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Forum UI Revamp

Our current Forum, although is has many features. It doesn't have the modern look & feel of some of the more modern Forum Systems.

Great examples of modern forums

General Objectives

  • Make the categorization of Topics easier to navigate
  • Create a more visual View Topics Page
  • Create a clean fresh View Post Page
  • Add "Social Networking" type forum (e.g. similar to Facebook and Twitter)
  • Increase Performance ?

Make the categorization of Topics easier to navigate

Modern forums enable Topics to be organized. We already have the ability in Tiki to categorize a Forum Topic and Forum Post which is really powerful. The problem is that we don't really make great use of this within the interface.

This is an example of a Citadel Rock custom hacked interface that we've created for our projects that use forums

As you can see, we have a Forum landing page that allows users to choose a category before seeing Topics. We also allow users to quickly change categories even when viewing Topics.

We also allow users to categorize Topics and Replies into more then one category

ForumRevamp TutelaCategory2

ForumRevamp TutelaCategory

This is an example of Discourse.org combines their interface to see Topics and Categories in one unified view

Discours Categories

Create a more visual View Topics Page

The current Tiki View Topics page needs a refresh. Ideally more information about the topics should be displayed (if we want to stay in Table view) but we should also have (Preview Mode) which would give a snippet of the topic

Example of a modern Table View from Discourse.org
Discours Table

Example of a hacked theme we created for our Forums at Citadel Rock - Notice the snippet preview
ForumRevamp TutelaTopics

Create a clean fresh look for View Post Page

Our current Tiki View Post page does everything you need in a standard forum but would be nice to give it a clean modern fresh look.

Also instead of having Threaded Forums, we could take the more modern approach of simply have inline replies.

Example of a View Post page from Discourse.org
Discours ViewTopic

Add "Social Networking" type forum (e.g. similar to Facebook and Twitter)

Forums were always mean't to help people share thoughts, opinions and experiences. Today, the web allows us to share those thoughts through multiple ways.

  • Text
  • Pictures
  • Video
  • Links
  • Etc...


If we look at how Facebook, Twitter, even Instagram. They take a Timeline approach where people share and allow others to comment / reply. This is essentially a Forum.

We should have a "Social Mode" for our Forums. This would simplify the interface and focus it more on sharing different TYPES of content.

We should look at other social networks for inspiration


Notice how easy they make it to share Text, Pictures, Links etc...
GooglePlus AddTopic
GooglePlus AddTopic2

Idea of offering alternate layouts

So there needs to be a flexible framework/way to display forum content. Different types so to speak. And also different input forms to enter new content (e.g image vs. text). Should think about Bootstrap.

Something that is really troublesome nowadays is the need to replace the text “Post a comment” with “Post a reply” or any other similar text in the tpl. An easy way needs to exist to change this text for different forum settings.

Feature enhancements

Team

Keywords

The following is a list of keywords that should serve as hubs for navigation within the Tiki development and should correspond to documentation keywords.

Each feature in Tiki has a wiki page which regroups all the bugs, requests for enhancements, etc. It is somewhat a form of wiki-based project management. You can also express your interest in a feature by adding it to your profile. You can also try out the Dynamic filter.

Accessibility (WAI & 508)
Accounting
Administration
Ajax
Articles & Submissions
Backlinks
Banner
Batch
BigBlueButton audio/video/chat/screensharing
Blog
Bookmark
Browser Compatibility
Calendar
Category
Chat
Comment
Communication Center
Consistency
Contacts Address book
Contact us
Content template
Contribution
Cookie
Copyright
Credits
Custom Home (and Group Home Page)
Database MySQL - MyISAM
Database MySQL - InnoDB
Date and Time
Debugger Console
Diagram
Directory (of hyperlinks)
Documentation link from Tiki to doc.tiki.org (Help System)
Docs
DogFood
Draw -superseded by Diagram
Dynamic Content
Preferences
Dynamic Variable
External Authentication
FAQ
Featured links
Feeds (RSS)
File Gallery
Forum
Friendship Network (Community)
Gantt
Group
Groupmail
Help
History
Hotword
HTML Page
i18n (Multilingual, l10n, Babelfish)
Image Gallery
Import-Export
Install
Integrator
Interoperability
Inter-User Messages
InterTiki
jQuery
Kaltura video management
Kanban
Karma
Live Support
Logs (system & action)
Lost edit protection
Mail-in
Map
Menu
Meta Tag
Missing features
Visual Mapping
Mobile
Mods
Modules
MultiTiki
MyTiki
Newsletter
Notepad
OS independence (Non-Linux, Windows/IIS, Mac, BSD)
Organic Groups (Self-managed Teams)
Packages
Payment
PDF
Performance Speed / Load / Compression / Cache
Permission
Poll
Profiles
Quiz
Rating
Realname
Report
Revision Approval
Scheduler
Score
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search
Security
Semantic links
Share
Shopping Cart
Shoutbox
Site Identity
Slideshow
Smarty Template
Social Networking
Spam protection (Anti-bot CATPCHA)
Spellcheck
Spreadsheet
Staging and Approval
Stats
Survey
Syntax Highlighter (Codemirror)
Tablesorter
Tags
Task
Tell a Friend
Terms and Conditions
Theme
TikiTests
Federated Timesheets
Token Access
Toolbar (Quicktags)
Tours
Trackers
TRIM
User Administration
User Files
User Menu
Watch
Webmail and Groupmail
WebServices
Wiki History, page rename, etc
Wiki plugins extends basic syntax
Wiki syntax text area, parser, etc
Wiki structure (book and table of content)
Workspace and perspectives
WYSIWTSN
WYSIWYCA
WYSIWYG
XMLRPC
XMPP




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