The forum module that comes with Drupal is rather basic. It doesn't appear to support things like avatars, rankings, or any of the more glitzy forum features that people have come to expect from other solutions like phpBB. Unfortunately, Drupal's user database doesn't integrate with third-party forum solutions, and I haven't found a better CMS that does, so I'm wondering if there's a way to add these features to the forums. What's more, I'd like to be able to give the forums a special layout that does not necessarily match that of comments to articles or blog entries. I'd rather the forums have a different look and feel.
Is there a simple way to beef up the Drupal forum module like this? If not, has anyone had any success in replacing the module entirely with a third-party solution?
Comments
Although I think that some of
Although I think that some of those options should be available, whatever happens I want to be able to turn them off. There's elegance in simplicity and although Drupal's forums aren't fancy I think that they do the job they were intended for very well. I find PHPBB kinda annoying because by the time you include avatars, graphics smilies, pretty borders and about a dozen other glitzy features, it takes an age to load the page. Having said all that, I like the idea of perhaps having two or three forum modules with different levels of 'glitz' to choose from. :)
Drupal forums
Drupal forums does support avatars. Recently we added support for sticky forum topics which will be part of Drupal 4.5.0.
Note that there are some forum related feature requests. Maybe you can dig those and add a prioritized wishlist to the comments so we can take your suggestions into account whenever the forum module is being worked on.
vBulletin
I've been working on a vBulletin integration module. It's not very functional at the moment but I have been able to get the databases to synch up. This allows you to pull in all forum thread id's into the drupal database. I'm working on this part time and if all goes well I hope to have a working vBulletin integration module by the end of the year (mortgage and taxes come first. sorry). This is my first module and I'm not all that great at coding. But here are the modules goals:
1) The databases will synch() via an input.
2) There will be a dropdown selection box to choose your vBulletin thread in which to post your comments to.
3) In the drupal administration area, you will have a vbulletin module page you can access to where you can setup vbulletin to replace the drupal comments module. In other words, vbulletin will be your comments.module replacement if you select vBulletin for your commenting purposes.
4) You will have the choice as to whether or not to place a small snippit of content in the forums for commenting, or the whole article.
5) loggining in to drupal, will log you into your forums.
This is way pre-alpha and not much is getting done quickly. It is however being worked on.
Last but not least I make no promise that this will ever become a reality. I've had drupal loaded for a little over a week (4 weeks but wasn't sure this was the cms for me. I've decided that it indeed is.) and it does take some getting used to. Taxonomies, vocabularies, nodes, etc... were not cms lanquages that I understood. So I'm still learning as I go. A real good coder that knows drupal could probably do this in a few hours. I'm doing this one crash at a time. All code has to be thought out as database synch due to vB being non OSS commercial software. It's more of a database synch module that allows you to send a drupal node type (content) to the vB database. Touches no proprietary source which is the main issue.
I also wanted to make mention that I'm spending more time setting up my drupal forums and I think the drupal forum module is excellent. I usually turn off all the vBulletin garbage so it will load quicker. The drupal forums.module loads like the wind! Just as the comments.module does. There are however many funtions that I truly miss. Nevertheless, the functions I miss require more queries and load time. It's a toss up really.
The only reason I'm doing this is because I like vBulletin. That and I'm scratching an itch and it feels good. I'm no coder and I don't code for a living. I just believe that Drupal does need third party module support but only in terms of commenting choice to external forum databases. So I'm giving it a shot. This is just my opinion. There is however nothing wrong with the way drupal 4.4.2 works. Drupal is a great CMS and once I figured out how it works I was blown away with all the function() and module additions. Unbelievable.
If I ever get this to work decent enough for testing purposes (I think I will), I'll make it available.
rjspence
mmm..
>>>5) loggining in to drupal, will log you into your forums.
maybe you share this a pease of CODE, this is only one i need
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No bears in Russia :)
vBulletin module
rjspence, I am quite interested in this module. Were you able to make progress with it? Is there one available?
Thanks, ssh
Any updates on the vBulletin integration?
I was just wondering if you made any progress. Keep us informed, and maybe some of us can help out with your project.
How about a member password
How about a member password synchronizing system that turns all drupal users passwords into vbulletin passwords or vice versa.
So anytime you change your password on DRUPAL, it's updated on phpbb, vbuillitin or whatever.
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