Artesian Forum progress report
It's been a month since I said Artesian Forum was almost ready to be committed so I thought I'd write a progress report to explain what's going on.
Drupal
Artesian Forum almost ready to be committed
Update: I didn't get as far as I'd hoped so have it in a sandbox for now while I keep working towards the initial commit to the project page.
Just a small note here since it's 1am. I've passed the really big hurdles I was hitting and the forum is starting to take shape. It's not even remotely close to production ready but I should have something ready to commit tomorrow or Monday, depending on how much time I get to work on it tomorrow.
Michelle
Artesian Forum still a go despite competition
This morning, I checked my queues and found a pointer to a new entity based forum, Brain Forum. I haven't had a chance to test it out, yet, so I'm only going by the description. According to that, it's already functional, and there's plans for future expansion. Basically, bfr beat me to it. My first thought was, "Now what do I do?" I'm sure people are going to ask why I'm bothering with Artesian Forum that's barely started when Brain Forum is already working?
How not to upgrade to Drupal 7
Disclaimer: In case some future employer / potential client runs across this on the interwebs some day, please keep in mind that my reckless attitude here is due to this being my site and a site that's not of much importance outside occasional Drupal ramblings. I certainly take much more care when handling sites that aren't mine or that can't handle being down for days while I work my way out of whatever mess I've made.
Comment or Nodecomment for Advanced Forum?
Starting with the 2.x branch, Advanced Forum supports the Nodecomment module (branch 2.x of that as well). Using Nodecomment is and will remain optional but using it makes available many more options by making all forum posts, whether they start the topic or reply to it, equal.
MyBB style for Advanced Forum
I've always loved the default MyBB theme. Personally, I think it looks much better than PHPBB's default theme. Since MyBB is GPL, I've often thought about porting it over for use with Advanced Forum 2.x. Last night, I spent a couple hours and got pretty far. It still has some rough edges but it's not bad. I can't really spend any more time on it right now so I decided to put what I have up here in my blog both to show what I have so far and share it in case someone wants to finish it off.
Calling a system page handler from code (CTools / Panels 3)
This is a quick and dirty tutorial for calling a CTools/Panels 3 custom handler from code. It works for handlers for the system pages, such as the user page override. Calling custom/panels pages from code is different. Make sure you replace all instances of MODULE_NAME with your module's name.
Step 1: Create a file named MODULE_NAME.delegator_default.inc and put it somewhere in your module's directory.
Step 2: Paste in the following code.
A rough introduction to building a page in Panels 3
Note: The CTools / Panels UI has changed drastically since this article was written, so much of it doesn't apply anymore.
This article is for folks used to making Panels pages in Panels 2 feeling bewildered by Panels 3. I wrote it quickly while my son had lunch and it's not polished at all but it may help some folks until there are better docs. I'm assuming you have bleeding edge Panels 3 and CTools installed for this.
Creating a content type with CTools for Panels 3
Update: Feb 17, 2010 This article was written nearly a year ago when CTools was still in alpha. I don't know how much of it applies anymore but I've been told there's an up to date plugin example that ships with CTools now so you'll want to look to that as an example.
Note: This article requires the current Panels 3 / CTools development snapshots (or the beta when it comes out) as the alphas do not contain the recent changes to content types.
Advanced Forum, Advanced Profile Kit, and Author Pane released
Early this morning, just past midnight my time, I put out 1.0 releases of Advanced Forum, Advanced Profile Kit, and Author Pane in both D5 and D6 with the exception of APK D6 which still needs a lot of work. I was trying for a 4/1 release just for fun but they're showing up as 3/31 for me (though one person reported it says 4/1 for them). If you've been using the RCs, there's not much change.
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