Geeklog Forums

I've been thinking about how best to add the feature where you could create a story and then have the forum used for the comments and discussion instead of the story comment feature.

IN GL 1.3.10 we have added the new autolink feature and the forum plugin version 2.3.2 includes support for autolinks as well. I've been wondering if I could extend this feature to auto-create the forum topic if needed for such stories. I don't think it will work all that well but wanted to explore the idea with others.

Today (GL 1.3.10 and forum 2.3.2) you would create a new topic introducing that this was a topic for the discussion of a story. Create the story and include the autolink like [ forum:12345 Discuss this topic here] and a link would automatically be created to the forum topic id 12345 with a link name "Discuss this topic here". Note: no spaces normally between the bracket and autotag - I did not want to trigger it to work in this post.

If I try to add the logic to auto create the forum topic then I see two issues:

1: The [autolink tag] is parsed at display time and not when the story is created so I need to know if there is already a topic created for this story. Ok - so I track the story ID (sid) and if there is not topic for this story then create one. But .. the story is not yet created (saved) so I don't have a story ID to look up and check for. The author would need to first save the story then come back and add the autotag - not much more convient.

2: What would this new topic look like - creating a blank topic would nto be all that good. It needs some sort of explaination. The topic subject "title" could be the story title - thats ok. I could create a topic with a general default message but would that be appropiate in all cases.

So .. I come back full circle and wonder if it's not just fine the way I have it now in 2.3.3 and GL 1.3.10.

The only better option that I see is modification to story create template to add the "Use Forum" for discussion and create the forum topic then. That requires a MOD to the story admin program, user story contribute program and templates. And would then not be plugin independant.

Comments?

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Blaine I love this idea.

I had tried to do it but never got it working right, the logic is somewhat out of my level of programming.

I had a "discuss this topic" link in my stories that linked tothe forums and it would create a topic in the forum of the same title as the story. I however not was able to get it recognize that a topic had aready been created correctly. So I ended up with multiple topics in the forums and stuff like this.

I think it would be helpful if the first story or the forum topic maybe linked back to the story being discussed.

Great idea, if your looking for testbeds I am willing to give it a go, I currently am not running a forum.

Very cool idea, thank you.

Sounds like you made code modifications if you had it automatically creating topics but then later on you are not running a forum so I'm confused.

The [autolinks] are a new feature in GL 1.3.10 and as I noted, you need the forum plugin 2.3.2 release.

You can now create autolinks to the forum, faq and staticpages plugin items as well as within each of those to reference each other or reference a story such as this one here is an example of a autolink entered for a story on this site.

Its possible now to create a story that links to a forum topic and a topic that links back to a story.

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Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com

I prefer that option. a bit of code in the core to check for the plugin's installation and display the link, "use forum," accordingly (and do a bunch of other stuff i'm sure). then have the rest dealt with by the forum plugin.

have a topic created that can only be created once (using the sid) at the first click of the "discuss.." button, then and all subsequent clicks of the button would post replies to the already created topic.

either way, sounds like a genius plan

OK, I had the forum and all I was doing was a PHP hack really. It was a sad implimentation that never saw the light of day.



Looking forward to seeing an implimentation of this and I agree with machinari that it being an option to use the forum for comments would be very flexible and sounds powerful.

Maybe I can add a new "Comment Mode" option so that a Story Editor can select from: "No Comments, Comment Enabled and Forum Discussion".

The comment options are pulled from a table so that would be no code changes for that part.

Then the story editor uses an autotag like [ forum_storydiscussion:sid# forumid]. I still need to know what story (need the sid#) this forum discussion is for so that I can map to the correct topic and create a new topic if need. The forum id is needed to know what forum to create the topic in. A geeklog topic like "Announcements" may want to refer to discussions in several fourms.

Now .. if I add a little code in the savestory function I can then remove the need to add the story id as part of the autotag. It would do the mapping needed when saving the story. All that would be needed is a autotag like [ forum_storydiscussion:forumid link title] I could then allow the Editor to add the TITLE for this link instead of having to create a default title.

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Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com

True story, about an hour ago I was talking to someone about changes I want to make to my site, and disabling comments in favor of discussing the article in the forum was one of my goals.

The way I see it, adding a "Use Forum" option when creating the story seems like the simplest approach. And then don't worry about the autolinks, instead just populate a link with {forum_comments} or something, that can be put into the story templates. Instead of making this an addition to Comments, couldn't you make it a replacement for those that want it? Maybe a simple change that can be made in lib-common to enable the feature? That way you don't have to hack geeklog much, just redirect the Comments routine.

And then when the story creates the forum thread the first time, it will need to populate the first post with some kind of opening statement and a link back to the article. In a config file or in the forums plugin admin we would have to designate which forum category handled all of the comments, unless you just want to create a default Story Comments category. I think tihs story/forum relationship will strengthen the site's seoptimization.



edit:
Oh nevermind about the {forum_comments} - since you already have something for comments, when you choose to use the forum then that would be replaced by the link to the forum...

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