Thread

Hi all,

I am currently evaluating EE. I think it’s a great software.

For a community site I need an integrated forum.

Your Forum is pretty good, too.

Now I am wondering how I can get it integrated into the rest of the site that it’s more part of the site and doesn’t look like an additional component (like here).

Know what I mean?

I want to keep the website main menu, any bottom blocks (like here the “order expression engine”,...) and some left/right columns(like “got a question” on the services-page).

Is this possible at all?

Regards

Achim

It CAN be done, yes… but takes a fair amount of work.  You would have to doctor up the forum templates (especially the main forum index page) and also, most likely, run your forum using the main templating engine, not the forum templating engine.  I’ve done some work in this same area, and it’s definately a bit confusing.

However, using EE is worth the added time.

I’m in the same situation here - glad to know it can be done, and options for this would be great out of the box.

It would be great to link (replace) the comments in blog entries with the forum functionality - the last 5 posts on the thread shown with a link to the full discussion.

As Vanceone notes, it’s doable, but will take creating your own forum theme.  If it’s a busy forum?  I’d tend to avoid running it through the main templating engine, as that adds to the load (though admittedly, makes it much easier to customize, as the regular EE tags can then be used in the forum themes).  But yes- it’s largely a matter of creating/modifying the forum themes.

As to replacing comments with forum threads?  That’s integrated by default.  If the forum is installed, when you post an entry, you can select to have a forum post for that entry created at the same time (see docs)- the link to the forum entry can be shown using the {forum_topic_id} variable inside the weblog tag.  While you can’t display the first ‘x’ replies to that topic via a tag, it would be simple enough to pull them out with a query- on single entry weblog pages.

As to replacing comments with forum threads?  That’s integrated by default.  If the forum is installed, when you post an entry, you can select to have a forum post for that entry created at the same time (see docs)- the link to the forum entry can be shown using the {forum_topic_id} variable inside the weblog tag.  While you can’t display the first ‘x’ replies to that topic via a tag, it would be simple enough to pull them out with a query- on single entry weblog pages.

Awesome!  Thanks for the info.

Hi,

thank you all for the replies.

One more question regarding the forum integration:

Is it right that there are 2 member registration forms (member area and forum)?

Means, if my users register on the website startpage in the member area and then enter the forum, will it recognize them?

Maybe this is a stupid question but I can’t check that all in the free version.

Regards

Achim

Yes, there are two FORMS, but there is only one member system—either form registers into the same database.  So it’s really up to you which form you want to use. 

The tendancy I’ve noticed with sites that focus heavily on forums is to use the forum member templates rather than the standard templates, but it really doesn’t matter—they both access the same systems.  So, if you have your members register on the site, they will indeed be recognized by the forum, and vice versa—they register with the forum, they are registered with the site.  It’s one of the cool integretions EE does well.

Hi,

thank you Vanceone.

That’s great 😊

Regards

Achim