forum.module improvements [#5802]

We recently had a discussion on the mailing list about improvements that might be made to forum.module to match its abilities with those of dedicated forum packages, such as vBulletin, Invision, and phpBB. (1) We also estabilshed that most newly-added features should be purely OPTIONAL, to avoid making the current forum style cluttered and unpleasant. To promote future development on forum.module, I've saved this list of suggestions below.

Things some my users have asked about (and I haven't forgotten) include:
- mark all as read within a forum
- stickied posts - I created a solution with my node weight patch (2)
- more user info by each post (post count, avatars, links to IM's, private message links) - this could be done by creating some themed function to jazz up the forums... it's on my todo list. I've also written a patch for xtemplate that optionally enables display of avatars (3)
- the ability to have, for each site, a library of avatars to select from (this would be an addition to profile.module... it's on my todo list as well)
- custom post icons (ability for poster to choose from a few icons to indicate the content of the post)
- ability to make forums' (only!) comments flat rather than threaded (basically, a comment threading setting based on node type) I know this is a bit of a step back from our nicely threaded comments, but some sites are looking for something closer to the forums they're familiar with.
- forums that "look" more like phpBB/vBulletin/Invision (this could be accomplished by theme-ing as well)
- icons for each FORUM (in the forum list) similar to how there are icons for each post. These icons would change for new posts and very active forums, similar to individual post icons. (see the behavior of phpBB)

Does anyone else have any suggestions? Hopefully, I (and others) will find time to create patches to implement some of these items.

1 => http://lists.drupal.org/archives/drupal-devel/2004-02/msg00304.html
2 => http://drupal.org/node/view/5738
3 => http://drupal.org/node/view/5789

Comments

Comment #1

robert castelo commented 11 February 2004 at 17:12

Topic Reply Notification

Forum sends you an email when someone replies to one of your posts.

Once a forum becomes busy, it's useful to subscribe to topics that you want to keep an eye on.

Comment #2

TDobes commented 11 February 2004 at 18:20

MegaGrunt: You can set up topic notification and/or forum post notification using the execellent contributed subscriptions.module. I've been using it for a few months on my site and it works quite nicely. (Note that its functions apply to all of drupal... not just forums.) It allows users to be notified of new comments on a node or to be notified of new nodes within a taxonomy. (replies to a topic or posts to a forum)

Comment #3

irwin commented 19 February 2004 at 19:38

In the forum "main" page, under the "Last Post" column, post the name of the thread. Currently, the page kind of looks like:

Forum	Topics	Posts	Last post
General
News and announcements For news and announcements to the Drupal community at large.	83 3 new	724	6 hours 1 min ago by adrian
General discussion For less technical discussions about the Drupal project.	197 23 new	980	4 hours 3 min ago by mathias