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  #1  
Old 10-03-2006, 02:03 AM
mdevour mdevour is offline
 
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Default Organizing a VERY small vBulletin forum

I am creating a forum community that's only going to have six topic areas.

I want it to look something like this:

Quote:
On Topic Stuff...
  • Beginners
  • General
  • Technical
  • Related stuff
Off Topic Stuff...
  • Chit Chat
  • Debate
What I want is for this to be a perfectly flat forum structure. I do NOT want "On Topic Stuff..." or "Off Topic Stuff..." to be parent forums, but only plain titles to label and set off the two casual groupings of topics.

Yes, I'm trying to vastly simplify the structure of my forum. My members will appreciate it!

I want to code this myself as much as I can, for the practice, but can you experienced coders give me some clues as to different ways I can approach it?

If you want to chase me back to vBcom or point me to a mod that already does this, that'd be okay, too.

Thank you,

Mike D.
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  #2  
Old 10-03-2006, 02:13 AM
calorie calorie is offline
 
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How about making one parent, stick all the others under that, and then nix the parent from showing via a template edit or two?
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  #3  
Old 10-03-2006, 06:07 AM
mdevour mdevour is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by calorie
How about making one parent, stick all the others under that, and then nix the parent from showing via a template edit or two?
Hi Calorie,

It's going to be something like that. I'm hoping to keep all the forums top level, so I don't have to fight with the nav-bit wanting to show something like this:

Quote:
MyDomain.com Forum > On Topic Stuff... > General
|-> Some post here...
Instead I just want this:

Quote:
MyDomain.com Forum > General
|-> Another post here...
My members don't need to be able to collapse and expand my measly two categories!

Let me try to describe what I want in another way:

If I make a top level forum and set it to act as a category, but don't give it any child forums, it behaves almost the way I want it to. It shows the name of the category, which is fine, but the name is also a link to a forum display page that has no sub-forums! It also displays the little collapse button at the right hand end, which has nothing to collapse and disappears the first time you click on it after a page refresh.

If I add a couple more top level forums the forum index ends up looking something like this:


Code:
     Forum                                         Last Post   Threads   Posts

On Topic Stuff <--this is a useless link     this gadget does nothing -->  ^

     Beginners     Newbies start here...             Never        0        0

     General       General discussion...             Never        0        0
So, defining this more closely, it seems I want to create a plug-in that adds an option to the forum manager that let's me simplify the way a forum is displayed when it's acting as a category, so it does not make the forum name a link nor display a collapse button that has nothing to act on.

Whew! What a mouthful!

Does that make sense of it?

Thanks,

Mike D.
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  #4  
Old 10-03-2006, 02:59 PM
calorie calorie is offline
 
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When you add a new forum try:
  • Parent Forum: No one
  • Act as Forum: Yes
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  #5  
Old 10-04-2006, 02:42 AM
mdevour mdevour is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by calorie
When you add a new forum try:
  • Parent Forum: No one
  • Act as Forum: Yes
<LOL> I guess I really shouldn't try writing instruction manuals, eh? I think I lost you completely!

I don't need vBulletin's fancy category behavior, where the category titles are live links to a subforum and there's a button at the right that lets you collapse and expand the grouping on the forum index page. That's only going to confuse my members. Why do it that way on such a small board?

But I do want the simple appearance of a strip with a category name at the top of each grouping of forums, in my example; On Topic Stuff and Off topic Stuff.

By experimenting with it, I've found that a forum acting as a category, but without any child forums, almost does what I want. It displays the name and separates the category from the one above it. The only problem is the name being a link and the collapse control at the right end of the strip are both useless.

So it looks like one way I can achieve what I want is to suppress those behaviors in the template that generates the forumbit for a forum that's set to act as a category. A new forum variable set in the ACP and modifying that template with some conditionals should let me do that.

Is that the best way to do it, though? Instead, could I use a plug-in to modify the behavior of the PHP routine that generates the forumbits to call a complete template of my own so I don't have a template mod to deal with at installation or system upgrade?

Sorry if my questions are not understandable enough. I'm trying to be precise in my language and use the terms that Jelsoft uses for things.

Be well,

Mike D.
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  #6  
Old 10-04-2006, 06:33 AM
GriZzm0 GriZzm0 is offline
 
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I'm not 100% sure if I get what you want. But if I do. Try to edit the forumhome_forumbit_level1_nopost template to this.
Code:
<if condition="$childforumbits">
<tbody id="collapseobj_forumbit_$forumid" style="{$collapseobj_forumid}">
$childforumbits
</tbody>
</if>
Then creat a new forum and click no on "act as forum" and let all your forums have that forum as parent. That would give you a list with all your forums without the "head" part.
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  #7  
Old 10-06-2006, 03:41 AM
mdevour mdevour is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GriZzm0
I'm not 100% sure if I get what you want. But if I do. Try to edit the forumhome_forumbit_level1_nopost template to this.
Code:
<if condition="$childforumbits">
<tbody id="collapseobj_forumbit_$forumid" style="{$collapseobj_forumid}">
$childforumbits
</tbody>
</if>
Then creat a new forum and click no on "act as forum" and let all your forums have that forum as parent. That would give you a list with all your forums without the "head" part.
Alright GriZzm0! Thanks for looking in on this. I appreciate your giving it some thought.

First off, forumhome_forumbit_level1_nopost is the template that we need to deal with, yes. Your modification, if I read you right, is to delete the entire first <tbody>...</tbody> code block that displays the category title and link, the description, the collapse control button, and the subforum links, if you've selected that option...

This leaves me with the category not displaying anything at all, which actually strips out more than I intended. You got close, GriZzm0, and it really helped me make some progress. Thank you.

I am really amazed at how hard it is to get across what I want. You guys are not dumb! I'm trying as hard as I can to communicate, and I still only succeed in confusing people!

I want a single line of plain text (not a link) to be displayed in the forum list ahead of a group of forums or between groups of forums. It can look exactly like a forum set to act as a category, but without any of those extra behaviors; no link attached to the category name and no button for collapsing or expanding the category...

I can delete parts of that first block of code and display only the $forum[title] and description, something like this:

Code:
<tbody>
	<tr>
		<td class="tcat" colspan="<if condition="$vboptions[showmoderatorcolumn]">6<else />5</if>">
			
			$forum[title]

			<if condition="$show['forumdescription']"><div class="smallfont">$forum[description]</div></if>
			</div></if>
		</td>
	</tr>
</tbody>
That seems to do what I want in the narrow case where that's all that I want, ever, but it cripples the code if I also happen to want another group of forums to exhibit vBulletin's standard category behavior.

I'm making that distinction because it's obvious to me sitting here that the behavior of the forumhome_forumbit_level1_nopost template is inappropriate for the absurd case of a category with no subforums, but that same case could be made useful for displaying a simple category header such as I want.

If you understand that much, then the obvious next question is:

Is there already a flag, bit field, variable, or something that I can use within the forumhome_forumbit_level1_nopost template to test whether the forum being displayed is being used as a category and has no subforums?

If you don't understand the above, then nothing is obvious!! :laugh:

I apologize once again for being so bloody obscure...

Mike D.
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  #8  
Old 10-08-2006, 03:29 AM
mdevour mdevour is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mdevour
Is there already a flag, bit field, variable, or something that I can use within the forumhome_forumbit_level1_nopost template to test whether the forum being displayed is being used as a category and has no subforums?
Okay, that's still my current quest.

Am I right to assume that the ..._nopost template is only going to be invoked when the forum is acting as a category, so I only need to test for the (non)existance of child forums?

Hmmm... Interesting stuff in /includes/adminfunctions_forums.php, plus there's fetch_child_forums in functions_misc.php, and build_forum_genealogy() in adminfunctions.php just to name a few.

Looks like there ought to be a field in forumcache I can test for "No there are no child forums."

Maybe I can figure out what forumcache["$forumid"]['childlist'] is filled with if it's not a parent forum...

Ack!! It's late and I'm tired. I have to start on this earlier in the day.

Mike D.
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