PunBB integration?

hcgtv · 2006-01-23 19:14:58

A bridge that feeds articles to the forum is what I’m most interested in. Basically turning the forum into an advanced commenting mechanism.

Since I’m the only one posting on the Textpattern side, users would sign up on the forum. A common auth bridge could be added later if needed by some users.

I would also throw in $100 into the pool, my PayPal account awaits ;)

Edit: To see how this would all work, visit hcgtv in my sig. I really like the idea of visiting one screen and being able to view any and all comments on one screen.

Last edited by hcgtv (2006-01-23 19:18:16)

Dawk · 2006-01-23 19:31:46

Sounds good Bert,

feeding articles to the forum + adding the forum link to the article would be perfect for now.

Thats $200 :)

chriloi · 2006-01-23 19:44:56

Please put together all your requirements for a txp-punbb bridge and I will see at which costs I can do it for you.

If it’s only an auth and comments bridge, I need approx 2 weeks to finish the job.

Feel free to email me.

maniqui · 2006-01-23 21:58:36

> hcgtv wrote:

> A bridge that feeds articles to the forum is what I’m most interested in. Basically turning the forum into an advanced commenting mechanism.

I would love to see something like this and other ideas I have read in this thread.

I have a question: to post a comment about an article, visitors will have to sign up in the forum? Or it will be possible to post a comment without registering at forums?.

Right now, you dont have to register at a site (managed by TXP) to leave a comment, and that is good, because it’s easy for average users and also for my mom to post a comment.
But registering needs more steps… time… activation… etc.

Also another question, but this is more about PunBB. Is it possible to have just threads related to articles. I mean, 1 article <-> 1 thread, so, no one but the administrator can create new threads.

I would love to see this bridge soon.

hcgtv · 2006-01-24 00:20:03

maniqui,

You can enable guest posting on the forum, no registration required, which I have done on my sites.

Also persmissions in PunBB enable only certain groups to start topics, so an article would be fed over by the site admin and users can respond to it but not start new threads.

For new threads, I created a special forum where users can chat away.

Dawk · 2006-01-24 04:18:54

Looks like its time to start nailing down some specifics aye?

First, do we do this for pun 1.2.10 or 1.3?

@hcgtv, do you have any inside info on the status of 1.3?

Jeremie · 2006-01-24 07:00:29

I’ll start working on some specific scenarios (and I can add some box to the pool, but not as much as you guys, not right now anyhow). But there are a few questions that need answers first :

As stated previously, what version of PunBB do we target ? 1.3 is a major change (and improvement), but I don’t know when it will be out. I’m not sure the SVN version of the 1.3 branch commit by Rickard is accurate of the 1.3 development state. On the other hand, I’m not sure for our purpose there is that much of a difference between 1.2 and 1.3
SQL compatibility: TXP can handle only MySQL (right now), and PunBB can also handle Postgre and SQLite. I would suggest sticking to MySQL to made this easier, but that’s just me.
Charset compatibility: TXP is UTF-8 only, where PunBB is in Latin1 (iso-8859-1) by default but can be easily made to use other charset (including utf-8). Do we say for the bridges to work the PunBB has to be in utf-8, or de we convert the charset when needed ?
How many bridges/modules ? I think we could separate the whole things in two, one for the auth bridge (login/password replication), and one the “the forum as the comment tool”. But again, that’s me.

hcgtv · 2006-01-24 07:13:37

Dawk,

Don’t hold me to this but finishing up PunBB 1.3 is next on Rickard’s todo list, so it should be out soon.

I would vote to use the 1.3 code base because it has some nice new features that would make integration easier and better to maintain. PunBB 1.3 will have extensions, or core hooks into the code, making mods to PunBB easier to travel from version to version. There’s also the SEF urls, no more viewtopic.php?pid=123, so the forum will fit better with a TXP frontend.

Ther are other enhancements, I could gather up a list and post it if anyone is interested.

Dawk · 2006-01-24 14:52:46

Yeah, I’ve been waiting for the SEF & RSS features, thought there were some plugin enhancements coming too like you mentioned.
I’ve been following pun for awhile, long before I started this thread. Pun & TXP is going to be a sweet match! =)

I vote for 1.3 too, I really need this asap though. Have 3 projects in limbo.

@ Jeremie…
I’d vote for MySQL, UTF-8 & not sure on the bridge part?
We should probably let the difficulty in development & plugin maintenance play a big part in that decision? Whichever will be easier?

my 2 pesos =)

Jeremie · 2006-01-25 15:53:41

Ok, this is a first draft on how a “PunBB Comments” plugin would have to work. There is still one big unknown: the format of the datas within the post of the ported article. Is it BBcode, something else ?

I included an automatic post creation even if comments are closed, because I would believe in a system like this some users may stop reading articles in the main web, but only use the forums (especially if it’s a “small website” with a big forum, not unlike our own textpattern.com).

Steps backend

When an article is published for the first time, a new thread is created in a special PunBB forum with the same title as the article, if set to the same excerpt (as the first body paragraphs), the same body. A link back to the article is created at the end of the post, as set to.
If the article’s option “Comments” is set to “off”, the thread is closed.
If the other plugin PunAuthBridge is present and activated, the same author is used. Otherwise, a special common author is used.
If an article is saved again as published, a new export is done (overwriting the previous post, including author is necessary) and the “Modified by XX” is inserted at the end of the PunBB post (core PunBB feature).
If an article is unpublished (saved as draft, hidden or deleted) the thread is silently moved to another special forum

Steps frontend

A link is created with a comment invite, to the appropriate forum’s thread using a tag like txp:PunComments.

txp:PunComments : this new tag would be inserted into a article form, as a replacement for the native TXP tags (so the “Automatically append comments to articles” would have to be set to “no”). It would use a form to display the comments invite and some datas). Attributes:

form (the name of the form used to display the comments invite & datas)

Several new tags would be created to use within this form :

txp:PunCommentsNum : display the number of replies in the thread (number of comments)
txp:PunCommentsLink : the raw URL of the thread

Backend tab menu options :

Pun author login (used if PunAuthBridge is not present, override PunAuthBridge is necessary)
Forum where to insert the articles
Forum where to place unpublished articles’s thread
TXP Sections where the article are ported to PunBB
Insert excerpts before body or not (choice section by section)
Text of the link back from post to article
PunBB data (database, base URL, path to, etc.)

Last edited by Jeremie (2006-01-25 15:54:58)

hcgtv · 2006-01-25 17:11:58

Jeremie,

The big unknown, is this in reference to what the forum is running, bbcode or textile. Or what markup language the article is entered with?

Your outline includes some nice features, especially if the article changes. I use the Nucleus/PunBB bridge and it’s only a one time feed, so if I make a change, I also have to update the forum post.

On the feeding over, can sections and or categories be assigned to certain forums. This way you have the flexibility to design your forum to mimic your site’s layout.

On the author, even if the AuthBridge is not used, can’t the author of the article be used if that person happens to be a member on the forum, or else just use a common author?

Glad to see this coming along, I’m itching to use it already.

Jeremie · 2006-01-25 17:18:39

hcgtv wrote:
The big unknown, is this in reference to what the forum is running, bbcode or textile. Or what markup language the article is entered with?

Yep. We have two sources… the Textile version, and the xhtml version. PunBB only deals natively with BBcode. So what do we do there ?

On the feeding over, can sections and or categories be assigned to certain forums. This way you have the flexibility to design your forum to mimic your site’s layout.

I thought of that, and this may be a little too much. But if several people want to, we can add that to our request.

On the author, even if the AuthBridge is not used, can’t the author of the article be used if that person happens to be a member on the forum, or else just use a common author?

How the plugin will know what author to used ? We’ll need to create another SQL table and link TXP_author<->PunBB_member. It’s a lot of work and code when another plugin can do the job.

Glad to see this coming along, I’m itching to use it already.

Well, we need to get a consensus over the details of our request, then find a developper who can code it.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#37 2006-01-23 19:14:58

Re: PunBB integration?

#38 2006-01-23 19:31:46

Re: PunBB integration?

#39 2006-01-23 19:44:56

Re: PunBB integration?

#40 2006-01-23 21:58:36

Re: PunBB integration?

#41 2006-01-24 00:20:03

Re: PunBB integration?

#42 2006-01-24 04:18:54

Re: PunBB integration?

#43 2006-01-24 07:00:29

Re: PunBB integration?

#44 2006-01-24 07:13:37

Re: PunBB integration?

#45 2006-01-24 14:52:46

Re: PunBB integration?

#46 2006-01-25 15:53:41

Re: PunBB integration?

#47 2006-01-25 17:11:58

Re: PunBB integration?

#48 2006-01-25 17:18:39

Re: PunBB integration?

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