Advanced Forum
Advanced Forum is a "glue" module that provides a layer between the core forum module and all all the various modules that add the functionality found in stand alone forum software. It also handles theming and some functionality not covered by other modules. Because it is so heavily tied to the theme, it requires a PHPTemplate based theme to work.
This module does the following:
- Comes with fully customizable template files that control the look of your forum
- Makes calls to other contrib modules and creates variables that are used in the forum template files.
- Adds some functionality that lacking in core forum such as pagers on topics, link to last post in the forum, ability to mark all topics/forums read, and more.
Make sure you read the documentation! Especially for 5.x, there is more to installing this module than copying it to your server and enabling it.
Before filing issues, especially feature requests, please check the roadmap / to do list to be sure it's not already listed.
Theme problems? I am a coder, not a designer. I have some minimal CSS skills but am not that great at it. So if you post a support request to make it work in theme X, it will probably get a "won't fix" unless someone else steps up to help. You may want to try the issue queue for that theme for help. Once the theme part stabalizes, I encourage theme maintainers to build in support for advforum to make it easy for your users. I do my best to make this work right in default Garland blue in FF, Opera, and IE 7 so if you find a problem in those, please file a bug report. Patches for IE 6 are welcome but I won't take a lot of time supporting it.
5.x Status: Alpha 7 is out, which fixes all the known bugs in alpha 6. I'm not anticipating any more major theme changes for 5.x, though some small changes will likely be needed as I add features so keep an eye on the release notes for each alpha. I reccommend not using the dev version for a live site. The alphas are pretty ok as I try not to release an alpha with known bugs but this module is in active development so use it with care and be very careful of upgrades.
6.x Status: The latest dev tarball is getting close to ready for an alpha. I still need to give it some good testing, though, and don't recommend using it on a live site, yet.
If you use the nodeaccess module, see http://drupal.org/node/238125#comment-781387
If you use Zen, see http://drupal.org/node/246109
This module was created for Coulee Region ONLINE, which is a hobby site and it is therefore unsponsored. I work on it as much as I can but my free time is very limited and I am often slow to respond to issues. You can see the module in action there but please do not create accounts or post test messages as it is a live site. Use the demo site to play.
Releases
| Official releases | Date | Size | Links | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.x-1.0-alpha8 | 2008-May-08 | 43.12 KB | Download · Release notes | Recommended for 5.x |  |
| Development snapshots | Date | Size | Links | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6.x-1.x-dev | 2008-May-10 | 36.59 KB | Download · Release notes | Development snapshot |  |
| 5.x-1.x-dev | 2008-May-12 | 43.32 KB | Download · Release notes | Development snapshot | |