Here's What I Want -- Need Help Implementing

[AviationForum]

Okay, so I've drafted (on paper) some layout ideas for the next version of my web site and I've come up with something I'd like to implement. I'm going to need your help, though.

Essentially, when people come to my domain, AviationForum.org, I want them to see the forumhome in the middle and some dynamic sideblocks, similar to the side blocks found in portal software (I was hoping to base my design around vBindex). Not news in the middle. I have little reason to devote the majority of my home page to site news. It would be perfect, however, if I could replace that with the forumhome.

Ideally, I would have the forumhome sandwiched by a welcome block, who's online, a site nav (menu) block, a latest threads block, a shoutbox, a poll, another block I will design and implement for a "featured image," and a sponsors block.

I could easily construct this block system via vBindex or any of the portal systems, but I couldn't get the forums in the center like I want without help. How would I go about doing this? Ideally, I'd like the blocks to travel with users throughout all of the forums so that, for example, the shoutbox would always be available for a shout no matter where they were. I'm more flexible on this option, however.

I'm no ludite, but I've seen a lot of short, techy responses on the forums. If someone could provide me with a more fleshed out, easy to understand explanation for how this would now be implemented, how it might be implemented in the future, and what problems it might present, I would be very appreciative.

[Velocd]

It's not too difficult, but you should consider the queries that will be called then.

If you have dynamic elements on the sides of your forum for each page, e.g. shoutbox, poll, latest threads, member of the day, featured image, sponsors.. and the data from each section is being retrieved by a query to the database.. you're looking at 6 additional queries separate of those made by the forum, at least. Things like "latest threads" require more than just one query, since the check permission function also does other queries.

Maybe this is why not too many sites have implemented this layout.

Although, this isn't to say it's not entirely impossible, to a feasible degree.

SitePoint forums makes use of showing related articles in some of its forums:
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=34 (see the right section)

So how would you go about adding dynamic tables to the left and right, of every page? Just like $header and $footer are applied to every full HTML page in vBulletin, e.g. forumhome, you could create a $left_panel and $right_panel that would be placed before the $header, then restructure the tabling in the templates (the dirty part) to accomodate these left and right panels.

This of course still requires you to go throughout each page and add those variables. If you could add them into the header template, maybe that is the better solution?

Unfortunantly I don't have the time to write any code at the moment to help you.

[AviationForum]

Sounds complicated.

I was hoping to be able to use vBindex to power this. Could I somehow put the vBindex code in the header?

[Velocd]

Don't know, I've never used vBindex.

Now that I think about it, I've done what you are trying to accomplish with a project I was working on last year. I had side panels from the header template, that showed on every page.

If I can find the code, I'll post it.

[AviationForum]

Thanks!

[AviationForum]

At your leisure, Velocd. Just bumping the thread.