www.talkcyprus.org

[erolz]

Hi

Firstly I have made this new section of the forum that is viewable only by logged in members because I think that the viewing and discussion of the current propsed changes to the forum are best kept 'in the community' so to speak.

editor note:actually I have reconsidered this and have instead made the sugestion for the forum section only viewable to members, moved this thread to this section and will remove the new section described above entirely. This seems to make more sense.

This time round I managed to create a duplicate test forum, complete with the IM portal mod, located in a subdirectory off the main root, that works and I do not seem to have damaged this live version of the forum either - as far as I can tell.

Please remember that the URL's I am posting below take you to a seperate test version of the forum - created to stimulate discussion and ideas about the future of the forum. The message databases that drive this forum and the test forum are distinct and seperate - so do not post in the test forum anything other than test post. All 'real' posts including discussion of the test forum should be made here and here alone. Do not post a message in the test forum and then wonder why it is not appearing here please.

The whole point of the 'portal' system is that it is highly configurable. All of the 'blocks' shown on the portal page can be changed moved around , edited and made to contain all sorts of 'feeds' from either the forum or elsewhere. I have not had a chance to experiment with any of this, having spent last night just getting the environment set up and the mod installed. So what we have currently is just the 'defualt' setting for the portal system. it should however give people a better idea of the sort of thing we could do with such a front page.

the test portal front page can be found here

www.talkcyprus.org/forum/portal.php

the test version of the forum is at

www.talkcyprus.org/forum/index.php

it is pretty obvious and 'distinct' from the live version but please do not get the two confused.

TVSET if yuo have a chance perhaps you could do some investiagtion as to how blogs might be integrated into the forum and into the portal page? I good starting point is probably these existing mods for phpBB

http://www.phpbbhacks.com/searchresults.php?version=2&query=blog&search_type=1&Submit=Go

OK that is mee for the night. I am off to bed now but this should give some useful 'food for thought' and promote ideas and discussion.

Enjoy.

[brother]

Firstly when i was checking out the links the forum unlogged me and i had to log in again :shock:

The test forum looks o.k but why the big emptiness in the middle when we can have all the threads there, and where would the threads that lead to photos, moving to cyprus etc. be.

[erolz]

brother wrote: Firstly when i was checking out the links the forum unlogged me and i had to log in again :shock:

Do you mean you clicked on the link above and you were logged out of THIS forum? Ot that you clicked the link above and were not logged into the test forum?

brother wrote:
The test forum looks o.k but why the big emptiness in the middle when we can have all the threads there, and where would the threads that lead to photos, moving to cyprus etc. be.

The way the portal page loooks now is just the way it set's itself up by default without any tailoring at all. The whole point about this system is that I can tailor the portal page in infinte different ways.

I can move the 'block' on the right showing recent posts to the middle section. I can create a middle section block that showed the recent posts from the cyprus problem section of the forum only, if these are what we wish to emphasise or any sub section. Or create multiple middle sections each one showing the latest posts from different forum sections like one (top one) showing lates cyprus forum posts, another one showing latest photos (and possibly integrate this with hazza's upload space system so that any uploaded there create show up as links in this section) or one that shows links to static information - like advise on cyprus. I can set up a block that integrates to TVSET's blog on 'whats on events' in Cyprus. I can change the menu options currently on the left to have more options of links to other parts of the forum or info seperate from the forum. The options are endless and I have not done any tailoring of the system at all yet. I will try and do some playing around though probably not till this evening.

[brother]

Quote: Do you mean you clicked on the link above and you were logged out of THIS forum?

YES :shock:

[erolz]

brother wrote: Quote: Do you mean you clicked on the link above and you were logged out of THIS forum?

YES :shock:

OK that does not happen here using windows and IE. Littel bit weird but clearly you had no problem logging back in again :)

[brother]

erolz wrote: brother wrote: Quote: Do you mean you clicked on the link above and you were logged out of THIS forum?

YES :shock:

OK that does not happen here using windows and IE. Littel bit weird but clearly you had no problem logging back in again :)

No problem logging back in just thought you should know and also take into consideration i am using a mac and running 'explorer' on it. :wink:

[petethegreek]

I've had a go at it works fine with me.

Must be a problem at ur end Brother.

[brother]

petethegreek wrote: I've had a go at it works fine with me.

Must be a problem at ur end Brother.


I am putting it down to this stupid mac, its always crashing and creating difficulties.

[erolz]

OK I have made some very quick roaugh and ready changes to the test portal page to tailor it a bit more to the site and gvie an idea of the sort of thing it could contain. Again remeber it is stil very early days.

http://www.talkcyprus.org/forum/portal.php

Also please remember the stuff in the first post. This portal page does not attach to this forum but to a copy of it that is seperate from this forum.

[brother]

erolz wrote: OK I have made some very quick roaugh and ready changes to the test portal page to tailor it a bit more to the site and gvie an idea of the sort of thing it could contain. Again remeber it is stil very early days.

http://www.talkcyprus.org/forum/portal.php

Also please remember the stuff in the first post. This portal page does not attach to this forum but to a copy of it that is seperate from this forum.

Looking better and better :wink:

[Dhavlos]

Can i just ask, what is the point of this part of the forum? I dont mean to be rude, but i havent been here for a while,

Is it to redesign the front page of the forum?

(BTW, the link to the scrolling text etc... looks good!!)

[brother]

Dhavlos wrote: Can i just ask, what is the point of this part of the forum? I dont mean to be rude, but i havent been here for a while,

Is it to redesign the front page of the forum?

(BTW, the link to the scrolling text etc... looks good!!)


Check this out D. so you can come up to date with situations.

http://www.talkcyprus.org/viewtopic.php?t=810

[TVSET]

I am currently looking at a different approach. (That might be because I like specific tools for specific tasks). I was thinking about using Wordpress for content management. Wordpress is very flexible with a few hundred plugins behind its belt and I had some very positive experience with it too.

It seems that integrating Wordpress with phpBB is possible and even pretty easy. Here are the links:

* Discussion about integrating Wordpress and phpBB at phpBB forums
* Someone who did this and explains how it went
* Home of the script that provides the integration

I am yet confident or even sure about this setup, but it sure seems interesting, and if it works - that would extremely powerful and flexible. :)

[TVSET]

erolz wrote: TVSET's blog on 'whats on events' in Cyprus.

That would be http://mamchenkov.net/wordpress/tags/cyprus events :)
No RSS though yet. :)

[Crash Test Dummy]

Its a nice idea but how does it work?

What is that second section for?

Look very nice btw.