Our current Forum, although is has many features. It doesn't have the modern look & feel of some of the more modern Forum Systems.
Great examples of modern forums
- Discourse.org (http://www.discourse.org/)
- http://XenForo.org
- Biostars - https://github.com/ialbert/biostar-central
General Objectives
- Make the categorization of Topics easier to navigate
- Create a more visual View Topics Page
- Create a clean fresh View Post Page
- Add "Social Networking" type forum (e.g. similar to Facebook and Twitter)
- Increase Performance ?
Make the categorization of Topics easier to navigate
Modern forums enable Topics to be organized. We already have the ability in Tiki to categorize a Forum Topic and Forum Post which is really powerful. The problem is that we don't really make great use of this within the interface.
This is an example of a Citadel Rock custom hacked interface that we've created for our projects that use forums
As you can see, we have a Forum landing page that allows users to choose a category before seeing Topics. We also allow users to quickly change categories even when viewing Topics.
We also allow users to categorize Topics and Replies into more then one category
This is an example of Discourse.org combines their interface to see Topics and Categories in one unified view
Create a more visual View Topics Page
The current Tiki View Topics page needs a refresh. Ideally more information about the topics should be displayed (if we want to stay in Table view) but we should also have (Preview Mode) which would give a snippet of the topic
Example of a modern Table View from Discourse.org
Example of a hacked theme we created for our Forums at Citadel Rock - Notice the snippet preview
Create a clean fresh look for View Post Page
Our current Tiki View Post page does everything you need in a standard forum but would be nice to give it a clean modern fresh look.
Also instead of having Threaded Forums, we could take the more modern approach of simply have inline replies.
Example of a View Post page from Discourse.org
Add "Social Networking" type forum (e.g. similar to Facebook and Twitter)
Forums were always mean't to help people share thoughts, opinions and experiences. Today, the web allows us to share those thoughts through multiple ways.
- Text
- Pictures
- Video
- Links
- Etc...
If we look at how Facebook, Twitter, even Instagram. They take a Timeline approach where people share and allow others to comment / reply. This is essentially a Forum.
We should have a "Social Mode" for our Forums. This would simplify the interface and focus it more on sharing different TYPES of content.
We should look at other social networks for inspiration
- http://sharpandnimble.com/se7en/demo/social.html (responsive design)
Notice how easy they make it to share Text, Pictures, Links etc...
Idea of offering alternate layouts
So there needs to be a flexible framework/way to display forum content. Different types so to speak. And also different input forms to enter new content (e.g image vs. text). Should think about Bootstrap.
Something that is really troublesome nowadays is the need to replace the text “Post a comment” with “Post a reply” or any other similar text in the tpl. An easy way needs to exist to change this text for different forum settings.
Feature enhancements
- https://dev.tiki.org/item7187-Create-a-forum-within-a-forum-sub-forum
- https://dev.tiki.org/item7186-Sort-forums-arbitrarily
- https://dev.tiki.org/item7188-Ability-to-sort-edit-and-delete-Forum-Sections
Team
- fatiki
- Benito: https://gitlab.com/benito243
- Loic: https://gitlab.com/lyabs243
- koth @Nelson: Are you still up for this?
- jonny @Jonny: Are you still up for this?
- marclaporte
- YOU?