Dove Forums - Version 2

[eluser]techgnome[/eluser]
Nice... the addition of Ion Auth helps me a lot... been spending the majority of my night reading through the various auth modules available, trying to decide which one I wanted. Knowing that I also want to add forums to my site at some point too, I stumbled into this thread. This makes things a lot easier. Now I'll only need to worry about one authentication process.

-tg

[eluser]techgnome[/eluser]
Quick question... a couple questions really...
1) Will it support sub categories? I plan to have a few top level categories, each with several sub categories. The plan is to have the top level ones un-postable, but to simply act as parent cats for the postable forums. I think that made sense.

2) I see from the sample site that the links to the categories are in the form of "Category/X" where X is the cat number. I'd rather see category slugs. Would help with SEO as well I believe. So instead of "forums/category/1" it would read "forums/category/general" ... or maybe even "forums/general" ... but that might be pushing it. And if sub categories are implemented: "forums/category/general/news" ... "forums/category/news/site/updates" ...

I'll probably be downloading a copy in the next day or two... take it for a spin on my dev machine... see what I can do with it.

-tg

[eluser]Bainzy[/eluser]
Hi techgnome,

Ok let me clear up your questions .... First of all the forums will support sub categories by the time of release, top and sub categories will be postable however since you require the top categories to be locked sort of speak i will code in a setting to allow this

Second i see what you mean that will be better from a SEO point of view and to be honest its not something i have thought about till now, I will edit the code and make it run of category names rather than category ID.

At present there is no downloadable version of Dove Lite, not till i have sorted the coding out and got the auth system running properley. So please hold fire and i can always email you once i release a beta version. This should be done by Friday ... but Sunday at the latest.

I hope that clears things up a little.
Chris

[eluser]techgnome[/eluser]
That works timing wise ... I probably won't have the time this week anyways. Besides, the site I'm planning on using this for isn't live yet anywho. Just as an FYI - some of the stuff I'm looking for is based on a previous forum install I used to use called bbPress from the makers of WordPress (http://bbpress.org) I'm not using them this time around because trying to integrate the forums, user authentication and CI just seems a bit ... impractical. As it is, trying to get to user login information outside of the bbPress install (because I do not want it in the root) was a royal pain in the aaaaas you were.

At any rate. SWEET! Yeah, just drop me a line when you have something. I'll take a shot at it. I don't mind being a guinea pig, as long as you don't mind me making suggestions - and please feel free to tell me to go pound sand if necessary.

-tg

[eluser]Pschilly[/eluser]
From the sounds of it, this will be a pretty kickass forum release... I can think of a few ways to use this in projects I have

[eluser]Bainzy[/eluser]
Hey guys,

Another update ... I have basically started again with this as adding ion auth into the system meant alot of my coding logic could no longer be used, so back i went to the drawing board and thought ahead of what other features will be use full and allow for growth and expansion.

So what have i changed ?

First of all i dropped my old template library in favor of phil's ... The reason behind this choice is it allows modules with no code modification. ... thanks phil

Modular Extensions - I have now started using this for modular separation taking it one step further than before. The reason behind this is in the next release i want to add in a plugins system and this will help me do so.

Codeigniter 2 - The risky bit :S .. i have being in two minds over swapping to codeigniter 2 .. and for this version i have made the leap. I know its risky as its not released yet but i have noticed a few people using it and there will be frequent builds of the software as and when code updates are released on the codeigniter repository.

SEO - After a comment i got on the dove lite forums regarding SEO it hit me ... i really had not included any form of SEO minus the front page keywords & description. There is a huge gap that needs to be filled.

Categories and sub Categories - You will be pleased to hear that the forums now supports both, you can now have top level categories which topics can be posted in, sub level categories which can also be posted in ... it also includes the feature to turn off top level category posting. I have also made the change from using the Category ID to use the Category Name - this again makes the SEO front a little better

Where are you at the moment ?

At present i am still porting everything over into the new file structure and getting everything running again, the main advantage is that for the most i don't have to change any of the coding logic so its a simple copy and paste .. however some parts are needing major re-work and this may delay release for a little while longer ... However ... weekend is here and i have nothing to do around the house so i have a full weekend of coffee and code ahead of me so i will keep everyone posted of my progress .

Chris

[eluser]Phil Sturgeon[/eluser]
Sounds brilliant!

Don't fear the CI2. One of "the few people" you mentioned are EllisLab lol, they use it as a base for EE2 and MojoMotor so it can't be that unstable right?

I've been using it for PyroCMS since it came out, its all good.

[eluser]Pschilly[/eluser]
The only real downside to using CI2 right now is that its still beta... But thats it... Just because it's beta doesn't mean anything. Most programs, specially web coding projects stay in beta for years and years. No fear

[eluser]Bainzy[/eluser]
Hey phil ... i noticed by the file structure in pyro that you were running CI2 so this is why i did i thought then integration should go without a hitch

And eye pschilly .. i agree 100% on that

[eluser]Pschilly[/eluser]
Speaking of the integration... How comes the progress?