I'm currently working on Harmony Forum which is a native Drupal forum built with two entities (Thread and Post) with Taxonomy for categories should you want them.
That's the shortest possible description which outlines an entity based forum, a bit more in depth would be leveraging contrib as much as possible to produce something like Discourse (http://try.discourse.org). All whilst coding so that Views are used and can be overridden, display elements can be changed with Field UI and that there are plenty of hooks and chances to jump in and do what you need to.
I've listed out a specific list of modules I've got planned along with a theme at the following groups post, once they're mostly in place I'll be making a distro to glue it all together.
https://groups.drupal.org/node/314178
What I would like to know is what's important to you as a developer/site-builder/designer/client, what would you need a Drupal forum to have or be?
You can find the core project page here:
https://drupal.org/project/harmony_core
Thanks!
Comments
Standard forum
Given that the Question & Answer format is covered by Drupal modules such as Answers, etc., what I think is mostly needed is a Drupal forum in the same line of well-known classical, standard forums such as phpBB, vBulletin, SMF, Invision Power, etc.
The current Drupal core forum is different, blog-like and not very appropriate for this. On the other hand, different entities for at least Thread and Post, like in Harmony or unfinished precursors Artesian Forum, Brain Forum and Colloquium, are well suited for a standard forum and allow a flexible forum structure and administration.
I'd agree, Q&A is covered,
I'd agree, Q&A is covered, that said harmony could satisfy this. Given enough time and resources I'd like to create harmony distros that match different offerings out there. The first would be a traditional forum/discourse type forum (difference being the initial listing style is flat or forum/sub-forum based - you can choose either with harmony_core). The following ones would be Stack exchange, reddit and so on.
forum features
www.discourse.org is wonderful.
I believe main feature for a forum would be:
Hi, yep these features are on
Hi, yep these features are on the list but won't be in harmony_core (as they're non essential/not everyone would need them). They'll be available as modules (harmony_search, harmony_messaging) which integrate with other modules. You can see what I have in mind for the subscription/notifications on the following link, see the bell in the navbar: http://frontend.getharmony.io/thread.html
Good job!
Yes, very good!
Are you planning also to deploy tags subscription (follow a taxonomy term so to be notified for new content with the selected tag)?
To be honest it's not a
To be honest it's not a feature I thought of and would be low priority to me (with a massive amount to do). That said with harmony_messaging in place someone could easily contrib this as a feature with a dependency on harmony_messaging.
email support
We currently use listserves for our members. While we want the benefits of a forum (like a nicer online archive), we need to be able to maintain the ease of posting via email that a listserve provides.
Also, not sure if this would be the case with Harmony, but when we looked at Drupal Commons, people found the subscriptions and notifications very confusing. I'd like to be able to take advantage of the granular control of the different notification options, but I would need a way to keep it simple for most folks, while letting those who want more control access it.
Thanks for your efforts at trying to build a better forum in Drupal!
email support
Email support (posting and reading via email) would be awesome! I really hope this can be worked into Harmony.
I've been using phpBB2 with Mail to Forum (m2f) which does just that: registered members of the forum can start a thread by sending an email to a forum, or they can reply to a message and their message gets threaded in the proper place. Even attachments are handled by m2f.
I'm looking for a CMS solution to replace my phpBB-based website, so Drupal with Harmony would be wonderful if email integration was incorporated.
Probably the best thing about
Probably the best thing about Drupal is that there are loads of modules for most situations. As with other features I'm planning integration (which would be more of a guide or example) with the MailHandler module which would allow for posting replies via email. I'm not sure about creating new threads but would have thought it's possible. I'm making harmony as much of an integrated hub as possible so people can do whatever they need to with it. When code is live I'll happily take issues and patches!
On subscriptions to threads I've not looked into it a huge amount though am planning to use Message module and https://drupal.org/project/message_subscribe (which uses flag). If you've seen Discourse there are different levels of subscribed which I'm not so keen on, I prefer the binary subscribed/unsubscribed.
I believe with message you can choose your notification method (message on screen, email, sms) though may be getting mixed up.
By default with harmony_messages (or could be harmony_notifications) by default if someone @ mentions you, quotes one of your posts, replies directly to one of your posts you'll get a notification. When you specifically subscribe to a thread you'll get notifications that 'X has posted a reply to the thread "X"' each time someone updates.
Forum Mining
80% of a forum's posts are worthless, or at least become worthless over time, but it is worth keeping track of the few gems, and their authors. I would expect to have the ability to rate posts (at least Like), and become fans of (or at least friend) posters. I would like to have some reporting and analytics functions to show top (e.g. most influential, least inflammatory) posters. And I would like the ability to promote a high-quality post something visible on the greater web site. These things may all be possible by using existing Drupal modules.
La vero vin liberigos.
Something like Flag or
Something like Flag or Radioactivity module would be useful here.
Eric
Eric Aitala - ema13@psu.edu - f1m@f1m.com - @aitala
www.essp.psu.edu - www.f1m.com
harmony_core has a like flag
harmony_core has a like flag per post already in it, and there's plans for radioactivity in harmony_popularity. You can see various choices here:
https://groups.drupal.org/node/408323
Depending on the type of
Depending on the type of forum yep, the concept is that once the modules are made and the first base distro is out that we can make other distros such as a stack exchange, reddit type forum. As you say this would be done with the harmony modules and others such as GA reporting to provide features you're after.
This conversation has morphed
This conversation has morphed somewhat into a poll with choices here:
https://groups.drupal.org/node/408323