More Starter Site Options

[johnhenley]

The Forums module has a number of features that are not used by default, and some are not obvious:

• Tags
• Categories
• Subforums
• Likes
• Properties
• Post Icons
• Polls
• ...

The initial experience creates a quick starter site but could be enhanced by offering choice of different starter sites (e.g., empty, helpdesk, Q&A, etc.) and/or an interview process with configuration questions. Also offer an option to pre-seed some content to better surface features.

[johnhenley]

@Timo-Breumelhof @WillStrohl @valadas looking for example use cases from community

[valadas]

I don't have any publicly available forums and the use case I have is very basic.

I do not use Tags, Categories, SubForums, Likes, Properties or Icons myself

[johnhenley]

I don't have any publicly available forums and the use case I have is very basic.

I do not use Tags, Categories, SubForums, Likes, Properties or Icons myself

@valadas thanks for replying:)

[Timo-Breumelhof]

Tags > yes
Categories > Does that work? if so I would use it
Subforums > Not using these, not going to I think
Likes > yes, more options? :-)
Custom Properties > I tried them, seems to have some bugs, but I so see use cases
Post Icons > Nope

[Timo-Breumelhof]

User Mentions would be my first wish :-)

[Timo-Breumelhof]

I would see helpdesk and "stackoverflow" (vote answers up) as useful options

[johnhenley]

Custom Properties > I tried them, seems to have some bugs, but I so see use cases

@Timo-Breumelhof Specific bugs?

[Timo-Breumelhof]

@johnhenley it;s a long time ago. IIRC one thing was that you cannot remove a custom property once you created it

[johnhenley]

@johnhenley it;s a long time ago. IIRC one thing was that you cannot remove a custom property once you created it

Hmm. That would make sense since property values are stored as an xml document in the topic table :(. So to remove a property would require unpacking and repacking every topic that has a property being deleted.

As I've moved through the modernization of the module, moving properties to separate data structures/tables has been something I've thought about doing. I can see properties being a very useful feature

[Timo-Breumelhof]

@johnhenley it;s a long time ago. IIRC one thing was that you cannot remove a custom property once you created it

Hmm. That would make sense since property values are stored as an xml document in the topic table :(. So to remove a property would require unpacking and repacking every topic that has a property being deleted.

As I've moved through the modernization of the module, moving properties to separate data structures/tables has been something I've thought about doing. I can see properties being a very useful feature

Yes. We are using the Forums as a simple issue tracker for clients. Works Ok. But with a bit enhanced custom properties it could work even better..