Suggestion from user

[Nuan8]

Hello, I hope this is not inappropriate. I just want to give a little feedback as a user (not a developer). As I am not perhaps a typical user, I don't know how important this would be, but I did want to get it out there.

The biggest thing I would say is that the users like me want the ability to create a proper 'front page' rather than the front page of the whole website being the forums default page. Of course for some people they have an existing site and want a forum behind that. In any case, the difficulty is creating a seamless experience when going from a page which is technically outside the forum section into the forum.

When I was looking for a solution, which is for a brand new website that is really just a forum (i.e. no content really needs to be outside of the forum), the entire issue was, I wanted a custom front page with the style I want, and then the forums behind that. And I found some commercial sites that all have done this, often you can see clearly that the headers are different.

I have used Modx for about 5 years and love it, and thought Discuss was not developed enough, but finally I came back because of this issue of control and customization. I considered Vanilla for awhile but it was too uncontrollable. Fundamentally I wanted a different, original style on one page; I would have accepted Vanilla's lack of control over forum pages if I could have gotten a clear solution on a front page.

I am sure there are many ways to do this, but they are not very obvious, at least to me. I have already hacked a solution, so its not that tough if I did it, but it would be better not to a be a hack. I just copied 90% of the wrapper.tpl into a template...

Anyway, imagine that a user could take the theme of Discuss, (minus the forums) and basically treat it like a normal modx theme, stick [[*content]] in there, choose the option to have the sidebar appear or not, or put in our own html into the content area.

This capability would be quite attractive, in my view, to potential users.

[eladnova]

Have you actually got Discuss2 installed and running?

[Nuan8]

No, I haven't, these comments are related to my knowledge of Discuss, which I am still setting up my site now. But I can run Discuss 2 on my other website for testing. Should I?

[eladnova]

I couldn't tell you about Discuss 2. You'd have to ask on the Forums. I'm waiting for it to be released oficially too.

[Nuan8]

Ah I didn't realize. Yeah I can't wait because its going to take time to become stable. So I will learn with Discuss and then migrate later. I am not sure if my point is very valid, its not hard to do this I guess. I may have had a problem conceptualizing a solution. Still, I think common users will want to know that's easy to do, it would have made my decision on what platform to go with easier.

[eladnova]

Actually, I understand that it is quite stable but the status is more around final documentation and just getting time to push it out publicly. I was going to try download a version this week and do a test install.

[Nuan8]

Hmm...that's useful info, thanks. I was wondering if it might be, so i assume this means they haven't done a complete re-write. Have you used the first version already for some time? If it wasn't too different I might want to pick it up as well...but I got a deadline I dare not miss.

[Mark-H]

Discuss2 is stable? Has anyone actually been using it? I thought this was a new reimagination of the original discuss that was still in progress, but if I missed anything, do let me know..

The biggest thing I would say is that the users like me want the ability to create a proper 'front page' rather than the front page of the whole website being the forums default page.

That's totally possible, it just means not making your Forums resource (the one with the Discuss snippet on it) the home page of your site with the site_start setting. For modmore.com we're using the original discuss and it's simply a /forums/ resource.

[Nuan8]

Yes the site looks great! Everyone has come a long way over these last years. And it should continue to grow!

I guess my argument is, sure total flexibility is good, obviously, but for some people they need a little direction rather than, you can do anything! If you say, hey, select this option and boom there you go, that has value, IF that's what the downstream client is asking for. The manifest is totally awesome but often the users don't know how to harness it.

[eladnova]

Ok, I said my understanding of it was that it is "quite stable". :)
Don't quote me on that and again, the guys are the best resource for "proper" information.

[Nuan8]

Any idea of the official hopeful ETA?

[eladnova]

Again, I'd have to refer you to the guys. Sorry for being vague but I'm just an interested party thats been asking the same questions. Makes me wish I had better Dev skills and could contribute :-/

[Nuan8]

Ha yeah I understand. Well, testing and debugging and feedback will be needed. :-)

[Nuan8]

Hi, I just want to come back here, again not trying to step on toes, but go back to my original point: Users need a blank-slate page in Discuss to use the theme of Discuss as their home page.

Most users I believe will want a proper front page in addition to the forums. Some will customize their front page a great deal, but others want a quicker solution. As I continue to use Discuss, I feel even more strongly that my point above, which I didn't get my thought process together properly before posting, but my idea is still sound, I believe.

Consider that I had to make a login box that approximated the discuss login box, matched all the colors and styles (yes its true that I couldn't use the Sass, and that's another issue). That's not the end of the world, but consider how hard it is for developers to say, here is a blank page with the header and login (and probably option to include search or breadcrumbs or whatever), and the user can put whatever html in here you want, this will be your front page.

Again, what I did was take another webpage, and make it look like it was truly part of the Discuss system, but in fact everything is different. Yes, I could probably edit the manifest to do this, but why not make it a bit easier, or at least provide a road map.

Now if you have stayed with me up to here, the next step would be a way to provide some limited forum contents on that front page, including styling and stuff. In other words, I take the header and so on, add in what I want, pop some ads in there or a slideshow, and show some forum contents (by which I mean, like with those colors and all, not just data but style) in select areas of the page.

I already have a tool to grab forum data and provide it on the front page, but here I mean connect it from a style standpoint, imagine the normal forum view, but less contents and shrunk into a window, even have like two of those on the front page in different places, most active boards and user selected boards. Right now, this type of integration with my front page is just a dream, and again is seems so easy from a development side.