For people who like the look of forums like phpbb, flatforum is a great leg up on the theming. Unfortunately, the maintainer has gotten busy and is unable to continue with it. See http://drupal.org/node/165915 . I don't think I'm a good choice to take it over because my php and theming skills aren't that good, so I wanted to post this and see if anyone out there is willing to step up.
The HEAD version of flatforum works pretty well in Zen and probably other themes but not in Garland. One thing I suggest is making HEAD an official release but put in the caveat about Garland. At this point, I don't know if it's worthwhile to do more work in 5.x as it works "good enough" unless someone has the time and wants to.
My bigger concern is the future. I haven't looked into the theming changes for 6 but I've heard tidbits about it while hanging out on IRC and I suspect that they will have a big impact on flatforum. It would be good if someone who has been keeping up with the changes could take a look and see what would need to be done. Even better if someone would go ahead and do it. :)
I should be in a better position to help out with this around the time 6 comes out. I'll be working on updating my sites to 6 and so will be able to test and maybe even do some minor fixing.
Michelle
Comments
I don't know why this module
I don't know why this module claims not to work with Garland... I was using it on the Ubercart forums for a long time w/ Garland. Folks just need to be sure to clear out the CSS cache and simply resubmit the theme configuration form after you've installed Flatforum. I'll consider taking over as maintainer, but I'm getting married in 8 days and will be out of commission for a while. ; )
Garland
TBH, I've never tried to use it with Garland. I've just heard multiple people say it doesn't work with that so I put that disclaimer in.
I'd love for you to be the maintainer. You've done great things with the forum on Ubercart. I'd love to see flatforum expanded to be a "forum theme" with various tricks to make forums look better included. I think that would help a lot for people who think Drupal forums are ugly to be able to install one pseudo-theme and have them much improved.
Congratulations on getting married! I don't think there's so much of a hurry that it can't wait until you're back from your honeymoon. :)
Michelle
I might be interested
We use the module activiely on our site and as a result we would want to see this module continue. Contact me marc AT ourfernie.com if you want to discuss it further.
Ourfernie
ourfernie
examiner.com
Open discussion...
I think it would be better if discussing happened publically. I"m not the current flatforum maintainer, just an interested party. :) So I think it would be better to have everyone in on any discussing rather than a one on one email.
Michelle
No problem I assumed you
No problem I assumed you were the current maintainer.
Sorry
ourfernie
ourfernie
examiner.com
I could put some time into this module as well
Perhaps we should collaborate on this module, at least until we see what's in Drupal 6. Let me know here or by emailing me if you're interested.
I'm not sure if the
I'm not sure if the flatforum module is the right approach. It's more a theme than a module. You could reach the same result if you simply consider the forum module while theming your site.
All in all it's overwriting some theming functions of forum.module (in template.php *_forum_list and *_topic_list) to change the style of the forum itself and to provide a node-forum.tpl.php with a lite tweak in template.php to theme all forum nodes and comments. The rest is CSS. I've did latly with a little work but within a acceptable amount of time.
So maybe a good documented theming tutorial would be better. So theme-authors could consider the forum module in their themes.
greets