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Advanced Forum

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Michelle - November 18, 2007 - 16:24

Originally created for my Coulee Region forums, Advanced Forum is a theme/glue module that enhances Drupal's core forum module. The included styles provide the look typically found in stand alone forum software and the code provides some of the functionality, mostly related to the end user experience. By adding other Drupal contributed modules, many of which are automatically used by Advanced Forum, you can achieve much of what stand alone software provides. Because it uses the core forum module, it uses the node and comment system built into Drupal and is completely integrated, not a bridge.

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.

Features

  • Comes with fully customizable styles to make your forum look like more traditional forums.
  • Integrates the display of many forum related contrib modules.
  • Adds ability to mark all topics or topics in a forum as read.
  • Adds views column to topic list
  • Adds extra information and shortcuts such as pagers on topics, link to last post in the forum, jumps within topics, and more.
  • A complete list of features can be found in the handbook.

Dependencies

  • Requires: Forum, Taxonomy, Comments, Author Pane, PHPTemplate based theme
  • Recommended: Statistics (for views counter) and Flatcomments (to avoid issues due to the underlying threads when forums are visually set flat.)
  • Others: For a complete forum package, see this list of other contrib modules.

Known conflicts

Does not work with OG Forum or Nodeforum. Some problems with Theme Settings API have been reported as well.

Version status / Roadmap

  • D5 1.x: This version is done. I will do bugfix releases as needed but it will not be getting any new features. It will continue to have minimal support until D7 comes out.
  • D6 1.x: This version is done except for bugfixes. I will continue to support this version until the 2.x version has a full release. If you are on D6, you should be using this version!
  • D6 2.x: This version was originally intended only to add Nodecomment compatability but the scope has been expanded to include a number of new features. It is still very unstable and not suitable for anything except testing. At this point, you must have Views and Nodecomment (2.x) or you will get errors. It also has a new dependency on CTools and will be using the 2.x branch of Author Pane. If you'd like to help test, make sure you have the latest development versions of all those modules. Do not use this in production, yet, unless you enjoy pain and suffering. :)
  • D6 3.x: Because I don't want 2.x's development to drag out too long, I will be closing it to new features sometime in the next month. That is sure to leave some features unadded and so a 3.x branch will be started at that point for final features and polishing before porting to D7.
  • D7: I expect to begin porting this to D7 in September, though the new dependencies on CTools, Views, and Nodecomment may alter that plan.

About

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 this is a long term project. You can see the module in action on CRO but please do not create accounts or post test messages as it is a live site. Use the demo site to play.

If you are using it on a publicly visible site, I'd love to hear from you. It's always fun to see your module used in the wild.

If you'd like to support this module financially, there is a donate link on Shell Multimedia.

Releases

Official releasesDateSizeLinksStatus
6.x-1.12009-Jul-01193.07 KBDownload · Release notesRecommended for 6.xThis is currently the recommended release for 6.x.
5.x-1.12009-Jul-01226.26 KBDownload · Release notesRecommended for 5.xThis is currently the recommended release for 5.x.
Development snapshotsDateSizeLinksStatus
6.x-2.x-dev2009-Jul-04164.24 KBDownload · Release notesDevelopment snapshotDevelopment snapshots are automatically regenerated and their contents can frequently change, so they are not recommended for production use.
6.x-1.x-dev2009-Jul-02193.08 KBDownload · Release notesDevelopment snapshotDevelopment snapshots are automatically regenerated and their contents can frequently change, so they are not recommended for production use.
5.x-1.x-dev2009-Jul-02226.26 KBDownload · Release notesDevelopment snapshotDevelopment snapshots are automatically regenerated and their contents can frequently change, so they are not recommended for production use.


 
 

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