If there is any interest, I could make a "collaboration" or something component in specialpurpose
and include my personal calendar application in it too. I hope to add an In/Out board and To Do list
soon.
Adrian Crum wrote:
That would work too. It just seemed convenient to have it in with the
majority of the files it will be using.
Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
Adrian,
and why not as a new component in the specialpurpose folder?
Jacopo
Adrian Crum wrote:
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