. :(
Maybe try deleting your cache and try again? :-/
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Web Design, GNU/Linux and Drupal.
Back bench bitching
I'm not bitching just to bitch. I started a small rural/village area online community in 1996 based on a static website and a simple Yahoo Groups list added in 1998, which has grown to 170 members with active daily posts. This community went from one admin (me) to a new non-profit board in the past couple years with four members and some semi-technical participants, expanding our online presence to a MediaWiki platform for community documentation. But MediaWiki "doesn't do" forums, and members did not want to try to use Yahoo Groups as a forums app (which it can adapted to...), so now we have a phpBB system too. Add to this our Google Account for community calendars, email, and more... plus this, plus that, plus. Now, we have an impossibly disintegrated community platform that's blocking our progress. So, I'm pushing for a leap to Drupal, and while I've known about/messed with Drupal for 2+ years and have been telling the group that this is the direction we need to go... I MUST hesitate because forums are lacking. Everything's great, except the one application that most people in the online world regard as the killer "community" application -- forums -- lags behind in Drupal. I can only guess that the core problem here isn't a technical problem with Drupal nodes, but that the technical experts w/Drupal have shut out the bitching from the back benches and it's only now sinking in that it must be fixed. Imagine, the best community platform in the world with a sub-par discussion area. Yet maybe I'm too harsh is this estimation, though my use of these forums seems to indicate they could be more useful.
actually no
You just posted above that Webmaster-Forums.net was perfect for you and that's Drupal. So stop bitching and roll up your sleeves and start working on your implementation.
This is Open Source software at it's most kitty herding chaotic. People work on that which interests them and they contribute as they feel for their own reasons. No one owes you anything and your bitching without solving things just drives away anyone who would be interested in offering to help you. After a while, they learn that there are those who will bite them and they avoid them like the plague.
Frankly you probably could have built your test site already and had most of the functionality but instead you post demand after demand after complaint when you could have been asking more specific questions germane to your install.
Your needs and your reasons for your needs are not necessarily anyone else's, but many people may have been willing to help you already. Your behavior is driving us away.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
I can only guess that the
This is a common misconception when it comes to Free software. You see there is no difference, no barricade, between you and the 'technical experts'. For example: I've been using Drupal for less time than you, but have already made some contributions to making the forums better. It's not just coding that counts either, everyone can contribute: test patches, help on the forums, help in IRC, clean up the issue queues (there's always outdated stuff on there that needs to be marked 'fixed', duplicate bugs etc.), even check the wiki on http://groups.drupal.org/drubb see if there's anything you can do there, the list goes on.
There are no 'technical experts' in the divisory way this says it. It's just you, me, Steven Peck here, and the rest of the Drupal community. Granted there are those that know PHP and those who don't, but those who don't generally have many other talents the Drupal project needs. If the Forum module needs to be improved it's not going to happen unless you make it happen (and by 'you', I mean anyone in the Drupal community that's reading this).
I wonder how many man hours we've collectively wasted talking about this subject? We could have been doing something to help the Drupal community! Talk, at this level, is for politicians and people who'd rather complain than get stuff done: let's drop the talk and get on with some real work! :D
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Web Design, GNU/Linux and Drupal.
No CMS has a good forum.
No CMS has a good forum. Joomla does not have one either (fireboard is not as good as phpbb3, say). I think the best is to integrate a good forum (such as vBulletin, SMF, phpbb3) with drupal.
Real lack of good solutions
Integrating a forum will always pose problems down the line if you're the kind of person who likes to always have the latest version. I've looked at great length at the options for Joomla, WordPress etc and none of the integration packages are the kind of thing you'd feel safe with 5 years down the line. Fireboard is one of the most credible efforts but the last time I checked didn't have private messaging as standard so you're still relying on 3rd party plugins to hack it all together.
Overall Drupal forum is worth the limitations as it is bundled with the install and you know you are safe long term, and this is more important than features for me. But then you're also held back by other Drupal such as the continued separation of CCK, image handling and Views, as I really think these should be adopted in the core for long term support. Obviously this is a matter of opinion but for me I really prefer using a CMS where the default install can do everything you need and you can just keep upgrading the software and know you're safe.
SMF?
What about the Simple Machine Forum and Drupal integration effort?
SMF 1.1 and Drupal 5 live demo
http://drupal.org/node/112116 | A discussion which died suddenly
SMFforum Integration module
http://drupal.org/project/smfforum | The project page which shows some recent activity
I'd likely value the integrated templating of Drupal Forums over the effectiveness of an integrated SMF -- where you have to jump to what looks like a second site.
The thing I find the
The thing I find the greatest about the Drupal project is the consistency of it's user groups courteous attitude twoard malcontents such as yourself. Sorry if that was a bit harsh, but give me a break - if this or that bulletin board has better features than Drupal's forum, then use them instead of griping about what you preceive as the shortcommings of a fraction of what Drupal can do. In fact, you could link to it from your Drupal site. The term CMS encompasses a whole lot more than forums. These BBs you speak of were developed with a MUCH more narrowed focus. So either help out by contributing as stated in the above posts, or go away. BTW, I didn't enter a subject for this reply - if you had been around long enough, you would have known better I guess.
Negative?
I made a positive comment here, stating that I'd prefer to have an integrated forum using Drupal forum -- which may not meet all of my needs -- than to use a bridged solution (using SMF). I'd prefer to not divide up a site like that. Yet, you perceive this as negative. Add to this the other overtures here to corrent how I state things and to reduce any negative comments and it adds up to a fairly defensive group of participants. Maybe this defensiveness suggests some ineffective underlying communication strategies. Maybe it's better to let negative comments flow and even encourage them. Anyway. I've refrained from going off on an endless rant or attacking anyone personally. I'm making an honest attempt to publicly consider a decision I need to make for a particular community site I'm working on. This this thread has added some useful information yet I still have not decided what the best route is. Occasionally, a group needs to find a scapegoat... That's fine, if you must. Let it rip.
The auto subject can be
The auto subject can be really annoying depending on the start of the post, and cutting off a word at the end can totally change the meaning of a sentence. I don't see why there needs to be a subject at all, obviously one could hide that in the CSS but it's inescapable on here.
That SMF integration looks pretty good. I only had a quick look but over time you're basically going to get stuck using an old version of Drupal and or SMF when they come along and change the code. By using integration software you're totally putting your faith into a module that has no guaranteed long term support or compatibility. Take these two examples:
- Many people were using Joomla with SMF, however changes to the SMF license meant Joomla decided to stop supporting the integration. Their homepage now uses phpBB3 and for most people changes like that are major events that you never want to do.
- There is a plugin called WP-United which is a integration tool for phpBB and WordPress, however the various changes to phpBB's code have broken the plugin and despite this tool having it's own dedicated forum and website the author has vanished leaving everyone in the lurch.
Given the unofficial nature of integration packages they just aren't worth it unless perhaps if you have an existing forum and you want to try Drupal. From a ground-up perspective the default Drupal Forum module is better if you want good maintainability.
I don't think there's anything wrong with criticism as long as it's constructive and specific.
...
That auto subject thing bugs me too. I usually put dots in unless I happen to think of a subject. :)
I agree that using bridges can be dangerous. Any time you are trying to mesh two different applications you are opening yourself up for trouble. I did that with G2. I upgraded G2 without checking to be sure the gallery module supported the latest and now I'm stuck with a broken implementation. I can't downgrade G2 so I had to stop using the module.
Personally, I wouldn't use separate forum software without a compelling reason. If you have an existing forum and then want to add Drupal (which is actually why I had G2 integrated) then it could make sense. Or if you have a really active forum and the back end tools aren't enough (common complaint). But I think Drupal's forum will work for most people if they just give it a try. Most of the things people complain about are actually easily changed. I've been watching the complaints for a while and the only complaint that I don't have a good answer for at this point is the back end tools. Moving multiple comments around and merging threads and more specialized needs like that just don't have good solutions, yet. But, if you can live without that for the moment, the Drupal forum is a good choice.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
...
Hey the ... is a great idea! Thanks.
I'd also stop focusing on convincing the community on what you think is the best forum wise. If you look through the posts, you will see this is a reoccurring theme. The same is true for a lot of other areas of functionality where there is a more narrowly focused project that someone likes better than Drupal.
One of the things that attracted me to Drupal, aside from the great community, was its architectural philosophy. I like that they focus on keeping the core small, yet you can have a usable site out of the box. I like the modular approach. This also means that it takes more work to figure out what module(s) that extend Drupal best suits your needs. It can be a pain, but it is better than the alternative. It also makes it easier to extend Drupal yourself and/or build a bridge module for things that don't suit you.
There are several areas where I rely on software other than Drupal because my needs are different. C'est la vie.
However, if your focus is to list what you feel are the shortcomings vs. other software you will get some blowback because it's probably already been said before, it gets tiring after a while, you have the option of using that other software if you wish, you can create your own module to suit your specific needs or you can build a bridge to your 'superior' solution. Nobody here is forcing you to use Drupal. Nobody here is saying that it is the only answer, just an answer that happens to be a very good answer for a lot of cases.
Don't confuse your needs with everybody's needs, because they aren't the same and they never will be. It's impossible to satisfy everyone, the world is too complex. As suggested before role up your sleeves and get address what you believe to be the shortcomings or use the 'superior' projects you are referencing.
And yes, a lot of us have used some of those projects and may even use some of them for certain implementations, when needs require it. Drupal is not meant to be the ideal solution for everything, no product can be. However, in terms of CMS and websites, it is the best solution for a lot of situations.
Good luck.
Eh?
You lost me... I'm not trying to convince anyone what the best forum software is. I certainly don't think Drupal is the best forum software but I do think it's good enough for most peoples' needs. All I was saying is that bridges can be a real pain and it's a lot easier to use native Drupal solutions unless you have a compelling reason not to.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Sorry, I was referring to OP
and not to you, I was just thanking you for the ... idea.
I agree with what you said in your post about being careful about using bridge modules.
My apologies for the confusion, I should be more careful, or separate out the different parts. It's probably time for me to have an Old Style ;)
Btw, your site is currently throwing an error. Looks like the devel module
I reread my post that you
I reread my post that you were responding to and yes, I definitely need to parse my posts more carefully because it does look like it was directed to you and I don't see how anybody would read it as otherwise.
Sorry, it wasn't!
...
It's ok. One of the reasons I don't care for threaded forums. ;)
Which site has an error?
Michelle
--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
couleeregiononline.com
couleeregiononline.com
I keep forgetting these are threaded...that's my excuse & I'm sticking with it! ;)
Gah
Dang devel... It was only throwing that error for people without access to devel. So of course I didn't see it. Sigh. I've had devel on all day because I was trying to track down a problem this morning. :(
Thanks for letting me know,
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
NP. I never realized that
NP. I never realized that was the name of that region. Learn something new all the time!
And Brett Favre retiring is good for Chicago!
The only problem with Favre is that he was a Packer. He's one of the greats and the game will miss him.
Coulee Region
It's an informal name so probably not known much outside the area. Anyway, we're really dragging this thread horribly off topic. If you want to chat more, feel free to sign up on the site. :)
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Back on topic
Please. ;-)
Look at CiviCRM. They provide one of the most powerful and esteemed Drupal modules -- for client relationship management. What do they use for forums on their Drupal site? For less technical discussions, they use a SMF (Simple Machine Forum) installation and for developer discussions, Nabble. (Nabble has been off my radar screen but it seems to offer a great solution for an "embedded" forum in a Drupal site. This leaves the split login problem and it seems unfortunate that CiviCRM has to split their discussion community like this.)
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I'm not familiar with CiviCRM (heard of it, of course, but never used it or looked at their site) but it seems kind of silly to use two different forum packages. I'm not entirely sure of the point here... There's lots of examples of people not using Drupal's forums but that doesn't mean they aren't usable. :) Though they are much better with threading turned off and this line getting narrower and narrower is a good example of why.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Let the issue die?
Someone needs to keep beating the drum on this issue. Those of us who like Drupal but recognize that it's forum module represents a step backwards from the common BBSs, which our users are so happy to use..., we need to have answers when they ask, "Why can't we just use a normal BBS?" Will Drupal Forum catch up eventually? Does the node architechure of Drupal mean it can never function as efficiently as punbb, phpbb, smf? Anyway. I continue to be very uncertain about whether a small community site should use a bridged forum or Drupal's built-in forum. My intuition tells me that I could work hard to make Drupal forum seem as useful but in the end it won't function as well -- so I should just commit to using something else. This seems to be the conclusion of a major Drupal user, CiviCRM. At this time, the most interesting option seems to be Nabble, which you can embed in a Drupal page very easily. If there were an easy login bridge, that would be the answer for me. SMF and others would require too much templating work. Alternately, I can hope that Google Groups suddenly offers an embeddable option similar to Nabble.
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Are you still complaining and not contributing? Just contribute something already. Your isolated example ignores the wealth of Drupal based forums I have already given you that do function as a 'normal' BBS. It ignores the countless hours of work by people willing to actually contribute instead of complain. What CivicCRM does as a project is not what Drupal does as a project. their aims/goals are different then ours so the parallel isn't really there.
Do something. Work on your mythological bridge module that will do everything or work on using Drupal's forum module improvements.... For goodness sake, this constant complaining when you are obviously unwilling to do something is just simply counterproductive.
Your intuition is just wrong. You could have built your site in the time you've spent complaining.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
I'm contributing by trying
I'm contributing by trying to make as clear as possible the evidence suggesting a serious flaw. Beyond this, I helped, in a cordial manner, to debug Sky theme a bit and I'll help on other things if/when I can. I also contributed $50 to DA. I am working on my site (1-2 hours per day), which might have some value, but mostly by showing how complainers like me can still make use of Drupal as an application framework, with a focus on easy, innovative, and effective alternatives to certain modules that I expect will not do. And though, as you suggest, my intuition isn't valid, others in this very thread have made outright conclusions in the negative on the issue, so at least my questioning, uncertain approach reflects a degree of openmindedness, that forums MIGHT work okay. (My current testing suggests otherwise.) As for the mythological bridge, maybe OpenID can work somehow with an embedded Nabble forum. I'll research and test these options and try to show them in my site (maybe) so others can try to evaluate this objectively as well -- not academically, but as a way to make decisions about what to use in their sites. As far as you reacting to my negative comments here, essentially by telling me to shut up, that's a learning issue and I'm sure an ineffective and unproductive approach, as effective organizations seek to maximize valid information, don't attempt to quiet the 'negatives'.
Huh?
Who said anything about letting it die? There are a few of us actively working on the forums and we hope to whip it into shape by D7. I'm really not sure of the point of this thread anymore. Are you just trying to make sure we don't forget or something? LOL! Trust me, my issue queue doesn't let me forget about the forums. :P
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Thread ended. Sorry, I'll
Thread ended.
Sorry, I'll be more productive with my posts in the future.