Comments & forum integration

Hangin' Around Joined: May 14, 2006 Posts: 25

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.

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.

Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:23 am

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

registered · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6437

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.

Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:32 am

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

Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 10:05 am

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.

Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 10:08 am

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.