Forum dependency of comment module not clear

I'm having the same problem with both 4.6 and HEAD.

Further description of the issue:
If I hit "Post new forum topic" from either the root forum (node/add/forum/0) or any of the sub-sections, I can enter the topic information and the topic node gets created, but it is disembodied from the forum. It does not show up in any of the forum listings, but it shows up in 'My forum discussions' and 'Active forum discussions'.

Very odd.

-Jeff

I have the same problem. It's been reported for quite a while now, but no one seems to have found a solution. I will keep checking back at this page to see if anyone has gotten it to work.

Also having the same problem, but... One thing I noticed by curiousity - if I create a new site and enable the forums before putting in any content then they seem to work just fine. But when I start to build the site (adding content and modules, etc) then it breaks again and won't display any topics. (As well, no-one seems to have mentioned that it does say on the forum page that there's -1 new topic, that's MINUS 1??? Weird...)

Paul

I'm also experiencing this problem. Forum posts don't show up when looking at the forum overview page. I also get the "-1" number of new posts. The posts are visible when searching on the specific taxonomy term though. I downgraded to 4.5.3 to get a working forum again.

Same here, but only logged as admin. When I login as user i get following error:

pg_query(): Query failed: ERROR: invalid input syntax for integer: "" in /web/www/htdocs/iaeste/includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 45.

INSERT INTO node (title, body, format, uid, type, teaser, status, moderate, promote, sticky, comment, created, changed, nid) VALUES('auto', 'asdsad', '1', '2', 'forum', 'asdsad', '1', '', '', '', '2', '1118794753', '1118794753', '43') in .../../includes/database.pgsql.inc on line 62.

So its the old one, somebody is trying to set values '','','' for moderate, promote, sticky. Of course they are INT so it wont pass on PostgreSQL, but MySQL chews it and sets value '' to 0.

Its interesting that it doesnt show any error when logged as admin!

I think its in node.module on INSERT INTO line.

If anyone knows a bit more, write please!!!!

In case it helps I'm using gentoo linux with php4 apache2 drupal 4.6.1 and mysql. I'm using the slash theme, with these modules enabled:

address, attached_node, block, cart, event, feedback, filter, flexinode, folksonomy, guestbook, help, htmlarea, image, image_filter, img_assist, massmailer, menu, node, page, payment, paypal, phplist, privatemsg, product, profile, search, shipping, statistics, statistics_filter, store, story, system, tangible, taxonomy, theme_editor, user and watchdog.

ALL the modules above are working and being used at one time or another, literally the only problem I have is with the forum module :(

I reiterate that when I create a new blank site for testing, the forum module works 100%. It's only when I start adding content and changing settings that something gets messed up.

Please help! I'd really like a forum on my website!

Thank you

Pobster

Okay... I've stepped through the modules and everything, and I've found whats breaking the forum module. This should be in the INSTALL.txt I guess! The forum module requires that the comment module is enabled else you get this weird error. With the comment module enabled the forums behave exactly how they should do. I guess it almost makes sense in that without the comment module a user can't reply to a post, but...

...bizarre!

Pobster

Sorry, but thats not working for me!
I have few drupal installations, and on my new one everything works perfectly with forums. But on my old one I still have the same problem, regardless of comment.module! Everything was ok on this old one too, but when I was adding new modules and playing with content dropdwon list with forums dissapeared!

I really dont know wheres the problem, because version is 4.6.1 on both sites. Just hope that that wont happen on my new site..

welcome :)

To solve this issue, we must include a message when forum is enable and comments not.

See http://drupal.org/node/25593

I think it is strictly related…

I was having the same problem described above -- view forum, click to add topic, add it okay but it's not attached to any forum. Comment module was enabled, so this was not the problem.

This started happening after I deleted the Forums vocabulary (as part of cleaning up after deciding that taxonomy_access wasn't going to work for me).

According to http://drupal.org/node/29133 there is a bug in Forum module such that when the Forums vocabulary is deleted, Forum module still hangs onto a variable pointing to the old vocabulary ID, and that variable is no longer valid.

Here is the workaround we used:
- delete all the forums
- disable Forum module (?q=admin/modules)
- using phpMyAdmin (or mySQL command line), go to the Drupal variable table, find the entry where the name is forum_nav_vocabulary, and delete it
- re-enable Forum module
- recreate forums

Pain in the neck but all is working again, thank heavens!

See also http://drupal.org/node/26583 for a slightly different solution to the same problem.

So to identify the issue specifically...

a) Comment.module *must* be enabled
b) Forum topics entered without comment.module enabled will not display in forum lists correctly
c) b) remains true even after comment.module is re-enabled

Why?

Because forum.module's forum listings require each forum topic to have an entry in node_comment_statistics, and merely re-enabling comments doesn't do that.

Fix: add entries to the node_comment_statistics table for each forum topic.

Fortunately I only had 10 topics at the point I needed to fix it, so I could add them by hand. Larger data sets will need a script solution. But I didn't need one, so I haven't written it. Feel free...

If you post forums with comments disabled, then enable comments, I guess you will have to go forum by forum enabling comments for them.

Does this work?

Coloma's suggestion worked for me as I struggled with this the last few days.

"Here is the workaround we used:
- delete all the forums
- disable Forum module (?q=admin/modules)
- using phpMyAdmin (or mySQL command line), go to the Drupal variable table, find the entry where the name is forum_nav_vocabulary, and delete it
- re-enable Forum module
- recreate forums"

Taxonomy doesn't seem to have anything to do with this module because I created forums that were not even of the same name of any taxonomy categories.

Can someone add the following to the list of modules:

forum Enables threaded discussions about general topics. Requires comment module if people are to participate in the forums.

It should be right there when folks are enabling/disabling modules.

Miike

You mean like as documented here?
http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/forum

Having the same problem with 4.6.5. Deleting the row from the variable table as specified in the fix above worked for me.

Like described in #20 and #21 this can also depent on how forum.module implements taxonomy. Some 'standard' taxonomy features are not possible to be used with forum, e.g. multiple-select. Additional you cant have multiple vocabularies with node type forum. Look at http://drupal.org/node/28625 for more information. We are discussing to remove forum related options from categories (admin/taxonomy). Since it is the easiest workaround to administer your forum directly from admin/forum. Doing so you dont have access to the options that break your forums ... Simply spoken: Dont go to categories to alter your forum settings!

I close this, this has been documented and in 4.7 we took care that you can't mess the forum vocab up.