Main new features included in this release are:

Fine grained forum permissions
Allow file attachments and images in posts
Contents of posts are searchable 
New portlet type lising links to all forums user has read access to
Allow automatic thread subscription for thread starter (useful for noticeboard type forums)
Forum admin can prevent posts with no topic
Expiry can be specified for all types of forum
Reply count calculation fixed
HTML Editor can be used for posts 
Subscription emails can (and should) be sent as html emails)

Other minor changes, fixes and configurable features are also included. 
Check new config parameter descriptions in com.arsdigita.forum.ForumConfig_parameter.properties
  
After deployment, to install new features, either get rid of existing forum app, and load new version, OR 

ccm upgrade ccm-forum --from-version 6.5.0 --to-version 6.5.1
ccm upgrade ccm-forum --from-version 6.5.1 --to-version 6.5.2
ccm-run com.arsdigita.london.search.Reindexer --object-type com.arsdigita.forum.Post



When developing this, I tried to ensure that a basic deployment will not affect the XML 
that is produced by the current forum application.

I have tested the new implementation with Coventry's theme. There is one theme amendment required (because of a bug fix). 
In current release, the drop down list for filtering threads by category has the same name as the drop down list for selecting a category when making a new post. This means that the selected value carries through . ie if you have filtered the threads then make a new post, the new post has the filter category selected as default. More importantly, if you make a post and assign a category, then the thread list is filtered after you complete the post.

To fix the bug, I renamed the drop down list in the post form from topic to PostTopic. This means the category drop down is not visible until the two references to @name='topic' in the forum:postForm template are changed to @name='postTopic'

Only other visible changes if the patch is applied without changing config
are:

Reply count only includes posts that have been approved

Posts are searchable from the main site search. This is a change from the current behaviour . if not desired then it could be made configurable. 

Moderation form and emails are formatted slightly differently

recent forum postings portlet prevents users creating new forum application .
only site admin can do this. Also filters forums to those that the user has
read access on.

New portlet . my forums. Lists links to forums that user has read access to.

The other non-visble effect is that the wizard uses java session rather than
hidden fields. This approach makes it much easier to include links in form
steps (eg remove an uploaded file etc). The impact is that users in a load
balanced environment need to consider session affinity. In our production
environment, this is accomplished by the server that sprays requests to the
various back end servers. It identifies each browser session and routes all
their requests to the same back end server. Hence there is no replication of
session - the user is guaranteed to end up at the server that holds their java
session. As a result, when a backend server is stopped, there is a risk that a
user with session on that server in the middle of creating a post will lose
information entered up to that point. On our site we live with this small risk
but mitigate it by restarting servers at unsociable hours where possible. 

I have put examle theme files in
ccm-ldn-aplaws/web/themes/static/aplaws/forum-example: forum-index.xsl,
forum-index.css and the contents of images/forum

To have a look at a forum using these files, copy the xsl and css to the top
level of your theme and make a new forum directory in images and copy the
images there. I.m afraid these files have continued the existing format of
putting all the templates in a single file, so they are not the most easily
maintained, and I make no guarantees about the content, but they do work. and
if required they may be used as a basis for your own look and feel.


There is a separate application - ccm-categorised-forum that adds category path and menu components to the front end, 
and adds a categorisation tab for admin users. Load this application if you would like this functionality.

When a forum is created, only site admin can access the admin tabs, 
until you assign users/groups to the forum admin group under the permissions tab.

Next things I plan to do are: 

list pending and reapprove posts under the moderation tab
create a user info page so users can write a bit about themselves
allow thread branching so administrators can split long threads or threads that have strayed from the point.
Allow different thread views - paginated full details, or tree of titles with one post visible (a la sourceforge)

chris.gilbert@westsussex.gov.uk