Hi everyone,
I have been using Drupal for over a year now and the more I use it, the more I fall in love with it! Yes, I have been wowed by Joomla!'s theme availability etc. but I wouldn't live without Drupal's Lego-like modularity (which Joomla! or most other CMS's lack). But it's good to see that even some of Joomla! theme providers are beginning to offer professional themes for Drupal! (RocketTheme, WooThemes, JoomlaShack, JoomlArt etc.). That is kewl!
Now back to the point I never started ;o) I am working on a website for our community and a good forum feature would be one of the top priorities. I have used Drupal's built in forum functionality but as it has been mentioned elsewhere, it doesn't come close to some of the other stand alones. I have been looking at Vanilla Forums. I love the user interface - clean and uncluttered, quite intuitive for end users, very appealing too. It's quite flexible etc. I have looked over in the module section for any module that integrates Vanilla Forums with Drupal but haven't found it yet. Does anyone have any other suggestions? (I have seen some integrate the two through code etc. but I don't want to go that route and run into difficulty when upgrading etc.). I have looked at Advanced Forum. Is it possible to achieve the look and functionality of VF with Advanced Forum and other related modules?
What other forum software is available for Drupal that can be seamlessly integrated? I have ruled out PhPBB for its cluttered interface and (too many features?).
Any suggestions or ideas?
Thanks,
Kenneth
Comments
.
AF 2.x is all Views based, except for the main forum page since Views doesn't handle the hierarchy. Between that and the abundance of templates, you can mold it into pretty much any form you want. It will take a little time investment but you'll end up with a forum that works the way you want with all content being true Drupal content that you can reuse elsewhere in your site that you won't get with a bridge.
Michelle
It is possible to build a
It is possible to build a forum with Drupal with most of the features that other forums have.
Recently, I created a forum for one of my websites here Forum
The forum is empty right now and is under development, but you can register if you want to look at the features as a forum user.
Thanks Michelle and usmanz
Thanks Michelle for putting in all that work into AF! It is surely appreciated. I wish there would be lots of themes available for AF (I know Antsin makes one but I could not see a preview at their site) Do you have any links to tutorials or guides where I can learn to tinker around AF themes?!
Usmanz, I assume you meant it is possible to build a forum the way I like by using third party modules (primarily AF) and not Drupal by itself (i.e. using Drupal's core functionality)? Thanks, I did look at your forum. Looks good.
Kenneth
Yes Kenneth, you need some
Yes Kenneth, you need some third party modules and not just by Drupal's core forum. But these contributed modules shouldn't be a problem as they are quite stable, I haven't faced any problem yet.
I will list some of the features that I have successfully implemented:
User IP visible to admin.
User join date visible to all members.
user Post count visible to all members.
Subscribe to post.
Subscribe to user.
Quote posts.
User online/offline status.
Profile visitors listed on user profiles.
Last login date of user on profile page.
.
I don't know of any outside the AF docs, sorry. I do wish more people would make AF styles to go with their themes. Maybe once 2.x is stable.
Michelle