I thought a custom type to hold the data and a new "tree" type called "forum" (similar to dmNavigation and categories). The top element (the root) would represent the whole Forum with only one Forum per FarCry site (with as many Discussions in that Forum as you liked). First descendant levels from the root would be each "discussion". The the second level descendants would be an item in the discussion (this would cause an actual new custom discussion object to be created). All the discussion items created in that discussion would basically just be categorised by that node of the tree. This would also mean that admin tools could easily move items between discussions and any number of more complex facilities (such as cross-referencing) would be possible because of the generic object model (gotta LUV that about FarCry).
You're right on the money here Gary. This is how we have implemented the forum. A forum custom type to hold the post details, and thread details stored in nested tree objects table with a forum typename.
"Unwrapping" all the above, I basically see "discussion" items just living in a database and being "categorised" by the Forum/Discussion/Item they belong to. This will then allow for maximum flexibility in adding other categorisation mechanisms and linking with other FarCry objects (e.g. a "discussion" on a FarCry content page - a la Microsoft MSDN, or even a "dicussion" on a dmEvent, or - heaven forbid - a "discussion" on a Discussion).
Paul has written a forum rule which allows you to place one or more forum topics in any container. I will have to check Paul's latest code to see if it's linked by the standard category tree.
Many of the forum tools out there - while maintaining threads in general - tend to just display everything in the discussion in a "flat" model. So maybe "threaded" is not really that important.
Yes I thought about this also and I agree that it should be set when forum topic is created. I will add this to the code base.
I might try and set up a demo of this forum object on our server for people to play with. Would people prefer to have a web based forum instead of a mailing list?
-Brendan http://farcry.daemon.com.au
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MXDU2004 + Macromedia DevCon AsiaPac + Sydney, Australia http://www.mxdu.com/ + 24-25 February, 2004
