Posted by kevcol on June 13, 2009 at 11:00pm
I sure love Drupal -- except for the forums, which are pretty weak when compared to Simple Machines Forum or PHPbb. Even with the Advanced Forums module -- which improves things quite a bit -- the forums still come up short.
I'm working on integrating SMF with my Drupal 5 site now, and will look for Drupal 6 solutions in the future, so I'm wondering if anyone has good experience integrating one of these (or another) third-party boards.
Thanks!
Comments
There is a project to
There is a project to improve Drupal forums- specifically to bring it even closer to PHPbb. druBB is not yet ready to go, but it sounds like you are planning well ahead.
There is a SMF-Drupal integration project that apparently has a Drupal 6 release all set to go.
What features specifically
What features specifically are you looking to replicate? I don't care for the forums in drupal either but I'm finding ways around the missing features with contribs, cck, and views.
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@foggyperspectiv | foggyperspective.com (blog)
smfforum or phpbbforum
try
http://drupal.org/project/smfforum
or
http://drupal.org/project/phpbbforum
by vb, vadim
and donate if you find it useful so he can continue to improve it.
cheers
Come up short how?
It would be very nice if, when folks say things like the forums "come up short" they explained in what way. Drupal's forums would be a whole lot better if folks were willing to help make them better rather than just say they aren't good enough and run off to other software.
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region
Come up short how?
Call me shallow, but I think the standalone boards are much prettier than Drupal forums. ;)
Seriously, a lot of it comes down to presentation and expectations about what a message board should look like. When I see a phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/community/) or SMF (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php) forum, I know instantly what it is and how to use it. And I think most users would say the same.
Drupal forums, like mine (http://welltoldtales.com/forums/general-discussion-0), tend to have a much simpler (I'd say clunkier) presentation. I admit that I haven't delved too deeply into the CSS of the forum theme elements, but I haven't ever had to do that with standalone boards.
Users will brave any interface to get at the content they REALLY want, but I do think an attractive, familiar layout encourages more participation.
As to specific features, it seems odd that replies are handled like comments (rather than nodes) on Drupal forms. And Drupal forums seem to be slower than standalone apps (which is understandable -- it is a more complex tool.) But if I could get the boards looking better, I could live with these quibbles.
I'd love to be corrected by someone, and shown an example of a great-looking Drupal forum (ideally with a list of modules or settings that make it so.)
Styles
Well, you're using the Naked style, which is just a base... That's sort of like using Zen as a site theme without customizing it and complaining your site doesn't look good. :)
I think the Blue Lagoon style looks pretty good and it's easy to change the colors to fit your site with the color scheme at the top of the .css file.
As for nodes for replies, 2.x handles that. Not quite ready for use, yet, but just about. Speed, that I'll give you. Drupal's forum does have a couple of nasty queries in it and isn't cached at the level of stand alone apps. That shouldn't be a big problem for the average forum, though, but it starts to show when you have a ton of posts.
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region