Forums

Submitted by Michelle on Sun, 03/29/2009 - 23:40

Modules used in this section

Core: forum, taxonomy, comment, statistics, path, menu, user
Contrib: advanced forum, author pane, flatcomments, imagecache, pathauto, bueditor, comment page, fasttoggle, smileys, live, quote, signature for forums.

Forum

Navigate to ?q=admin/content/forum/settings

These settings are for the topic list for an individual forum. I leave them at the defaults but you might want to adjust the first two depending on how busy your forum is.

  • Hot topic threshold: 15
  • Topics per page: 25
  • Default order: "Date - newest first"

Navigate to ?q=admin/content/forum
Add containers and forums
@TODO: Flesh this out more.

Taxonomy

Navigate to ?q=admin/content/taxonomy

This section allows you to select content types to use in forums. By default, the forum type is selected. If this is the only type you want, you don't need to do anything here. If you would like to add more types, such as polls, this is where you do it.

  • Edit the forum vocabulary
  • Check all content types you want to use in forums.

Comment

Navigate to ?q=admin/content/node-type/forum

Drupal forum topics (aka threads) consist of a topic starting node and comments for replies. You will want to change the default comment settings for each type you allow in your forums.

  • Expand "Comment settings" fieldset.
  • Default comment setting: "Read/write"
  • Set Default display mode: "Flat list - expanded." Advanced Forum is intended to be used flat. Using it threaded can cause layout issues and incorrect calculations of the location of the next new post.
  • Default display order: "Date - oldest first"
  • Default comments per page: Up to you. (If you chose to have a threaded forum, setting this number to the maximum will reduce issues with pagination and threading.)
  • Comment controls: "Do not display".
  • Anonymous commenting: Up to you.
  • Comment subject field: Up to you. If disabled, Advanced Forum will not display the Drupal default subject, which is the first few words of the comment.
  • Preview comment: Up to you. I recommend making it optional.
  • Location of comment submission form: Up to you. Displaying below provides a non-ajax quick reply.

User

Navigate to ?q=admin/user/settings

  • Signature support: Enabled
  • Picture support: Enable this for avatars in the forum.
  • Picture maximum dimensions: If you make this larger than about 100x100, you will want to size it in either CSS or with imagecache to avoid breaking the forum layout.

Statistics

Navigate to ?q=admin/reports/settings

  • Enable access log: Enabled
  • Count content views: Enabled - Needed for topic views count.

Menu

Navigate to ?q=admin/build/menu-customize/navigation

Enable and optionally move the "forums" entry.

Imagecache

Navigate to ?q=admin/build/imagecache/add

Define a preset for use in the forums.

  • Preset Namespace: forum_avatar
  • Click "Create new preset"
  • Add action "scale and crop"
  • Set the width and height to 100 x 100
  • Click "Add action"

Advanced Forum

Navigate to ?q=admin/settings/advanced-forum

  1. Advanced forum style directory: Select the name of the style you wish to use.
  2. Use graphical buttons for links: Included buttons with text are only in English. If your site isn't in English and you don't want to replace the buttons, uncheck this box and you will get translatable text links instead. Icons with no text are not affected by this setting.
  3. Image directory: The images used by the styles are assumed to be in an "images" subdirectory off the style. If you need to use images from another source, enter the complete path here.
  4. Treat all site comments like forum comments: If you would like advanced forum to take over the theming of all comments, even those outside the forum, choose yes here.
  5. Hide the created column on the topic list: Because the column headers for the topic list are set in code, they are not themable. This option will let you turn the column off. This is useful if you want to move the "created" information into the topic title area. Note that this only turns off the column. It doesn't move the contents.
  6. Maximum number of pages to show on per title pager: On the page that lists all the topics, for topics that span multiple pages, there is a mini pager under the topic title. This setting lets you adjust how many numbers that show there. Useful if you are trying to cram extra information into that spot and want a smaller pager.
  7. Get the number of new comments per forum on the forum list: On the forum list page, core forum will show if there are new topics but not if there are new replies (comments). This option shows the total number of new posts (topics and replies) under the "Posts" column. Because the query is resource intensive, this is turned off to start.
  8. Use topic navigation: Core forum puts links to the previous and next nodes at the bottom each forum node. The query for this is inefficient and the placement is less than ideal, so this is turned off by default. Because some people like these links, there is an option to turn them back on.
  9. Number of characters to display for the topic title: Number of characters before cutting off title of the last post on the forum overview page.
  10. Number of hours before switching to "time ago" in displays: Will use "time ago" for this many hours back and then switch to displaying the date.

Pathauto

@TODO: fill this in

Other contrib modules

The following modules I leave mostly at default so am only listing changes.

BUEditor
No changes

Comment Page

  1. Navigate to ?q=admin/content/comment_page
  2. Uncheck "Show link to page view in the comment links section."
  3. Check "Default empty comment subject to 'Re: Parent node/comment title'."

Fast toggle

  1. Navigate to ?q=admin/settings/fasttoggle
  2. Change label to "Action (shows what happens upon a click, e.g. "unpublish", "block")"
  3. Check Topic opened/closed (users are allowed/disallowed to post comments)

Smileys

  1. Navigate to ?q=admin/settings/smileys/configure
  2. Enable smileys select box for: Nodes/Comments
  3. Uncheck Expand select-box fieldset by default
  4. Enable on types: Blog / forum post

Live

  1. Navigate to ?q=admin/settings/live
  2. Enable on all node types

Quote

  1. Navigate to ?q=admin/settings/quote
  2. Check forum topic
  3. Uncheck Make the comment subject field a required field

Signatures for forums

  1. Navigate to ?q=admin/settings/signature_forum
  2. Show signatures with nodes and comments for: Forum topic

Access control

Navigate to ?q=admin/user/access
- Administer Advanced Forum
- View Advanced Forum statistics