Building a Drupal Forum at AASHE.ORGJulia Kulla-Maderjuliakm.com@juliakm

Project Mission

Provide a central place where those interested in campus sustainability can ask and answer questions, share knowledge and expertise, and contribute to the growing body of knowledge on campus sustainability.

What can the core forum module accomplish?

Basic Forum Module Functionality

Create forum posts

Respond to forum posts via comments

Mark posts as sticky

Organize posts by taxonomy

RSS feed for each forum

What can the core forum module not do?

Part I: Requirements Not Met By Forum Module

Look and feel can be customized to match main AASHE website.

Ability for users to sign up for email notification (by email or RSS) of replies to a thread (this should default on their own posts).

Individual topic areas can be co-branded with partner associations. For example, the ACUPCC sponsors the Climate Forum.

Part II: Requirements Not Met By Forum ModuleSponsors recognized on the main forums page.

AASHE staff logo and AASHE member logo accompanies appropriate posts.

Non-members posts are not automatically published. Moderators receive an automatic notification.

The "Real Name" and not the username should show up everywhere for users.

Part III: Requirements Not Met By Forum Module

Users can “quote” one another in forum threads

Display recent posts categorized by relevant taxonomy term throughout the site

How can we build more functionality into the forum using contributed modules?

Look and Feel

Objective: Look and feel can be customized to match main AASHE website.

Problem: Basic forum module makes forum design difficult to customize.

Solution: Advanced Forum

Email Notifications

Objective: Ability for users to sign up for email notification (by email or RSS) of replies to a thread (this should default on their own posts).

Problem: Users need a way to receive updates via email. This is not a core feature.

Solution: Notifications + Token + Messaging Framework

Co-Branded Forum

Objective: Individual topic areas can be co-branded with partner associations. For example, the ACUPCC sponsors the Climate Forum.

Problem: There’s no section-sponsor setup out of the box with the forum module.

Solution: Create a block that only appears on specific taxonomy pages.

Sponsor Recognition

Objective: Sponsors recognized in random order on the main forums page.

Problem: Non-technical users need to be able to upload logos and have them appear on the homepage.

Solution: Views + Imagecache

Staff and Member Logos

Objective: AASHE staff logo to accompany staff posts. AASHE member logo accompanies member posts.

Problem: Need a way to automatically assign “badges” to posts.

Solution: User Badges + Author Pane

Auto Staff Notifications

Problem: When non-members submit posts, they are not published and the AASHE moderators receive an automatic notification.

Objective: Need to not public posts and comments with a specific role and to send AASHE Staff notification that it’s time to review a post.

Solution: Rules

Real Name Only

Objective: The "Real Name" and not the username should show up everywhere for users.

Problem: We don’t use “username” on the website to ever identify users.

Solution: Real Name

Quote

Objective: Users can “quote” one another in forum threads

Problem: It can been difficult to teach users that the appropriate way to quote one another is with <blockquote>.

Solution: Quote + patch

Recent Relevant Posts

Objective: Display recent posts categorized by relevant taxonomy term throughout the site.

Problem: Recent posts forum block doesn’t allow you to filter depending on the page you are on.

Solution: Views (not implemented on live site)

Bonus Problem: Deploying is HardObjective: Find an easy way to transfer required modules, Views, CCK fields, imagecache presets from development to staging to live site

Problem: It’s hard to keep track of all of the required modules and settings and downright annoying.

Solution: Features

Bonus Problem 2: Post Count Craziness

Objective: Provide an accurate forum post count.

Problem: Forum post count was doubling depending on the number of assigned roles if you use a contributed node access module.

Solution: Core Patch

Drumroll please...

Sponsor View

Real Names

Description/Sponsor Block

Block for anonymoususers only

SubscriptionOptions

Quote Button

MemberBadge

Recent Posts View

Forum Questions?