How about making a stand alone Forum application a separate web app within the content component?
All that would require is adding a few files and a <webapp> element in the ofbiz-component.xml file.
The <webapp> element could be disabled OOTB by commenting it out - anyone wanting to use it could
uncomment it.
Adrian Crum wrote:
Al,
I'm moving this over to the dev list - since the thread seems to be
going in that direction.
Thank you very much for the notes! My comments are inline...
Al Byers wrote:
That is one of the things to be done is define what a forum does and
how it
is different from a blog.
Of course the one big difference is that in a blog only one or a few
people
have permission to add "articles" while any logged in user can usually
start
a thread in a forum.
I agree. So, the basic underlying code would be shared, but the UI would
be different.
I have already created forum-specific permissions - so that they can be
handled separately from blog (or content manager) permissions.
The biggest question is whether or not the comments are ordered in date
order or by thread. Blogs tend to allow only date ordering, but Slashdot
orders responses by thread. A general forum mini app would probably allow
the user to choose which ordering.
I had already thought of that! I have the main forum message list in
descending date order right now, and later I'll add an option to order
it by thread.
One thing that I did a fair amount of work on was allowing the posting of
mixed content (ie. images and text). That is not something you may
want to
have in a forum, but if it is used for a non-standard purpose, you might.
Maybe that could be configurable.
I will start to diverge now, as I see forums as possible collaboration
tools
- in which case do you let users make personal notes to themselves about
certain entries?
You may want to think about allow categorization of an entry or response
(eg. asking for help, lodging a complaint, etc.)
In our case, the forums will be used as a type of online meeting.
Instead of trying to get everyone to meet in the same place at the same
time, a forum topic can be started and the meeting "attendees" can post
messages as they find the time.
So, mixed content would be appropriate in our case - so that files,
images, video, etc can be included in the discussion. As time goes by,
searches can be conducted on the forums for research purposes.
Extracting the forum feature into its own component was easy, and I've
made a lot of improvements in only a little over a day. That ease
demonstrates all of the hard work that was done previously. You've done
a great job Al!
-Adrian
