By rahim123 on

Hello all,

I run a site which is primarily a forum. I had about 1200 sporadic registered users. I was using SMF, but I'm not really happy with its license or with the flexibility of the software. So my site is currently offline and I am starting from the ground up.

I would prefer a solution that doubles as a CMS as well as a forum. I like the idea of being able to expand the site with other capabilities as it grows. I looked at myBB, but I don't like its license. I like Vanilla and bbPress forums, but they lack important core functionality for moderation and/or categories. I refuse to touch phpBB. I really want a package that is secure, powerful, and expandable. For that reason I keep coming back to Drupal. I already use Drupal on another site, and I really admire it. But Drupal's forum capabilities seem limited in order to create the sort of comfortable, fun, dynamic forum environment that users generally want. I personally don't care about avatars and karma and all that fluff, but I'm actually not too sure what features are really popular and what the Drupal forum module is lacking. What would most users want in a forum that Drupal doesn't provide by default? And what modules would you recommend for Drupal to fill in the gaps? I'd prefer a Drupal 6 solution, but it looks like most of the modules are for <= Drupal 5.

Thanks for your help!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

becauseyouspam’s picture

becauseyouspam commented

Use the PHPbb3 integration, IMO the best forum around right now (besides Invision). You have to decide on which database to use and you also have to reskin the phpBB3 so that it either fits or directly integrates in your skin. Also you have to disable the phpBB3 user CP. (at least on my site it wasn't possible to make direct phpBB3 changes reflect on the drupal db (e.g. it would reflect drupal profile changes in phpBB but not the other way round).

http://drupal.org/project/phpbbforum

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

Unfortunately, you'll want to use Drupal 5.x for any social networking / forum type of site right now and likely until this summer. There is a larger than normal lag time for modules being ported.

If you're willing to use 5.x, Drupal is a fine forum solution. All the normal features end users expect are there. I've started working on a list of modules to flesh out your forum. The major downside right now is on the forum admin end. Advanced features such as merging threads and moving multiple threads at once aren't available. If you can live without that, though, you can put together a fine forum with just a bit of research and theming.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

kriskd’s picture

kriskd commented

I use Michelle's Advanced Forum mod with my Drupal forum and it creates a nice look that people are used to.

However, my issue is the fact that the forum is made up of posts and comments and therefore, you can't create a view of all forum activity. I think this thread explains it well:

http://drupal.org/node/164830

Because of this, some of my forum users are frustrated at me for making the change from SMF which had a way of viewing all recent forum activity to Drupal where you have to balance blocks that will show active topics and comments. However, SMF was more than what I needed for my site and running two databases (SMF and Drupal) was causing me other problems. I wanted my site to be less forum centric simply because the forum was just used by a very few people (I run a neighborhood site).

I am hopeful that nodeforum will solve this and allow me to create this view that my users so desperately want.

rahim123’s picture

rahim123 commented

Thank you all for your comments!

I think I definitely want to avoid bridging Drupal with another forum, especially not phpBB3. My previous site used Joomla bridged with SMF, and it was just a disaster. I really hate maintaining a theme for the forum and for the CMS, and as well as the hassle of security-patching two systems, search integration, and SEO URLs for both CMS and forum. I really want to standardize on one package.

I think I probably will stick with Drupal 5 for the moment, I really need the additional module support. But for future reference, anybody know if there are definite plans to port Advanced Forum and its dependent modules to Drupal 6? Thanks Michelle, nice list. One feature I liked about SMF is the ability to delete user accounts and all their related posts. This is because I frequently got SPAM posts by live humans who would manually register and post a bunch of junk. So I need an easy way to delete the user account and all the stuff he posted with just a few clicks.

Please keep the comments and suggestions coming, I will be watching this thread.

Thanks a lot!

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

The 6.x port of advforum is in progress. I just need a solid chunk of time to give it a thorough going over and make an alpha of it. Technically the only dependent module is forum (well, and comment) but you need other contribs to get all the forum goodies people are used to. I haven't checked the status of any of them since I won't be using 6.x until this summer but most modules have an issue in their queue about the port status.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

rahim123’s picture

rahim123 commented

OK, thanks. Btw, Michelle, is the template you use on http://couleeregiononline.com available publicly? It looks really nice.

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

Thanks. :) My theme is based on Zen, which is in the downloads section, but my changes aren't public.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

becauseyouspam’s picture

becauseyouspam commented

You should take a look at the advanced forum module before you make a judgement so quickly. Personally I think drupal is NOT a forum and should not pretending to be one either. Forums of Drupal are based on regular comments and with this you get a lot of trouble.
Of course with bridging you would have to maintain two skins but it is faster to bridge and skin a forum (especially since forum skins are REALLY simple compared to drupal ones) then to integrate AND skin the advanced forum module (at least right now you still have to skin it seperately) in a way that is eye-friendly and functional.
I have yet to see a Drupal forum (D4, D5, D6) that runs on the standard forum module and meets the requirements of deep community. The MTV site might be an exeption but I'm not sure on the technical details behind it and I doubt that it was easy to create this platform.

Of course that's just my personal opinion but I'll change it as soon as I see a functional forum made of the drupal forum and eventually additional modules.

[edit]
Was just taking a look at http://couleeregiononline.com and I do have to say that although it is nicely integrated into the theme it lacks usability and the handling itself feels totally unnatural to me. I'd never be able to participate actively in a community like this. And I can guarantee that this will be worse on people that do not deal that much with pc's like I do. The same goes for the Advanced Forum module in it's "pure" state. Maybe some specialists gather and turn it into something that's similar to modern BBS and their efficiency.
I'd love to see that happen although, again, I'm not sure if that is the point of drupal.
[/edit]

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

Drupal.org forums have worked steadily for over seven years. The use of /tracker to follow threads you've commented in and activity on the site was just plain natural and unencumbered by weird and odd usability issues on the so-called other forums. Adding on modules to accomplish your specific site needs has allowed for flexibility and diversity of look and solutions. Keep in mind, it's not 'just forums'. It's a solution for managing your site and all it's content and users. Drupal's development over time has been different then all the other crowd followers ad has resulted in less bloat and od solutions to solve usability and content management issues.

You seem to have managed to use the forums here. Of course, your goals my differ.

-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

izmeez’s picture

izmeez commented

Please excuse me as I am very new to Drupal. I just discovered it 4 weeks ago and after a brief analysis felt it was worthwhile investing a significant amount of time using it to create a community web site. Drupal 6.1 had just been released so I thought it was worthwhile to start with that.

I must admit that so far it is astounding. Kudos to all who have made this possible.

The Forums in the core has some good basic features and I haven't had a chance to look at fine tuning it yet. The Advanced Forum has also caught my eye and is on tab, but waiting to be cracked open. I have not used other BBS systems so I may be missing a good understanding of the features and difficulties. But, at this point the Drupal Forum is a reasonable starting point.

I did very briefly try the Zen module, just before we launched the alpha/beta site and found it was not fully operational or so it seemed to me. It does look like a promising route to go but as other threads have discussed there are system conflicts with the name "Zen" and the base system on which Drupal is installed. We are staying with the Garland theme because it is a fluid width. It has some quirks so I would prefer to move to something like Zen.

However, right now with the pressures to go live, we have the Drupal 6.x web site on the net for our alpha/beta testers and we have run into a few difficulties. I started a post earlier today but am not sure if I put it in the best place.

http://drupal.org/node/242356

Any help would be appreciated, even pointing me to the right place.

Thanks,

Izzy

becauseyouspam’s picture

becauseyouspam commented

I hate to disagree with you here. The Drupal.org forum was down just a week ago (although I did not research the reason), heck, it even showed me the site installer script!!!
But that is not the point. I do believe that the drupal.org forums are a great example of how BBS shouldn't work at all. I was just searching for a thread with more then a few replies and voila: http://drupal.org/node/30831 , at best I'd call this messy and unorganized.

Of course you are absolutely right when it comes to drupal as a powerful system to create an advanced forum and of course it is a very flexible system at that - the problem is that only a few people can put afford to put this effort and that the forum module itself is not even close to an advanced forum and further that even the advanced forum module isn't close either. I tested it, intensively, and I have to say that it is not even in reach of the features of IPB, vBulletin or PHPbb3. Not when it comes to speed, the general needs of a BBS and it's not plain and/or natural either. You want proof? Then I can only tell you to ask someone who is not a drupal geek to actively use the drupal forum and also another BBS like phpbb3 and you'll see what I mean. Actually I did the test (parents, friends and random people) and it was a fatal blow for the drupal forum module.

If I were the coder type of a person I'd absolutely contribute to the drupal forums but sadly I'm more the designer. I do hope that more people contribute to the forum and/or advanced forum as well as some community modules. This is simply due to the fact that not everyone can put as much effort into pimping OOTB modules like MTV or Sony. And just on a sidenote: Sony probably uses OS like Drupal because they want to get rid of all their pirated software they're using. (see lawsuite filed against sony by PointDev http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.6/sony-pirated-software )

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

You keep saying it's "unnatural" but you aren't saying why. Complaining about something without offering any specifics isn't helpful. What, exactly, is "unnatural" about using the forums? You click a link/button to post a topic. You get an edit box. You type in your topic. You save it. Not hard and not unnatural as far as I'm concerned. If you have specific complaints, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise it's all just noise.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

becauseyouspam’s picture

becauseyouspam commented

----------------Ranting--------------------
How does yellow look and how does a strawberry taste? I wasn't making more noise then the "defenders". If I hear people saying Drupal forums feel natural to them then I am responding with: they don't feel natural to other people (as in not drupal geeks). In what way is the Drupal Forum superior to even underdeveloped BBS out there? I think it generally lacks features since it was never the aim of drupal to be a great forum platform in the first place. Logic alone only leads to the clue that software, special designed to be used as a forum, will be ahead of a module that just offers basic features that take the admin a LOT of time to turn it into something useful. If you have a big project and the budget and also the programmers - then of course you can turn it into something great (e.g. MTV.co.uk) , but that will not help 90% of people that want to start a small community.

Further, and again an amazingly useful comment, sepek proves to himself that drupal is NOT a forum and that the forum component is NOT useful. Minimalist approach for 250.000 users? Ok, but then again I know lot's of communities with more then that and most likely less technical staff then drupal! Of course I do know that Drupal is neither a forum nor suited for this - actually that was what I said in the first place, sepek ;).

I get bashed for stating something obvious: that it is extremely difficult to turn drupal into forum-active community. I'm not a drupal hater, just today I was promoting it to someone, I'm just stating the fact that it will take a lot of time to create a community with the modules we have right now.

And sepek, by saying things like you're proving that you're nothing more then a fanboy.

The words and phrases you are using also convince me you don't quite understand it. Drupal is not a forum.

Many friends use Drupal but you seem to be missing a point in your attacks. Drupal may not solve your needs. If it doesn't, then don't use it. Just because it doesn't solve your needs doesn't mean it doesn't effectively work or is not in use on tens of thousands of sites worldwide. It means it doesn't fit your needs.

I never said it'd doesn't fit my needs
I never said Drupal is or has to be a forum - I even said the opposite, read, or read twice, I don't care. But don't put words in my mouth.
I don't know about your friends and their tastes. I don't know if you realize that not everyone has the time to make it through an 3 years learning curve just to get a half-assed forum running.

I don't need to PROVE that drupal is not a forum solution, you said it yourself, everyone says it. And on top of all things drupal itself proves that it is very complex to turn it into a great forum! See this thread http://www.webmaster-forums.net/offtopic-chat/get-know-your-fellow-members . Do you call this a forum? Can ANY human read through this?! I can't won't and wouldn't even if I would get paid for it!

I do have the feeling that this will end up in a fanboy discussion anyways, so I'll most likely just shut up before I get hanged for saying: "drupal is not a forum" because that obviously is only ok when sepek mentions it. Just on a sidenote sepek, do you have an apple?

One more thing sepek - compare http://webmasterforums.com to http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/
Wan't me to tell you a secret? One site was set up in a process that took professional IT guys months to set up a drupal so that it serves as a forum - the other one was made by cat-fetishists that probably did that thing in less then a week. Magic? Yeah right, get real! Would you use a screwdriver for breaking down a house? No, you would also use the RIGHT tool for the RIGHT purpose. If some great tech gurus make the effort to turn the screwdriver into a laser cannon in years of work that's their problem - it won't solve the problem for other people though. ;)

--------------Drupal Forum-----------------

I'll try to explain some points that made me have that perspective. It'll not reflect usability-problems of inexperienced people though since, sepek amazingly stated it already, I am able to use the drupal forums.

First of all I do not click a button to reply to a post. It's not even called post at all, it's called either "add a comment" (if it's the first post) or "reply" if it's a "comment". This needs to be improved in the standard module.
Secondly I am maybe viewing a thread that looks like this

Topic
|||-Answer
|| |-Answer
||-Answer *NEW
| -Answer
|  |-Answer
|  ||-Answer *NEW
|-Answer

| |||-Answer
| ||  |-Answer *NEW
| ||-Answer
| |-Anser
|-Answer *NEW
|-Answer *NEW

A HELL to read through and it will get worse the more people respond. This might be ok for a small cozy family homepage but not for a big community. This also needs to be improved. Maybe with a nice theme setting that allows the user to visually recognize the relationships (colors would be of great use here) and also if an element is new or not (Maybe fading? What about some Java features, e.g. "sliding" that could be done in a way that new subreplies will slide "on top" and when you read them slide down? I don't know but it'd be worth thinking about it)

Further this list of things that could be improved in the standard module (or the advanced module). Many things could even be modular.


  1. Out of the box it's just too simple for a big community. It takes a lot of effort to turn it into something that allows what most users need.
  2. Working Avatars of all sizes and not just simple workarounds because drupal avatar-pictures will be force-scaled to 85x85.
  3. Easy acessible PM system
  4. Better standard template for categories / containers and forums, subforums, topics and posts.
  5. Better backend and frontend integration of moderational features.
  6. Hatelist/Friendlist, Rating and Reporting
  7. Display topics filter, sorting filter,
  8. Jump to and subscribe features
  9. Mark topic/s as read
  10. Search this forum box and a better search integration overall
  11. Generally improvements that display your interaction with others in a better way. A more direct input/output feeling
  12. Friends or Group features are not existing or not easy enough for people to use / for site owners to embed and to maintain
  13. The threads look like a big mess. Inexperience people will and do not know where to click reply and more importantly: how to handle more complex scenarios e.g. they want to reply to two things at the same time. This mostly results in double posting and confusion because the "thread" itself will be cut sooner or later by the method the drupal forum uses. Generally this method is outdated because it's vulnerable to break the context due to people that either do not know how to reply and/or read in that way or harm it on purpose. (for example like what happens right now, me having things related to sepek in this post although his answer to my post will be displayed even under this post since I answered to your post, michelle - confusing? I know... :P )
  14. Most people, not being geeks, will never look for a "new" marker or tag somewhere in a thread. They expect the newest response either on top or bottom. Also if you have a thread with 100+ replies this concept is ABSURD!
  15. Spam control (throttle posting)
  16. Theming is too complex. Theming a drupal forum module often takes longer then re-theming a random BBS skin (also due to the complex nature of drupal skins of course)
  17. Introduction posts should look the same as answers in the thread and offer the same elements as any of these replies does
  18. Drupal forum is, in it's current state, an early beta version of a modern BBS. It is not possible for every website owner to make those extremely complex modifications just to get a running forum. That is highly inefficient, which sadly reminds me of the Drupal forum in every way
    If it takes 6 hours to integrate and theme a PHPbb3, that is 3 years of development ahead of drupal forum module, into drupal and it takes the same amount of time to integrate and theme the advanced forum module which lacks many needed features then I sadly have to continue PHPbb3 even if a drupal integrated forum would be very nice.

Of course there is more and also this is just one opinion, mine. But if it weren't at least a little valid then we wouldn't have any BBS's anymore. They do their job more perfect then the drupal module. And it is wrong to assume that forums will stay what they've been 10 years ago. Drupals forum modules should either be developed or maybe there would be a way to make integration easier or interaction with other systems easier - like the openid login.

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

Good grief that's a lot of ranting. All I asked for was some specifics. Saying it's "unnatural" gives me nothing to go on. At least you finally got to some usable points at the end.

1. Agreed. Unfortunately there's no good solution to this, yet. Install profiles don't really get us there, IMO.
2. Done with CSS right now but I'll be adding an imagecache solution soonish.
3. I don't use privatemsg much but it's worked ok for me and my users so far.
4. Not sure what you mean by this.
5. Definitely an area that needs work. I've been focused on the end user experience but will be turning my attention to admin soon.
6. There's a few friendlist modules... Hadn't thought of a hatelist one. That seems kind of mean. Or do you mean like an ignore list? That would be good to have. I'm not sure if there's a module that does it. Rating of what? Posts? You can do that with fivestar.
7. What sort of filter? I don't understand this one.
8. Jump to is coming. Subscribe can be done with subscriptions / notifications.
9. Already there.
10. Hmm... That might be hard to do well. It can be fudged with a link that presets the type to "forum", though that would only work on 5.x. Will have to think more on that.
11. I don't get this one.
12. Again, this is vague. If you use buddylist, it's as simple as clicking "add/remove buddy". User relationships is new and needs to be integrated.
13. This is only relevant to threaded forums which I can't either. Drupal forums don't have to be threaded, though.
14. Same as 13.
15. Lots of options for spam control. Nothing I know of for throttling posts, though.
16. I've never tried to theme any other forum system so I can't compare. You can do quite a bit just by changing the CSS, though. And you just need to move things around in the .tpl files for more drastic changes. It's no harder than theming anything else on your site.
17. They do.
18. Too vague.

Well, now that you've finally taken the time to get specific about the problems you have I can see a few items I hadn't already thought of. So it was actually useful despite the ranting.

Thanks,

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

becauseyouspam’s picture

becauseyouspam commented

Sorry michelle, actually the rant part was mostly aimed at sepek - it just looks confusing because I didn't introduce it properly. I must say that I'm not a drupal hater at all (would I be on the forums then?), on the contrary I'm working with drupal projects and would love to see a good out of the box forum module that can be expanded! :)
It just creeps me out if I state my feeling about something and suddenly all the fanboys jump at you and try to turn your head around. If I look at a picture and it looks _insert-w/e_to me or, in this case, even others, then this is something that needs to be changed on the other side - I can't help how things look to me.
That's why I labeled it ranting since it serves no purpose other then to remind some people not to see the world only with their eyes only. It can generally be ignored ;p

Nevertheless, as I was checking this "webmasterwhatever" thing I saw another flaw in the drupal forum system but I'm not sure if you already fixed that or done something about this in your "advanced" module -> I miss a way to not just "reply" to some comment in the middle or at the end but to actively reply to the topic itself.
Basically a static "reply" button that adds a reply linked to the topic itself and turning the drupal "reply" into "quote" or "reply to &name_of_poster&".

I also didn't mean to make that ordered list a numerical one, it's just a few points that somehow gave me that feeling I mentioned, not a to-do list. I hope you get support by some able coders - heck, if you need artworks for a project page to get people into supporting advforums then I'd be willing to make em!

Thanks also for the respond and the status on the adv forum - I'll follow it and most likely try to implement it as soon as I can get it on D6
-spam

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

We were having a discussion and personal attacks and rants are not welcome or tolerated. I never said or implied you were a 'Drupal hater' (your words).

Your earlier posts were vague and added irrelevant personal side notes (Sony reference, maintenance reference) to your justifications that I responded to. Unless you are specific, vague generalities are worse then useless, clutter up reasoning and provide nothing of relevance other then "Don't like".

Earlier, you continued to refer to Drupal as a 'Forum' (as in Drupal.org forum was down. Drupal is not a forum, it is a CMS that has a forum component. Referring to Drupal as a forum is not an accurate description of Drupal. Drupal is a core starting point to build a site to suit your needs. It does not aim to be that complete solution out of the box. This is the reason that the first part of the Getting Started guide contains the mission and principles.

Modular and extensible. Drupal aims to provide a slim, powerful core that can be readily extended through custom modules.

This first is very important. If people want to be a one stop end solution and provide that, then as an open source project we are open to this. Michelle is in fact working on such a set of solutions. But Drupal core is not a complete out of the box solution. It is the base starting point for a solution for a site implementor to build.

As Drupal is for people wanting to build sites, I assume that anyone asking on the forums is here to do so. I will answer pretty much all questions as if the person is a developer, power user or willing to learn. Drupal is complex and takes time to master, yet people with minimal skills using available contributed modules can with a little investment in time build functional sites. If you are here, you are considering using Drupal and I will treat you as such and point out the merits of using Drupal as a solution.

-------

As a designer you must know the power and challenge of accurately describing an issue. If you are going to claim that something doesn't work and not provide very specific foundations for those claims, then you should realize that people will challenge you. I cannot assume your audience, I do not know your family or friends nor does anyone else here. Things cannot be improved without the very detailed participation of others. Your follow up list was much more interesting and would have been a very nice conversation point if only you hadn't ranted.

No, I do not own any Apple products at this time. I am considering the purchase of an iPod but again, not relevant to this discussion except as a potential vector for a future personal attack. Please refrain from doing so again.

-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

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

The problem with ranting is that it's rarely useful. Those of us working on the forum module are aware of most of its shortcomings. That's why I wanted details, to see if there was anything new to add to the "to do" list. Just saying something sucks doesn't do anything to make it better. Even "It sucks because of X Y and Z is more helpful."

Anyway, replying to the topic itself can be done with the "post reply" button at the top or the "add new comment" in an unmodified forum. Quote can be done with the quote module. The one thing it doesn't do is multiple quoting, which takes js so not something I can do at this point.

I understand it's not a to do list but it was simplest to respond point by point. And there were a couple new things on there, so it's all good. :)

I'm hoping to get to D6 again, soon. I left it in a pretty unusable state. Just been busy.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

Drupal.org is two MySQL database servers in a master/read-only configuration, three front end web servers with a proxy cache. On occasion there is maintenance work performed on the environment. It happens. Drupal 6 has a better status page themable function for this that someone contributed code for.

Your example is the result of a theme design constraint. Theme yours differently. Many of us are not happy with the d.o. theme constraints (3 year old design) and work is being done to update this, but it's volunteer and has to be done in consideration to other additional updates not just tossed up there.

Your proof is lacking in details. Drupal has a learning curve. It's design is _very_ different from pretty much everything else out there. It has not followed other CMS designs so doesn't have their patterns in it.

The words and phrases you are using also convince me you don't quite understand it. Drupal is not a forum. It is a Content Management System that has a forum component. Drupal.org is not a forum. Drupal.org is a fully functional site with over 250,000 registered users and several million unique hits per month and it has a forum component that many people use. We could put more modules on to enhance that functionality but the core pool of people who support the hardware and software of drupal.org is small and so we go with a minimalist approach. But we also have the handbooks (documentation) provided by the book module. We have the project issue tracker and downloads provided by project module, we have the newsletter (simplenews) management, mail list account management (mailman) and aggregator feeds. We have the ability for every user to enable a contact form. We have an integrated user management system that lets us determine roles and rights to all these various features and functions of the site. All that and more.

As long as you focus on 'forums' you miss the entire point of an integrated content management solution. These folks saw it. But we come full circle, your needs may not be there needs. Maybe you only need/want a forum. Maybe you don't want or need a website where you can promote content to the front page. Maybe you don't want a site where you can have integrated links to other pages featuring community blogs which could be promoted to the front page or other location. Drupal does all this with one database, one set of user accounts.

Maybe Drupal is not for you. And that's all right.

Designers oddly enough can actually get involved with design in Drupal. I don't code yet here I am. As to how you setup and configured your sites for your review, I can't comment. However, I do use Drupal and I use it very effectively. Many friends use Drupal but you seem to be missing a point in your attacks. Drupal may not solve your needs. If it doesn't, then don't use it. Just because it doesn't solve your needs doesn't mean it doesn't effectively work or is not in use on tens of thousands of sites worldwide. It means it doesn't fit your needs.

I find those other forum packages bloated and there weird social quirks detrimental to usage, but I am not you. My needs are not yours. Despite my opinion, I do not feel the need to attack those packages. Though I do suggest you check out Organic Groups module. You can see an example of groups use on http://groups.drupal.org.

NOTE: Sony uses Drupal because it is a powerful tool that solves their needs. That lawsuit is something else and specific to Sony in France as far as I can tell and not at all relevant to Drupal except as a distraction or attempt to distract from a lack of substance in your case. :)

Other large environment use and scale Drupal, MTV, The Onion, Warner Bros GetFireFox, etc. It is also not in any way relevant to this discussion

-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

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

To each his own, I guess. I'm used to phpbb/vb forums and this is pretty close, so it seems natural to me. There's a few things that still bug me but I'll get to them eventually. I wish I had a community to counter you with but, well, I haven't had much luck there, yet. I suspect it has more to do with the fact that the site is massively under construction and not advertised than the usability of the forums, though. ;)

BTW, if anyone reading this decides they want to play around in the forums, please use http://socnet.shellmultimedia.com/forum not CRO. Drives me batty when Drupal peeps sign up on CRO just to play around.

Michelle

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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

summit’s picture

summit commented

Subscribing, may be integration with nodeforum possible?
greetings, Martijn

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

I don't know what you're "subscribing" to. This is an old, dead thread.

AF doesn't integrate with nodeforum if that's what you're asking. It's likely to displace it at some point, but that is a way off.

Michelle

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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

summit’s picture

summit commented

Hi Michelle,

Sorry didn't read the date thoroughly, the post itself was quite interesting.
Greetings, Martijn