87 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
87 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
Main new features included in this release are:
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Fine grained forum permissions
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Allow file attachments and images in posts
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Contents of posts are searchable
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New portlet type lising links to all forums user has read access to
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Allow automatic thread subscription for thread starter (useful for noticeboard type forums)
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Forum admin can prevent posts with no topic
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Expiry can be specified for all types of forum
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Reply count calculation fixed
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HTML Editor can be used for posts
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Subscription emails can (and should) be sent as html emails)
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Other minor changes, fixes and configurable features are also included.
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Check new config parameter descriptions in com.arsdigita.forum.ForumConfig_parameter.properties
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After deployment, to install new features, either get rid of existing forum app, and load new version, OR
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ccm upgrade ccm-forum --from-version 6.5.0 --to-version 6.5.1
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ccm upgrade ccm-forum --from-version 6.5.1 --to-version 6.5.2
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ccm-run com.arsdigita.london.search.Reindexer --object-type com.arsdigita.forum.Post
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When developing this, I tried to ensure that a basic deployment will not affect the XML
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that is produced by the current forum application.
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I have tested the new implementation with Coventry's theme. There is one theme amendment required (because of a bug fix).
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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.
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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'
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Only other visible changes if the patch is applied without changing config
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are:
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Reply count only includes posts that have been approved
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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.
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Moderation form and emails are formatted slightly differently
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recent forum postings portlet prevents users creating new forum application .
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only site admin can do this. Also filters forums to those that the user has
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read access on.
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New portlet . my forums. Lists links to forums that user has read access to.
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The other non-visble effect is that the wizard uses java session rather than
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hidden fields. This approach makes it much easier to include links in form
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steps (eg remove an uploaded file etc). The impact is that users in a load
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balanced environment need to consider session affinity. In our production
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environment, this is accomplished by the server that sprays requests to the
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various back end servers. It identifies each browser session and routes all
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their requests to the same back end server. Hence there is no replication of
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session - the user is guaranteed to end up at the server that holds their java
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session. As a result, when a backend server is stopped, there is a risk that a
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user with session on that server in the middle of creating a post will lose
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information entered up to that point. On our site we live with this small risk
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but mitigate it by restarting servers at unsociable hours where possible.
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I have put examle theme files in
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ccm-ldn-aplaws/web/__ccm__/themes/aplaws/forum-example: forum-index.xsl,
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forum-index.css and the contents of images/forum
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To have a look at a forum using these files, copy the xsl and css to the top
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level of your theme and make a new forum directory in images and copy the
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images there. I.m afraid these files have continued the existing format of
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putting all the templates in a single file, so they are not the most easily
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maintained, and I make no guarantees about the content, but they do work. and
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if required they may be used as a basis for your own look and feel.
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There is a separate application - ccm-categorised-forum that adds category path and menu components to the front end,
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and adds a categorisation tab for admin users. Load this application if you would like this functionality.
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When a forum is created, only site admin can access the admin tabs,
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until you assign users/groups to the forum admin group under the permissions tab.
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Next things I plan to do are:
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list pending and reapprove posts under the moderation tab
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create a user info page so users can write a bit about themselves
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allow thread branching so administrators can split long threads or threads that have strayed from the point.
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Allow different thread views - paginated full details, or tree of titles with one post visible (a la sourceforge)
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chris.gilbert@westsussex.gov.uk
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