Discussion Forum Add-On

The DiscussionForumAddOn allows to populate news and make comments on it in a Slashdot like way.

• See TWiki:Sandbox.DiscussionForum for an example of the initial prototype
• See TWiki:DiscussionForum for brainstorming and alpha package

The DiscussionForumAddOn is not a magical Plugin - it is simply an ingenious implementation of TWiki templates and searches using patterns in order to create the appearance of a bunch of different discussion forums. In reality, hidden text is embedded into each Topic that is created in order to generate the different "forums".

NOTE: DiscussionForumAddOn has only been really tested in it's own Twiki Web, not as a part of a larger web. This is not to say it won't work, only that it has not been tested as of this update.

Add-On Installation Instructions

DiscussionForumAddOn is comprised of two component distributions:

• DiscussionForumAddOn.zip Contains this topic plus a graphic file that goes into /public
• DiscussionForumTemplates.zip Contains the raw templates that need to be copied into the Twiki web destined to be the repository of your new Discussion Forum.

Note: You do not need to install anything on the browser to use this add-on. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the add-on on the server where TWiki is running.

• Install the TWiki:Plugins.CommentPlugin if it's not already installed.
• Download the ZIP files from the Add-on Home (see below)
• Unzip DiscussionForumAddOn.zip in your twiki installation directory. Content:

File: Description: data/TWiki/DiscussionForumAddOn.txt AddOn topic data/TWiki/DiscussionForumAddOn.txt,v AddOn topic repository pub/TWiki/DiscussionForumAddOn/edge.gif edge image pub/TWiki/DiscussionForumAddOn/edge.gif,v edge image repository

• Unzip DiscussionForumTemplates.zip into the data directory of the new web where you want the Discussion Forums to take place. Content:

File: Description: DiscussionForumOverview.txt The root of your Forums, gives an overview of 5 articles DiscussionForumOverview.txt,v topic repository DiscussionForumTemplate.txt create and post new articles DiscussionForumTemplate.txt,v topic repository DiscussionForumArchiv.txt shows all posted articles in short form DiscussionForumArchiv.txt,v topic repository DiscussionForumCreate.txt create and post new articles DiscussionForumCreate.txt,v topic repository DiscussionForumHead.txt holds HTML tags for articles DiscussionForumHead.txt,v topic repository DiscussionForumImages.txt holds images for article-categories DiscussionForumImages.txt,v topic repository DiscussionForumCategoryOptions.txt holds the list of selectable article-categories, editable DiscussionForumCategoryOptions.txt,v topic repository

• Upload the icon image for the article-categories into DiscussionForumImages as Attachments
• Configure/Create categories by editing DiscussionForumCategoryOptions with your category names. For every category there must be an icon image OF THE SAME NAME (see DiscussionForumImages).
• Test if the installation was successful:
  • Try to create a new Discussion Forum through DiscussionForumOverview
  • look in DiscussionForumOverview for the new forum.

Add-On Info

• Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Discussion forum with comments in a Slashdot like way

Plugin Author: TWiki:Main.AndreUlrich Plugin Version: 04 May 2003 (v0.900)   06 July 2004 (v0.990) SteveRJones Change History:   04 May 2003: Initial version 07 Jun 2003: general restructure of DiscussionForumAddOn, incorporate many ideas of TWiki:Main.PeterThoney 06 July 2004: General updating. Re-wrote this document with more detail on how this AddOn works.   DiscussionForumOverview is a tad bit more friendly in presenting options.   Added DiscussionForumCategoryOptions so it is easier to add categories   Tested with CommentPlugin version 3.0, 18 Feb 2004. Later CommentPlugin versions had issues.   Added additional category icons CPAN Dependencies: none Other Dependencies: CommentPlugin Perl Version: 5.005   5.6.1 License: GPL Add-on Home: http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/DiscussionForumAddOn Feedback: http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/DiscussionForumAddOnDev

Related Topic: TWikiAddOns

-- TWiki:Main.AndreUlrich - 04 May 2003

-- SteveRJones - 06 Jul 2004