Advanced Forum road map
Despite the fact that Advanced Forum for D5 is alpha and the D6 version has a warning not to use it, there seems to be an awful lot of people using this module. While I've had a "to do" post up on the DruBB group for some time, I haven't written out my "plan of attack". So I decided to write up a roadmap so people can have an idea of where I'm headed. Some of this is straight copied from my post on the drubb group and some is new. Hopefully it will be helpful to people using the module. I'm going to enable comments for the moment but please do not use this for posting support/feature requests. Use the issue queue.
This is the plan:
Fix the known D5 bugs and do another alpha.- Fix the known D6 bugs and do a first alpha.
- Do the code clean up section to make it easier for others to help.
- Do the "Improving what's there" section.
- Adding the new features in whatever order strikes my fancy. (Hey, life can't be totally planned. ;)
- More alphas will come out as needed. I try to keep them coming on a regular basis to discourage people from using the devs as my dev versions tend to be broken.
- Once I've added all the features that I plan to put in 1.x, I will make betas.
- Much testing will ensue. Simpletest, maybe? I haven't looked into that whole testing business, yet.
- RCs until it's all peachy.
- Official 1.x release. Yay!
- 2.x branch will start to keep up with core forum changes. Exactly when this will happen and what shape this will take is still up in the air. See the discussion.
D5 bugs:
http://drupal.org/node/253778 - Unfinished Zen fixing code is causing the advforum dir to not be found
http://drupal.org/node/239724 - Issue with admin theme & blocks
D6 bugs:
http://drupal.org/node/254051 - Mark as read completely broken
http://drupal.org/node/241639 - Error when run under multi site
D5/D6 bugs:
http://drupal.org/node/249651 - Email icon showing when contact module not enabled
http://drupal.org/node/246778 - Anonymous posting doesn't display properly
Code clean up:
http://drupal.org/node/253155 - Fix internal functions to comply with coding standards
- Make comments follow the doxygen rules
- Run thru coder to make sure I haven't missed anything
Improving what's there:
http://drupal.org/node/253365 - Make advforum work with Zen
http://drupal.org/node/241982 - Create a table to hold the last post info and get rid of the slow query
Bring back simple post counting as an option when user stats isn't installed
http://drupal.org/node/228557 - New method of gathering information from other contrib modules
New features (not in order):
Forum listing page:
http://drupal.org/node/219549 - Add option to compact sub forums
http://drupal.org/node/244329 - Change icon when subforums have new posts
http://drupal.org/node/238668 - Show number of new comments, not just new topics
- Put link to tracker on top
- Forum statistics
- Welcome message at top of forum listing
- Jump to latest comment in latest thread on forum overview
- Number of current viewers in each forum
- Collapsable containers
- List forum moderators
Topic listing page:
http://drupal.org/node/210453 - Forum drop down list
http://drupal.org/node/254892 - Forum description on top
http://drupal.org/node/244492 - Icons for attachments, ratings, etc
- Put link to tracker on top
- Hover over topic in listing shows post teaser in popup
- Number of views on topics
- Separate spot on top for announcements
- Jump to top within each comment
Individual threads:
http://drupal.org/node/217194 - Don't show node on the top of following pages (optional)
http://drupal.org/node/210453 - Forum drop down list
http://drupal.org/node/208440 - Theme forum post preview to match forum theme
http://drupal.org/node/212432 - Change post information for anonymous users
http://drupal.org/node/250112 - Have userpoints section make use of the points branding
http://drupal.org/node/234593 - Classes to show (un)published and post is by current user
- Add support for avatars sized by imagecache
- Member #UID
- Add link to jump to first unread to top of post
- Show whole thread when replying
- Ajaxified quick reply
- Ajaxified quick edit
- Icon by comment titles
Other:
http://drupal.org/node/254795 - Incorporate flatcomments.
- Pager X of Y
- Make this work with OG forum
Postponed until at least 2.x
http://drupal.org/node/252662 Forum replies as nodes
Panels integration
IE 6 issues*:
* I am not likely to deal with IE 6 issues until at least beta. If someone wants to volunteer to deal with them, feel free.
http://drupal.org/node/255491
http://drupal.org/node/212674
Site contents are licensed under a 
Isn't this amazing that this module is such a huge success despite being only alpha. Well, sure it is a glue module and won't produce very bad functional bugs.
I think it reflects a need in people to have a forum that looks like other forums right out-of-the-box. It is often mentioned people decide against Drupal because they miss a nice forum, or the even implement a third-party-solution.
I'm having a hard time to decide whether there should be more amazing innovative (and mind-bendingly complicated ;) sorry, Merlin) Stuff like Panels 2, or simple mainstream things like a nice Forum. Surely we need both. But serving the mainstream and giving them a forum, a shop and nice Themes has long been a bit neglected.
Good to see that gaping holes are beginning to be closed, and the car can go smoothly...
Well, they're not that hard. But I'm willing to give you a hand with them.
How does 6.x correlate with 5.x? Is 6.x developement parallel to 5.x (with new features added) or is it basically ported from 5.x-alpha?
I plan to use adv-forum on a 6.x site I will be working on, and I'd like to help as much as I can to bring 6.x to a stable state. Shall I start by checking out 5.x and help port it to 6.x later, or submit patches directly for 6.x? Thanks.
eigentor: Yes, this is an area that has had people complaining for a long time. It was always possible to theme forums to look like traditional forums but the work involved was intimidating to new people and non coders.
John: Thanks for the offer. I haven't looked into it at all so I haven't the foggiest idea how hard they are.
Jim: I currently am doing all the work in 5.x and then porting the changes to 6.x as I make them. Unfortunately, I got out of sync and neglected 6.x for a while and it fell behind. I need to clean up 6.x and get it caught back up to 5.x and then I'll keep them in sync again. I don't expect to shift primary development to 6.x until late summer maybe early fall.
The branches are very similar except where changes were needed due to changes in core. I'm no good with patches and just read them and add the code manually, anyway, so it doesn't matter too much which version they are for. I'll make the code work with both.
Thanks,
Michelle
+1
I am using advanced_forum on my dev sites without too much trouble, thank you.
One strange part, and I don't remember if it was in v 5 or v 6 - I got an error that some files were not in and advforum directory in my theme's directory so I copied the advforum directory there from the module and that seems to fix the error..
Didn't think to report as an issue at drupal.org - been kinda busy
I am pretty sure it was v 5 http://4m.netsperience.org
I don't know what you would report... You got the warning that you hadn't copied your files so you copied them and the warning went away. Sounds like it's working as expected.
Michelle
Sorry that this is not a Advanced forum question but I could not resist..
This editor for posting comments looks very cool. It does not look like the FCKeditor or YUI....
What editor is this?
How hard is this to integrate into a Drupal site?
Thanks much.
Anil Garg