Hi,

I've installed Advanced forum, and have it working on my dev site at www.bkks.org.uk/portal/forum. However, I have a few issues and I am looking for help.

I have the comments set to Threaded View - expanded by default. However, the comments do not indent as they did before.

Is this still supported under this theme (This is a MUST for me), or have I broken something (I have made some small changes to the php)

Thanks,
Gareth

Comments

Michelle’s picture

Michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
CreditAttribution: Michelle commented
Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)

The intent of this module is flat forums. As long as you're not using the flatcomment module, you _should_ be able to use it with threaded forums... It will just look funny. But I'm not actively supporting threaded forums.

Michelle

gareth_w’s picture

gareth_w CreditAttribution: gareth_w commented

Thanks for this (and the other replies) and getting back to me on them so quickly.

However, it is a great shame that this cannot be offered.

The great bonus to me of using Drupal is the threaded forums - something none of the other packages seem to offer anymore.

I don't use the flatcomments module (as far as I know; I've never explicitly installed it anyhow) and this does not work and does look odd - there is 1 level of indenting by about 3 pixels on seemingly random posts.

Without meaning to demean your hard work, if you cannot match this feature, then this module is seemingly useless as you are taking away good features to install other ones. In that case you may just as well install SMF or phpBB or something which already has all these features (and you could argue, performs better with them). This is something I really do not want to do.

I'm trying to get a constant look to the site to get people used to posting outside of the forums - the comments acting one way and the forum another is not the greatest way to go about this.

It would be a real shame if the only way forward was to disable the advanced forum module. I'd be grateful if you could point me at any code or CSS that controls this, so I can try to hack it to give the performance I need.

Thanks again, Gareth

Michelle’s picture

Michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
CreditAttribution: Michelle commented

It sounds like this isn't the module for you. The purpose of this module is to give Drupal's forums the typical look and functionality of the stand alone forum software people are used to. I, and the many other people using this, disagree that this is useless. If you're wanting threaded forums then Drupal will do that out of the box. At least for now. One of the goals for D7 is to drop threading.

Michelle

gareth_w’s picture

gareth_w CreditAttribution: gareth_w commented

My original reply did come across harsher than I intended and I did not mean to cause offence.

This module may not be the one for me, but it seems that it's the only way to achieve some of the things I do want. I thought that part of the Drupal philosohpy was that Presentation should be separate from Code - surely this is not the case in this module as the two cannot be unlinked?

It increasingly seems that I am in the minority of 1 when it comes to threading and must reluctantly bow to the wishes of the community. I can't help wonder how much of the driving force behind this is/was lazy coding which drove a product to success, and now the public is too used to the only way they know of doing things to change to something better.

You should at the very least change your documenation however - it does state that you can choose the format for the comments that you want - though only one of these formats will work.

Again, my apologies if I caused offense - I'm frustrated at the situation and not at you; I acknowledge and respect your contribution but just wish there was some way that I could use it.

Michelle’s picture

Michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
CreditAttribution: Michelle commented

"I thought that part of the Drupal philosohpy was that Presentation should be separate from Code - surely this is not the case in this module as the two cannot be unlinked?"

This module is a hybrid module/theme. Probably 90% of it is theme code. If you take that away, there's not a lot left. That said, the theme it ships with is fully customizable. Since the module doesn't do anything to prevent you from setting your forums to threaded, it "works" with threading. But you'll need to customize the theme to look decent. If someone wants to contribute a threaded based advforum theme, I'll include it. But it's not something I have the time or desire to create myself. (You might want to wait a bit, though, until I commit the D6 backport.)

"I can't help wonder how much of the driving force behind this is/was lazy coding which drove a product to success, and now the public is too used to the only way they know of doing things to change to something better."

We'll have to disagree there. I don't find threaded forums to be better at all. I find them to be a pain to read.

"You should at the very least change your documenation however - it does state that you can choose the format for the comments that you want - though only one of these formats will work."

It says "Set Default display mode: Flat list - expanded". That seems pretty clear to me.

"Again, my apologies if I caused offense - I'm frustrated at the situation and not at you; I acknowledge and respect your contribution but just wish there was some way that I could use it."

I still don't see what you want to use it _for_ since the whole point is flat forums, which you don't want. But, as I said, you can use it if you just change the theme.

Michelle

gareth_w’s picture

gareth_w CreditAttribution: gareth_w commented

I don't want to turn this into a slanging match. What I want here is the extra information display alongside the forum posts (post count, author link, badges, etc) - what I don't want is the flat forum. Seeing as this breaks the default behaviour, I was hoping at least for some advice on how to reset this.

Looks like I may just have to go with the flock on this one though.

Thanks again for your assistance,
Gareth

Michelle’s picture

Michelle
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Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
CreditAttribution: Michelle commented

"I don't want to turn this into a slanging match."

Then accept the fact that this module, which is the successor to FLATforum, was written for the purpose of emulating software such as phpbb and don't tell me that it's useless and that it "breaks the default behaviour". It's not breaking anything. It's doing what it was intended to do.

I don't have any advice for you for making it work with threaded forums beyond "change the theme". AFAIK, there is nothing in the module code preventing you from using threading. It's simply a matter of the default theme being designed for flat forums. It's rather like installing a one column theme with a drop down top menu bar and filing an issue because your left column menu doesn't look right.

It's all themable. Have at it.

Michelle