Implement Forum on my Site...!!!

[eluser]Zeeshan Rasool[/eluser]
Hi all, i am goin to implement a forum on my site using n-level categories. I need some very important points which i should use and should keep me in mind. So any one tell me about some thing very good to use in forum development. Some thing like very attractive and i want to make this module very attractive. Waiting for your ideas guys....!! mirk:

please give some thing new.

[eluser]Thorpe Obazee[/eluser]
You'd probably want to talk to Fuzzy. He's been 'researching' a lot about forums.

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
That's a very broad question. Can you be more specific? I'm still struggling on the best way to implement the forum. I think I've finally figured it out, but I'll no doubt change my mind in another 10 seconds or so.

[eluser]Zeeshan Rasool[/eluser]
you are right but i want to get some thing extra than just developing it in PHP in typical style means using 2 tables in which one should contain categories and other should contain forum posts. I need , is there any thing new which can make my forum stylish.

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
Functionality-wise? I'll just bash out some random thoughts (I get a lot of them, so I'll try to stay on-topic). If it's not what you wanted, or if you want more information on something specific, I'm sure you'll let me know.

MPTT to maintain the categories.
Zend_Search_Lucene for indexing posts.
Breadcrumb class for helping users navigate.

Need a way to track read posts.
Need an admin panel for managing the forums - For adding/editing forums, moving them, defining permissions etc...
Need a way to store user's preferences.
Need a way for users to sign up/login/logout.
Forum statistics.
Try to make extensive use of active record class. With Zend_Search_Lucene doing the indexing, we should be able to keep the forum portable, as we don't need any database proprietary queries.

[eluser]garymardell[/eluser]
Probably off topic but is the forum going to be released, (TheFuzzy0ne). I have been waiting for ages for a decent ci forum to appear and I'm surprised that no one has made one yet.

Also to add integration is a must i think for any forum. Most forums are made to be standalone which means integration is often very "hacky", alot do not allow the integration of sessions for both, only user data. The way i could see this working is have almost a mini api. So the external site can request a function to see if the user is logged in to the forum, get user information and set user information so it can be kept consistent. Also to register users to the forum externally. Having a function which passes some hash that can be validated along with a private "secret code" could mean when a user logs in to the site a session is created for the forum. There may be more functions I'm missing but these i think would be the main ones to make an integration that isn't hacking files and could make the integration both ways.

[eluser]Dam1an[/eluser]
[quote author="garymardell" date="1241121031"]Probably off topic but is the forum going to be released, (TheFuzzy0ne). I have been waiting for ages for a decent ci forum to appear and I'm surprised that no one has made one yet.[/quote]

I've you've been waiting for ages, then why have you not made one yourself (and released it)

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
I would like to release it, but it will take a lot more work. The problem is integration with existing sites. At the moment, the forum only requires minimal roles - User, Admin, Super Admin - and that's it (that's all the client wants), but I would like to integrate an ACL system in there to make all of this possible.

I still can't decide on the best way to proceed. I start coding the model, and end up ditching it for a seemingly better idea, and the cycle goes on... Once I know for sure what I'm doing with the model, and my mind doesn't change every time the wind changes direction, I think I'll be OK. Here's the link to my proposed prototype - http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/113117/ - I'm still not sure if I'm on the right track though.

To be honest, I think I'd make the forum standalone first, and then create a layer which will help with integration.

[eluser]Zeeshan Rasool[/eluser]
Thanks guys, garymardell,Dam1an ,TheFuzzy0ne. you r making lot of help including fun :-)
I got many things from your reply, i started my development on forum, One thing which i think should be asked to you.. here is way to getting subcategories in creating a category.. i-e In add new category module i have a text field 'Category title' and 'Category path' which is path in combo, meanz all main categories are showing in combo when a user want to create a category and need to put it under an other category you can say He want to make it a subcategory he selects a category a click a link near the combo 'fetch subcategories' and then all subcategories under that category appears

Code:

Fashion => Men => Cloth => Shirts.... n level

im calling model function directly to get a arry containing 'Shirts' and also its previus hirearchy means backwards to Fashion coz i m creating links till n leve also
Fashion->Mens->Cloths

So in my view, above thing is getting by calling model func directly in while loop till parent id is not 0. means we reached at first level.

Can you tell me a valid solution for this ? i want to get rid from caling a func directly in view

[eluser]Dam1an[/eluser]
You could do this in the controller (or model) and store it in an array
Then in the view, you just need to loop through the array, printing each link in turn

A sample bit of code to do this would be

Code:

$item = // set this to the bottom item
$breadcrumb = array();
while($item->parent != 0) {
  array_push($breadcrumb, $item);
  $item = $item->get_parent();
}