Comments & forum integration

Malke · New Member Joined: May 14, 2006 Posts: 21

I think a forum and comments integration would be cool.

I mean that a news story is also a forum thread, and comments are displayed as replies. Replies in the thread are also shown as comments.

I think this could be done by integrating the news stories database table with the forum thread table. When a news story is posted it is added to the forum thread database with a new variable (ie news=1). When a thread is posted by an admin, he/she could have the option to click "also post as news".

So that's my suggestion. I think it'd be a cool feature.

fkelly · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 6:20 am

It might be a cool idea. But be aware that the forum software and table structure comes from an independent source (PHPBB) than the Nuke table structure. And there is not just a single forum thread table but a series of related tables that have to be kept in synch. So any hacking into the forums code runs the serious risk of being obsoleted by the next release of PHPBB.

Guardian2003 · Site Admin Joined: Aug 28, 2003 Posts: 4815

If you just wanted to show comments you could enable the comments module.

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 4848

Quote:

I mean that a news story is also a forum thread, and comments are displayed as replies. Replies in the thread are also shown as comments.

That is exactly what the FNA (Forum News Advanced) mod does.

Malke · New Member Joined: May 14, 2006 Posts: 21

Cool. So how does it work? Does it keep them in both databases and add the thread and replies automatically?

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 4848

Only in Forums tables, I believe. It uses another module as the Home module to pull the news from specific forums, and basic forums functionality to threads / replies.

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 4848

By the way, I'm not recommending we replace News with FNA in RN since many aren't interested in replies or don't even allow it for various reasons.

We have discussed using an integration between News and Forums for this purpose, or consolidating comments for all content types into a single function, which might be more appropriate given the changes in Forums.