Posted by foxtrotcharlie on March 15, 2006 at 3:10pm
I'm really pulling my hair out over this. It seems that the forum module orders topics by the date of the most recent comment. That means that every time a comment is added, the order of topics is changed. In the forum configuration (admin/forum/configure) the only options for ordering are:
- Date - newest first
- Date - oldest first
- Posts - most active first
- Posts - least active first
I would like to order by the date of creation of the forum topic, but my attempt at hacking the forum module code did not work.
Has anyone figured out a way to do this, or can anyone help me to find a way to modify the module so that it displays by most recent topic?
Any help would be much appreciated!
Charles.
Comments
options
thats hard to do. whats not hard to do is to pin certain discussoions at the top of the list using the 'promote' checkbox on the topic edit form. that checkbox is shown to node admins only.
Made topics sticky, but still order by comments
Thanks Moshe. I tried that but it still seems as though comments take preference in the sort order, even when sticky...
Charles
www.parkroad.co.za
Charles
www.parkroad.co.za
What about the topic replies/comments/posts?
The way this works now is, you have your original post which defined a topic node, then under that is the most recent reply/comment and then following that they get older until you reach the 1st reply to theoriginal post.
That is just backwards to me. I want to see the thread in chronological order from the original node post, in chronological order as they were posted all the way to the end (the most recent).
Is that even possible? Do I need to hack the forum module? Something as basic as this ought to be in settings.
Update: Nevermind, I found it, but I am getting a SQL error when I enter into the admin\comments page.
Using Forums administration
Just an idea:
Maybe what you're trying to do is to organise your forum topics in a logical structure.
This is easily done by creating Forum containers and Forums in
admin/content/forum.You may just need to convert your sticky forum topics to forums which you can order as you want by adjusting their weight.
Then the forum topics are leaves in the created hierarchy tree; typically created by visitors, their order is more logically defined by some changes indicator.
Note:
Time has passed since initial post, I hope that foxtrotcharlie found a solution since ;) . However this answer could help other users. It applies to Drupal 6.x. I couldn't tell for other versions.
IMO, that's helpful, but not
IMO, that's helpful, but not sufficient.
Consider the case where you have an instructional forum. As presenter, you present Topic 1, Topic 2, Topic 3, in the order of presentation (i.e., oldest first.) You want to allow people to respond specifically to those topics, so you make them sticky at the top.
Problem #1. If you make an edit to Topic 2, it falls beneath topic 3.
Problem #2. If you want students to be able to add their own topics, they are added at the bottom, which becomes a pain if the forum gets very much material.
So, you would like your stickies to stay in one order, and not move if edits are applied, and you would otherwise like to see the most recent material at the top.
The idea of exposing weight on forum topics -- especially on stickies -- would solve the problem. Otherwise, I can't figure out how to gracefully deal with this kind of problem.
D Icenogle
As a presenter
Just in case you missed my point;
As a presenter, you could get permissions to convert your sticky forum topics to forums.
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This post is indeed ancient-- probably the best way to do this now would be with the http://drupal.org/project/views and, optionally, the http://drupal.org/project/nodequeue modules.
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Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
is every answer in contributed modules ?
I'm fairly new to Drupal, but I feel a bit uneasy, when more information is asked about core features, how often the answers are: "use module X or Y". I know that many contributions are excellent and very popular, but some are just not mature enough to answer beginners needs.
At the end, the newcomer just gets more confused, looses too much time, and gets a poor perception of Drupal.
When a core feature appears insufficient, why not working together with satellite modules developers , and complete core/recommended modules documentation ?
(That's not personal at all, just an general question, and I'm an utopist).
I'm afraid that this modules multitude, covering similar needs, would cause Drupal to be heavy an tricky.
=-=
contributed modules make it into core when they are mature and stable and even then it is likely that only parts of a contrib modules make it into core and is extended by other modules. an example of this is CCK which make it into core in Drupal 5.x, however, to expand on the ability to use fields one had to install CCK.module and then the fields addons. In Drupal 7.x there will be a fields api as well as other features.
In theory, there shouldn't be any module overlap, drupal developers reuse code which is why installing module A may require you to install module B and C so that A can use code from B and C.
acquia drupal ships with contrib modules but drupal core itself from this site does not.
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+1 to everything VM said.
This is indeed very true, and you'll want to be selective about the modules you use on your sites. Check the usage statistics for the module, as well as the usage statics for all modules (http://drupal.org/project/usage). Although there are no guarantees, I generally assume anything that appears on over 10k sites is relatively safe. Checkout the issue queue-- make sure it's active. Checkout the cvs messages and make sure the maintainer still seems onboard. Get familiar with the names of regular contributors and excellent maintainers (ie merlinofchaos, michelle, sun, quicksketch, etc).
Another habit I've gotten into is trying to limit modules to what I call 'building block' type modules (ie cck, views, flag, panels, nodequeue, etc instead of vertical modules like storm) with only occasional exceptions for things like comment_notify.
No one system can be everything to everybody. By being flexible and modular, drupal allows site builders to add only the features they need for a particular site-- which helps site builders avoid bloat. This is a good thing. Just be intelligent about your module selection and avoid 'modulitis' and you'll be fine.
That said, I can't imagine building anything without cck and views-- and nodequeue is like a views submodule (not to mention created by the same maintainer as views). Even with fields in core in d7, cck will still be necessary to add noncore field types and the UI for manipulating fields.
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Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
Sorry for the troll
That's why I added "It's nothing personal". Far from me is the idea of contesting views, or any module. I read that they are making their way to core and I'm happy for that.
I posted here just because I ran into a question similar to foxtrotcharlie's, trying to order sticky topics ... and I then realised I could achieve what I wanted at higher level. Other use cases may require some modules, I just told about mine.
My point was just that sometimes, basic features may be good enough, and that I prefer for now making sure that I reached core's limits before adding a processing layer, or adding complexity without clear reasons.
BTW, every module has to start somewhere, and I'm glad new contributions arise every day :)
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That's solid advice no matter what version of drupal and/or contributed modules you're using!
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Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
Maybe somewhat out on a tangent but...
I have certain forums running on my site that have content that becomes outdated rapidly. Unfortunately, people tend to post a comment on these nodes to let me know that they've become outdated - which brings content that would preferably be placed at the very back of the topic pages to the very front.
I didn't want to delete the content, but also didn't want it to be obtrusive so I spent a good bit of time looking for a solution - this page was the closest thing I came across in relation to the issue. So I'd like to share the very simple solution that I found here for others that may find this page while looking for an answer to the same question.
When forum topics are ordered chronologically, commenting on a topic brings it to the top of the list by resetting the node's date to be most recent...so the idea came to me to try (as admin) to edit the comment date back in time and see if this concept would work in reverse. It actually did work perfectly and I was able to send the unwanted nodes to the very back of the list where they won't bother anyone. To move uncommented nodes to the back of the list, I simply placed a comment stating that the offer had expired and again edited the date backwards. You can edit a comment's publish date as admin by clicking edit >> administration - then alter the date as desired in the "Authored on:" input field.
Ben Sullivan